1. The siloization of the public
sphere?
Social Media and the Transformation of Public Space
Amsterdam June 18th to 20th 2014
Jakob Linaa Jensen, Ph.D., associate professor,
Media Studies and Center for Internet Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
Mail: linaa@imv.au.dk Twitter: jakoblinaa Skype: jakoblinaa
WORK IN PROGRESS – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION

2. Agenda
 The public sphere – a contested concept
 Beyond Habermasian ideals
 Publics in the age of digital media
 Striated versus smooth space
 Siloization or….?

3. This is not….
 An analysis of deliberation in online debates – upcoming
in journal MedieKultur
 The Replacement and Mobilisation Hypotheses revisited
(in Scandinavian Political Studies, 2013)
 Investigation of citizenship online (Policy & Internet,
2011)
 An analysis of the Internet in elections – past reports on
national elections and coming work on the EP election

4. It is….
 theoretical reflections based on own studies and
international experiences
 work in progress, many reflections are unfinished
 So comments are most welcome….

5. The public sphere
– a contested concept
 Habermas: coffee houses as examples of a public sphere
 Dewey: from “great society” to “great community”
 Kant: reflective judgement
 These classic notions emphasize the role of media
 Processes of deliberation are central
 Strong criteria for conditions and procedures

6. Critique of the “classic” public
sphere
 Exclusive (for the educated and the able)
 Trade off between deliberation and inclusion
 Discourse ethics exclude passion, emotions
 Epistemological problems: reality rarely fulfills
Habermasian ideals
 Arenas: the public sphere takes place in many settings

7. Updated concepts of the public
sphere must include
 Focus on deliberation – but also on inclusion
 Focus on visibility and the spectacular
 The spatial perspective – from coffee houses to social
media and back to the city squares
 And of course media are still what binds together
citizens and politicians

8. The public sphere in the digital age
 Gitlin (1998) Seperate public spheres, defined by
affinity, interst
 Hartley (2002) Public Sphere in the Media Sphere
 Terranova (2004) Hydrospheres
 Benkler (2006) Networked public shere
 Foot & Schneider (2006) Issue networks = web sphweres
 Boyd (2011) Networked publics

9. Social media democratize?
 Spectacular effects
 But not the only cause
 Based on media hypes – augmented by other media
 But limited lasting mobilization
 Centered around short time spans
 Ephimeral communities (Christensen, 2011, 12, 13)

10. Facebook democracy
Likes, groups still the most popular
Statements, more about visibility than involvement?
Feel good “slacktivism” (Fuchs, 2014)
Ephemeral communities? (Christensen & Christensen,
2011, 12)

11. Recent cases of political scandals
in Denmark
 Eager discussions, news sharing, jokes
 But people tend to reconfirm their views
 #loekkeerminformand - support
 #loekkeerminfarmand – irony, sarcasm
 Social media as source for the press
 But also tends to correct mistakes by the press

12. Seggregation, fragmentation
 Davis (1998) demonstrated that Republicans stick to
Republicans, Democrats to Democrats
 Similar trends in Denmark
 Besides statements and single issues, people do not
really engage on Facebook with political opponents –
except to “troll”
 Monadic clusters (Kenneth Gergen)

13. So maybe more about visibility
than deliberation

14. The spatial perspective revisited
– smooth or striated space?

16. The smooth public sphere online
 John Perry Barlow – a Declaration of Independence in
Cyberspace
 Electronic Frontier Foundation
 Howard Rheingold – Virtual Communities
 Benjamin Barber – online townhall meetings

18. The monks’ protest in Burma

19. The Iran Twitter revolution

20. The actors behind the striated….

21. National governments - politicians fear the
loss of control
Hillary Clinton: WikiLeaks release an 'attack on international
community’

22. International society - ICANN and World
Internet Forum, limits to freedom of speech

23. Corporations fear a free Internet which
cannot be exploited commercially

24. Smooth versus striated
 Technology is not neutral, sets the frames
 Governments, corporations, institutions define and
regulate the frames
 The social media public sphere adds to visibility more
than deliberation
 But more importantly, facilitate Foucauldian
heterotopia, smooth counter-spheres….

25. A social construction of
technology
 WE write the story – within the technological and
cultural frames we can affect to some or a large extent
 Heterotopias, reconfigurations or re-confimation

26. In sum
 Today, the discussion of the Internet and the public
sphere is not about the level of deliberation
 It is about whether a coherent public sphere is possible
in a world of fragmented, personalized media
technologies, siloization
 And it is about the battles between actors of striated
and smooth spaces

27. “Siloization”

28. Thanks!
Jakob Linaa Jensen
www.linaa.net
Twitter: jakoblinaa
Mail: linaa@imv.au.dk