Joost Knaap
joost@joostknaap.nl

Public sphere
 Habermas:
A democratic political culture where people can, outside
state’s supervision, have critical debates and can reason
freely

Succes depends on
 Equality
 Can everyone access it?
 Does everyone have a vote?
 Effective deliberation and discussion
(‘procedures of open discussion aimed at achieving
rationality motivated consensus’, Dahlgren, 2006)

Critique
 Not very democratic at all….
 Exclusion of everyone but white bourgeois males
(Garnham, 1992)

But….
 The internet!

Twitter information network’
 ‘Real-time
 Communication through ‘tweets’ (140 characters)
 Microblog, ‘SMS of the internet’

 Global: rank 9 (Alexa)
 US: rank 10 (Quantcast)/
rank 7 (Alexa)
 Sources: alexa.com / quantcast.com

If only 100 people were on twitter
 Source: http://www.sysomos.com/ (Picture from: Visualized, the
Information Atlas (not yet published), www.visualizedthebook.com)

Twitter study (1)
 Source: http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Twitter-
Study-August-2009.pdf

Twitter study (2)
 Source: http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Twitter-
Study-August-2009.pdf

So, ís twitter the ideal place to
have critical debate and
discussion? (1)
 Equality +
 Accesibility +/-
 Everyone has a voice +
 Limited space (140 characters) -

So, ís twitter the ideal place to
have critical debate and
discussion? (2)
 Possible to interact (‘@’) +
 Most topics not serious (‘pointless blabber’) -
 People do not always comment on each other -
 Really outside state supervision? -

Example: miljoenennota (budget
memorandum)

Traditional media follow

Possibilities to interact

But
 Only a minority uses twitter to discuss the news
 Mostly short statements, not
a lot of reactions, no real
interaction
 A lot of politicians
 Not always serious

Conclusion
 Twitter has elements of a public sphere
 But, 140 characters are too short for effective
deliberation and discussion
 Most of tweets not serious
 Most twitter users do not interact

 In my opinion Twitter is not a public sphere

Feel free to ask questions if you have any!