The Death of the Public Sphere?

Sorry about the late post. I came down with a slight virus yesterday evening and stayed in bed for the night and forgot about posting my essay.

The Death of the Public Sphere?

As we know it, the public sphere is a doomed enterprise. Its very existence hinges upon the usage of mass media, which already fades as a priority in the eyes of the people. It has been replaced by a nodal structure, one which channels the energies of the civic into narrow spaces rather than letting them simmer in a larger plane. Instead of a focused, unilateral, yet at times dispassionate, nationwide discussion, we have constant, chaotic dialogues raging on countless disparate topics. Although some topics may attract more attention than others, such attention is monopolized by diehard enthusiasts whose numbers pale in comparison with the size of the public sphere of yore.

As with the destruction of many old ideas, the cracking of the sphere began with the invention of the internet. The innovation created a stark contrast with information of the past and present: whereas we were once funneled information in packaged goods created by major news networks such as CNN and NBC, we are now free to create our own news through the blogosphere. The result is a focus of interests. Rather than being forced to discuss a mundane topic which holds no personal importance, an individual can now comment on a subject of fierce ideological identification. Not only does the sphere diversify into a system of nodes, but human interest sparks, accentuating and polarizing the diversification.

Of course, this new arrangement may not be entirely incompatible with the notion of the public sphere, at least in the short run. As of this moment, mass media still controls enough of our attention to focus widespread interest on a particular topic, such as the nuclear crisis or Iraq War. The blogosphere, however, already partially subverts such interest. Highly opinionated blog entries that resonate with specific groups of people attract those sorts of people far more effectively than mass media, which attempts to stay inoffensive to all. As the number of voices on the internet grow, it become virtually certain that everyone will find some personality they would rather listen to than a mainstream media source, simply because they agree with what that personality has to say. Logically, if this process were to continue without bound (as it is doing now), it would mean each media consumer would prefer the internet over the newspaper and television, causing these latter sources to die out and effectively eliminating the public sphere, replacing it with the aforementioned nodal network.

Since this process, as of yet, may still be reversible (though not without significant effort), we must ask ourselves: is this what we truly want? Would we rather discuss passionately what we believe in with like-minded people or debate issues in a slightly subdued manner in public forum? Would we rather be composed of diversified but strong-willed interest groups lobbying for influence on the world stage, or of a unilateral yet lukewarm coalition force advantaged by massive numbers? Whatever we will decide, we must decide soon, or the choice will be made for us by human nature itself.