Expanding the Public Sphere through Computer ... - ResearchGate

Chapter 7
The Expanding Public Sphere
This thesis advances our understanding of the opportunities provided by Usenet,
and by extension other forms of computer mediated communication, to expand
the public sphere. As importantly, this thesis introduces a methodology for examining
the patterns of communication within Usenet newsgroups, and provides
some initial steps toward understanding the nature of this rapidly developing communications
medium.
This thesis suggests that Usenet newsgroup might expand the public sphere by
providing opportunities for individual citizens to engage each other in rationalcritical
debate about the abortion issue. More specifically, criteria by which a
public sphere arena can be evaluated for its goodness of fit with the idealized
public sphere defined by Habermas (1989) in The Structural Transformation of
the Public Sphere are specified and measures for each of these criteria are developed
and applied to an ongoing conversation about politics. The informal zone of
the public sphere created by the participants in the talk.abortion newsgroup was
found to be diverse and reciprocal, but lacking in equality and quality. This chapter
summarizes the main arguments presented in the thesis and highlights the key
findings. It must be noted that this work represents a beginning, not an end. Other
dimensions with which to measure the public sphere could have been selected,
and might have resulted in different conclusions. Additionally, alternative operationalizations
of the dimensions may have resulted in alternative findings. It is
important, however, that the scholarly community continue to expand our abilities
to measure the nature of the public sphere, especially with reference to emerging
communication technologies.
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