Expanding the Public Sphere through Computer ... - ResearchGate

CHAPTER 5. MEASURING THE PUBLIC SPHERE 72
1994 to March 31, 1995 was stored and archived. As described in Section 3.3
on page 51 and shown in Figure 3.1 on page 53, each Usenet message contains a
header identifying the author, thread, and date posted. In addition, most messages
contain some text written by the author of the post, 2 and some text written by other
authors but included for reference. The entire set of messages, representing more
than 94 megabytes of data, was analyzed using programs written in Perl (Wall
& Schwartz 1991), which generated data files for analysis by Matlab, numeric
computation and visualization software produced by Math Works.
The focus of the study was on the behavior of the participants within the newsgroup.
Generally, the interest was less on the content of the messages than on the
fact that individuals were participating in political discussion. The focus on the
structure of the newsgroup – at the expense of an extended analysis of the content
– represented a commitment to understanding the patterns of participation.
The amount of participation, the distribution of participatory acts across days and
threads and among participants, and the interaction between participants, are the
primary focus of this investigation. Together, these factors represent the “structure”
of the newsgroup.
5.2 Dimensions of the Public Sphere
One of the difficulties in assessing the degree to which the public sphere satisfies
the conditions of democratic theory is the lack of formal, operationalized measures.
This study seeks to rectify that situation by developing specific measures,
and applying these measures in the context of an ongoing conversation that is
contributing to the informal zone of the public sphere. One method available is
to use what critical theorists would call a “counter-factual ideal” (Dryzek, 1990).
Habermas’s ideal speech situation, and its operationalization in the informal zone
of the idealized public sphere, serves here as the model against which real-world
experience can be criticized. As suggested in Section 2.4, four dimensions that
embody the spirit of the idealized public sphere are equality, diversity, reciprocity
and quality. Each of these dimensions is operationalized with a specific measure.
This section discusses the issues concerned with developing these measures, and
briefly introduces the operationalization procedures used. More extensive discussion
of the measures, as well as the results, is provided in Sections 6.1, 6.2 and
2 In rare instances, an empty or blank message will be posted, probably by mistake.