Abstract
The concept of the public sphere has become almost ubiquitous in many arts, humanities and social science disciplines since the English translation of Habermas’s foundational text in the late 1980s. Much of the work in media and communication studies, however, tends to rely still on that text and takes little account of either Habermas’s own revisions to the concept in light of critique and experience, or the work of others that seeks to refine Habermas’s original formulation and make it useful for contemporary media analysis. O’Mahony’s substantial volume of essays on the contemporary theory of the public sphere while not addressed explicitly to media scholars is a useful reference point for those media and cultural analysts who are interested in learning more about the development of the public sphere as a concept in the 1990s and beyond.
The most important text for understanding Habermas’s revision of the public sphere is the relatively little referenced (at least in media studies) Between Facts and Norms of the mid-1990s. Habermas, in debt to Bernhard Peters’ sluice-gate model of the public, develops a striking account of the relationship between actors and institutions in the public sphere that can explain how on occasion resource-poor groups can make a difference. This work has surprisingly been picked up only occasionally in English work on media and politics.
O’Mahony begins in the first section of the book by usefully contrasting the different normative models of the public, pitting Habermas’s deliberative model against liberal, republican, realist and radical contenders. Part 2 seeks to relate this explication of contrasting normative theories with a theory of society and the place of public communication within it. This marks out the importance of Habermas’s work that brings together normative theory with a theory of public communication and a pathology of contemporary communication that serves not the public but the interests of political and economic elites. Part 3 develops a normative theory of the public sphere not from theories of democracy but from broader cognitive foundations of collective learning processes that underpin a communicative understanding of democratic politics. Part 4 seeks to bring the concerns of the first three sections to develop a framework for the analysis and critique of contemporary public communication.
This is a substantial and important work not only of exegesis and synthesis but also of conceptual development extending along the lines of Habermas’s revisions of the 1990s. A close reading of this text by media scholars would undoubtedly prove beneficial not only in helping to tighten up how the public sphere is used as a concept but also in terms of reframing how we conceive of the public sphere operating in contemporary societies.