This essay reviews John Hartley's Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular Culture. The significance of this text is that it provides one of the most developed engagements with the public sphere literatures from an author within cultural studies. The article necessarily addresses the considerable weaknesses in Hartley's understanding of the public sphere case. However, the aim is not to dismiss Popular Reality out of hand. Rather, the critique highlights the methodological and ethical differences between analyses based in cultural studies and ‘critical sociology’. Hartley does partially recognise the significance of recent feminist critiques to the much-needed critical reconstruction of the public sphere thesis. The article acknowledges this insight and then moves to a discussion of the ways in which a reconstructed conception of the public sphere thesis might not only be of value to media studies but also to a settlement between cultural studies and ‘critical sociology’.
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