I don't think that Habermas is right in pointing out that intellectuals lose their power to create focus because there is a decentered, multi-focus public sphere emerging by computer-mediated communication. The question is not how much online communication there is, but how much relevance it has, i.e. how much it is recognized and how influential it is. I think that also cyberspace is to a certain extent still shaped by old centres like corporate media (compare e.g. the overall public interest in cnn.com to the one in Indymedia). It is a nice political goal that all people can become intellectuals that talk in the public and to whom many others listen and answer and that CMC enables and empowers such processes. But today this is not yet the case, therefore I think Habermas is not right, there is no death of intellectuals as well as no death of powerful interests caused by the Internet. There is a general underrepresentation of intellectual thinking in mass media and cyberspace, this is not due to the effects the Internet on the public, but due to (in Habermas' own theoretical categories) the colonizing effects of monetarization/capitalization and bureaucratization on lifeworld communication processes in the private and the public sphere (including Internet communication and mass media communication) If one applies Habermas' own theory to cyberspace consequently, I think one will arrive at other results: Cyberspace as a realm of communication belongs to the lifeworld, but like other lifeworld aspects it is today shaped and colonized by the steering media money and power which results in a lack of communicative action and rational discourse. But on the other hand also great potentials for a new critical public sphere emerge that can transcends the colonization of the lifeworld because cyberspace creates new forms of networked commons and communicative action that can bypass colonization processes of the life world. I think that there are both colonization and decolonization processes of lifeworlds going on in cyberspace which are antagonistic and constitute new types of conflicts. I think what Habermas also wants to point out is what he calls "deformalization of the public sphere" (in another paragraph in the same article that has not been translated into English). And here I think he is right: The claims of validity of communication that Habermas identifies in his Theory of Communicative Action (truth, truthfulness, rightness, comprehensibility) are much harder to obtain in online communication than in face to face communication. I think that this can result in a loss of critical reflection in online communication, but not in a reduced importance of intellectuals in communication. Overall I am happy that Habermas has finally commented on the Internet because this was really overdue. Christian _________________________________ Christian Fuchs Assistant Professor for Internet & Society ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies & Society (http://www.icts.sbg.ac.at) University of Salzburg Sigmund Haffner-Gasse 18 A-5020 Salzburg Austria christian.fuchs@sbg.ac.at Phone +43 0662 8044 4823 Fax +43 0662 6389 4800 Information-Society-Technology: http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/ Managing Editor of tripleC - Cognition Communication Co-operation Open Access Online Journal for the Foundations of Information Science http://triplec.uti.at/ Am 28.03.2006 14:58 Uhr schrieb "Jeremy Hunsinger" unter <jhuns@vt.edu>:
"Use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts of communication. This is why the Internet can have a subversive effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes. But at the same time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time. The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a focus."
From Habermas's Kreisky prize lecture printed in Der Standard March 10-11 translated in part in signandsight.com. thoughts?
jeremy hunsinger jhuns@vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com
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