Firstly, the blogsphere and
Twittersphere need to be explained because they are in a world of
their own. Blogging allows anyone with Internet access to post their
opinions or feelings online for anybody to see. Twitter also allows
us to do this but in 140 characters or less. However, for your
opinions to be seen by anybody you need followers. So in this
respect, the blogging world is different to the idea of the public
sphere. Gaining followers on Twitter is a competition for some. It is
also a competition to post the wittiest tweet. Favstar.fm promotes
the growth of a Twitter community where people are in competition to
have the tweet of the day. Obviously this is more likely to be
awarded to those who have a large number of followers. The more
followers someone has, the more impact their blogging/tweeting has.
The current Queen of Twitter is Lady Gaga. She has 28,827,745
followers – possibly more by the time you read this. While a lot of
people choose to use Twitter to follow celebrities, others use it for
breaking news updates. But you can't be the breaker of news if you
don't have followers.
In his piece on Jurgen Habermas, Marshall Soules said this: “For Habermas, the success of the public sphere was founded on rational-critical discourse where everyone has the ability for equal participation and the supreme communication skill is the power of argument.” This doesn't seem to match the way that blogs operate today. It is not always about the power of argument. Sometimes it is all in the power of the blogger.
References
Soules, Marshall 2008, 'Jurgen Habermas and the Public Sphere',
Soules, Marshall 2008, 'Jurgen Habermas and the Public Sphere',
<http://records.viu.ca/~soules/media301/habermas.htm>
Hello,
ReplyDeleteI found your post very interesting, as while some posts say blogs are public sphere, you see those two as different things. Especially I liked your argument at the end, it’s not the power of argument, but of the blogger. I would agree with you, argument orally stated and its online version differ and could be perceived differently. As we’ve learned in this unit, images, youtube clips, and embedded websites’ links within blogs all could contribute to attracting audiences’ attention and persuasion, so I also think blogs differ from public sphere. Cheers.
You bring up a good point. The public sphere had equal participation which simply doesn't exist with Twitter (in that you need followers to be heard). Do you think the public sphere still physically exists? I think that the blogosphere and twittersphere are the evolution of the public sphere... though it doesn't really have all of it's features regarding equality. Great post!
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