The New Frontier: Social Media and the Public Sphere

In the name of your small business, you create a password, decide a username, and complete the registration for one of many social media websites, but what have you signed up to? One needs to look beyond the content generator websites, the calendar outlining when and where you will post various types of content, and the common, daily activities you perform online, and understand you are in the public sphere. Traditionally, the public sphere is a physical space. It is a cafe, a city square or a town hall. (Couto, week 1). Now, social media platforms are public spheres. They are new frontiers no longer attached to a physical space (Rayboy, 2006 & Couto, week 1). They are “deterritorialized”, and the rules are made on the go (Rayboy, 2006 & Couto, week 1). We communicate nearly instantaneously and for time eternal with our newly minted reference space, the entire globe (Rayboy, 2006 & Couto, week 1). Undeniably, the public sphere's nature is changing, but Habermas’s work remains the foundation.

The German philosopher, Habermas, one of the best-known modern-day scholars, is relevant today as much as he was in the 50s (Littlejohn, et. al., 2017). According to Habermas, in the ideal public sphere, several conditions are necessary (Littlejohn, et. al., 2017 & Couto, week 1). First, no constraints are placed on what can be expressed. All participants and opinions are acknowledged as legitimate, and everyone is allowed to speak. Lastly, power relations are absent, and everyone is treated equally. Equality prevails to absorb the risk of being denied, to abolish discrimination, and to include marginalized populations in the "emancipatory communication" (Habermas, 2008 & Littlejohn, et al., 2017, p. 437). A higher level of discourse or emancipatory communication is necessary to instill strong social norms, to transform society, and to fulfill all citizen’s needs (Littlejohn, et al., 2017 & Couto, week 1). Each person needs to work on establishing the new norms by examining and adopting, carefully, every point of view in debate and focus on reaching a consensus or a reasonable dissent (Habermas, 2008). Potentially, all online social media users can exercise caution, civility, and reason as they tweet, post, or comment online. Sadly, communicative rationality is present on rare occasions.

Communicative and instrumental rationality are two notions in constant tension, and their tension defines one of the primary problems in modern life (Couto, week 1). Instrumental rationality expresses itself in a subject-object manner (Couto, week 1). Even though instrumental rationality is needed in a strict finite amount to run systems, make scale possible and assist in bureaucracy, management, and complex technologies, it also leads to tragic, unsavoury outcomes (Couto, week 1). Indeed a top-down one-way approach, instrumental rationality is observed in many phenomena. The list includes, but is not limited to fast food, trolling, vitriol public debates, trash talk shows, political attack ads, gerrymandering, and micro-aggressions (Couto, week 1). Communicative rationality is “thus the intellectual power and social binding force that allows us to create a community of discourse and the possibility of understanding, despite the complexity and alienation in modern society” (Couto, week1, slide 38). The idea of communicative and instrumental rationality influences the metaphorical models of dialogue and broadcast written about by Peters (2005).

As a public sphere member or social media user, unknowingly, you aspire to use communicative rationality faithfully and instrumental rationality sparingly. Inadvertently, you aim for the perfect speech environment combined with the dialogue model. However, you live and breathe the broadcast model seven days a week twenty-four hours a day. In the dialogue model, the assumed goal is perfect understanding no matter the communication form (Couto, week 9). The sender sends the message “A” to the receiver, who receives the message “A” and understands exactly, perfectly, and precisely the original message “A”. Peters based the dialogue model on the medieval belief angels are telepathic (Couto, week 9). Evoking a utopia similar to the perfect public sphere, “where nothing is misunderstood, hearts are open, and expression is uninhibited” (Couto, week 9, slide 11). Thus, the threat to the dialogue model is failing to understand exactly what others are thinking and feeling or miscommunication. Since humans are not telepathic, the dialogue model is proven to be unattainable. The model distracts us from obtaining the truth, understanding each other, and learning to accept paradoxes and ambiguity (Couto, week 9). Peters believes the actual model we communicate with is the broadcast model (Couto, week 9). It is based on the parable of the seed sower, who scatters or broadcasts seeds all over the earth knowing some germinate and thrive while others die. The broadcast model is not only social media, TV, and radio but also encompasses all real-world communication forms. Unfortunately, we never know what another person is thinking or feeling, no matter how familiar the sender or how well-spoken is the message. Asymmetry and disagreement between the sender and receiver is the accepted norm.

Finally, the intent of a thought out, organized digital marketing plan is to ensure the best public sphere is maintained on your social media sites, the communicative rationality is cultivated and nurtured, and instrumental rationality is minimized. Or it is only used when needed to improve efficiencies. All within the broadcast model, knowing some blog posts, contests, or infographics scheduled on the content calendar will succeed, and others will need improvement.

References

Habermas, J. (2008). Public space and political public sphere: the biographical root of two

motifs in my thought. In Between Naturalism and Religion. (pp. 11-23). Polity Press.

Littlejohn, S., Foss, K. A., & Oetzel, J.G. (2017). Theories of human communication. (11th ed.).

Waveland Press Inc.

Peters, J. D. (2005). Introduction: Hard-hearted liberalism. In Courting the abyss: Free speech

and the liberal tradition. University of Chicago Press.

Raboy, M. (2006). The 2005 Graham Spry memorial lecture making media: Creating the

conditions for communication in the public good. Canadian Journal of Communication,

31(2), 289–306. https://doi-org.ezproxy.royalroads.ca/10.22230/cjc.2006v31n2a1733