‘Do the internet and Web 2.0 have the potential to be more idealised version of Habermas’ Public Sphere?’

The public sphere involves people coming together to discuss ideas and opinions that evolves from reading books to any form of opinion on a subject. The name ‘Public Sphere’ was given to this form of communication by a man called Jurgen Habermas. He believed that the development of the public sphere started in the 18^th century and transformed society from being feudal to a more equal society in which, people could express their opinions and possess more open views on subjects, such as books and novels. Habermas was born in Germany in 1929 and was linked with the Institute of social research in Frankfurt. He then published ‘The Structural Transformation of the public sphere’ in 1962. This put his thoughts about the public sphere into a structure, suggesting that the first known form of communication would have been coffee shops.
Habermas was correct in thinking that coffee shops were one of the first forms of The Public Sphere and that as society became more of a democracy and technology evolved, there would be more ways of this type of communication. Web 2.0 was the name given at a later date when websites that resembled the Public Sphere began to form. The concept of Web 2.0 began in a conference held between O’Reilly and the Media Live International in October 2004. They noted the importance of the web for this type of communication and the growing trend in websites marketing for all audiences (not those that just wanted to discuss books, on any subject). The name was given ‘Web 2.0’ and people started to branch off the characteristics given to it, but in some case it adopting the same characteristics as The Public Sphere. There became more of a demand in forms of Web 2.0 to discuss opinions or to just socialise and it captured these same characteristics of The Public Sphere, involving any one person discussing and forming opinions and ideas with one or more people in an area. At the moment 24.7% of the world’s population use or have access to the internet, which has tripled compared to 2000.

However, although Web 2.0 adopts The Public Sphere characteristics, Habermas envisioned that the discussion between the groups of people would be equal. There was no way of telling the person’s gender, age or nationality. The equality came from the anonymous way of using the internet as a public sphere; Habermas believed that people would be judged entirely on what they say on the subject of discussion. Technology has ventured further than his prediction and on websites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Blogger profile pictures and name status’ can be shown by that person. Web 2.0 websites include a lot of information about the person and equality is scarce in discussions on these sites.

It is now much easier for people worldwide to be able to connect to the internet, allowing discussions to take place around the globe. The amount of information that can be accessed is huge, but web 2.0 is not always reliable in both comment and function. Some of the websites can be slow and this can make discussing a subject hard. Sites such as Wikipedia can be edited by anyone that has access to it, so it is not always generating the correct information as some pages have been tampered with by the public. This could mislead people and the web 2. Website would not be acting as a public sphere. However, the website encourages discussion, such as social networking sites that allow communication easily through profiles, comments and online chat. However, social networking has fallen under the category of being a place for younger people to socialise, instead of a discussion, although ideas and views can be formed.

Technology has evolved, so more options are being made possible on the web and more takes on web 2.0 are expanding and not always fitting the public sphere criteria, or could be seen as a new outlook on it. Videos can be posted onto YouTube allowing all internet users to look and comment on that video, this is an ideal form of web 2.0, but does not fit the Habermas’ idea of The Public Sphere’. However, a website such as Blogger can be set up on any subject and people can comment on their blogs and follow other people’s blogs. This is a more genuine and relatable example of a web forms of the public sphere because it adopts the idea of a subject to discuss and any person being able to comment on the discussion.

Web 2.0 shies away from being discussion based and becomes non systematic, which defeats the point of the public sphere, however this is not the case with all web 2.0 sites, but as discussions are best held in person, rather than on the internet, as people use their body language and personality to get over opinions in a discussion. This is not as effective on Web 2.0 websites, although we do get some feel for a person’s character. Habermas believed discussions were best had in person to avoid confusion in any debate or subject. However, web 2.0 does in some ways fit into the criteria allowing people to do this to a certain extent, but it is not always used for the discussions of subject and technology has furthered and in some ways lost the control that the public sphere needed,

In conclusion, web 2.0 does base include some of the characteristics of Habermas’ public sphere, because technology has developed people are able to come together over the internet and discuss ideas and opinions. Although web 2.0 is classified as more complex, some websites do adopt this structure and behave as the public sphere was intended to. The amount of people that have internet access has grown and web 2.0 is the closest relation to the public sphere, but the simplicity of the public sphere is not obvious when using web 2.0 and is not apparent to the public.