Capitol Hill Blue Forums Life and Moral Issues Morality & Society Refeudalization and the Public Sphere

As Habermas argues, in due course, this sphere of rational and universalistic politics, free from both the economy and the State, was destroyed by the same forces that initially established it. This collapse was due to the consumeristic drive that infiltrated society, so citizens became more concerned about consumption than political actions. Furthermore, the growth of capitalistic economy led to an uneven distribution of wealth, thus widening economic polarity. Suddenly the media became a tool of political forces and a medium for advertising rather than the medium from which the public got their information on political matters. This resulted in limiting access to the public sphere and the political control of the public sphere was inevitable for the modern capitalistic forces to operate and thrive in the competitive economy.
[b]"Therewith emerged a new sort of influence, i.e., media power, which, used for purposes of manipulation, once and for all took care of the innocence of the principle of publicity. The public sphere, simultaneously prestructured and dominated by the mass media, developed into an arena infiltrated by power in which, by means of topic selection and topical contributions, a battle is fought not only over influence but over the control of communication flows that affect behavior while their strategic intentions are kept hidden as much as possible."

Jurgen Habermas's [b]The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is an immensely rich and influential book that has had major impact in a variety of disciplines....
Habermas developed his study within...the analysis of the transition from the stage of liberal market capitalism of the 19th century to the stage of state and monopoly organized capitalism of the 20th century developed by the Frankfurt School....

While in the bourgeois public sphere, public opinion, on Habermas's analysis, was formed by political debate and consensus, in the debased public sphere of...state capitalism, public opinion is administered by political, economic, and media elites which manage public opinion as part of systems management and social control. Thus, while in an earlier stage of bourgeois development, public opinion was formed in open political debate concerning interests of common concern that attempted to forge a consensus in regard to general interests, in the contemporary stage of capitalism, public opinion was formed by dominant elites and thus represented for the most part their particular private interests. No longer is rational consensus among individuals and groups in the interests of articulation of common goods the norm. Instead, struggle among groups to advance their own private interests characterizes the scene of contemporary politics....
Enlightenment norms had turned into their opposite,...democracy had produced fascism, reason had produced unreason, as instrumental rationality created military machines and death camps, and the culture industries were transforming culture from an instrument of Bildung and enlightenment into an instrument of manipulation and domination.

Media corporations and the government made decisions that excluded the public, ignored public concern and benefited their own private interests. The decision to deregulate media ownership has been largely responsible for the unfolding crisis in the news media, which current economic instability has further inflamed. Robert McChesney claims that deregulation has resulted in three major trends at the dawn of the twenty-first century: [b]corporate consolidation, conglomeration and hypercommercialism....
...the current oligopolistic system has resulted in a lack of diversity. Diversity in the news media is minimal in content and viewpoints. The public sphere demands access to all citizens, yet a select few are responsible for deciding newsworthy issues and framing them in a standardized way....

The crisis for news corporations is an opportunity for major reforms that could give the public sphere back to the public, beginning with the inclusion of the public in policy debate over how to address the crisis. New media technologies have opened up these avenues for public participation. The commercial model of the public sphere has proven itself a failure in both the pursuit of profit and the promotion of public interest. Regulatory reform can advocate for the establishment of a public service model in its place, one that understands news as a public good rather than a product, and individuals as citizens rather than consumers. Thus can regulatory reform revitalize democracy.