(1)
1.
The public sphere and its directrices
The birth and
development of modernity involves the gradual expansion of a large and complex
community that deprives the primary groups of their previous centrality. This
removal requires that the internal solidarity of social ties is no longer
regulated mainly by direct interpersonal relationships, but largely conveyed by indirect and mediated social
interaction.
By virtue of his
protean and heterogeneous character, therefore, in the modern society new
spaces and new models of sociability emerge where manifest in the appearance of
physical and symbolic places where they occur, you affirm and face different
political ideas, opposing viewpoints, divergent interests and differing
definitions of reality. Specific environments like pubs, cafes, offices, where
citizens exchange views freely on any topic consider relevant to their
existence and cultural arenas as the media of communication where opinions more
and less relevant in the scene, you compare, wrangle, talk, try to proselytize.
In this sense,
the media appear as the main institution on which hinges the whole of modern
life. Are they, in fact, to witness the transition from one type of
organization where services are obtained and public order imposed by coercion
to a different type where not only a small minority but that majority
voluntarily contributes to the cultural movement and the social order.
Since their origin,
in short, the media constitute the instrument by which the social body of
citizens can check live the body politic of the rulers. This is because, in
order to have effective oversight and measure the activity of political leaders
and public authorities, it is necessary to ensure that their actions are
clearly documented and that their results are all objectively measured and made
accessible.
It is since the
bureaucracy is imposed a duty to transmit its notifications to the
heterogeneous complex composed of citizens, is when Governments are forced to
use the media to disseminate laws and regulations that is modern public space.
It is in these circumstances that the recipients of administrative authorities
give rise to a publicum that serves as an integral part of the modern
State and the company's Center of gravity. By participating in the
institutional system, i.e., the new social stratum of the bourgeoisie assumes a
central position within society: gives life, thereby, to a socially significant
public sphere and politically relevant (1).
You can then
define this sphere in terms of the composite plot within which takes shape the
collection of opinions on issues of general interest expressed publicly by any
of the components of the social body: people whose opinion is important and
respected because collectively they don't speak in your name, but through a
voice that expresses the interest of the social group they belong to.
That each
representative is socially judgment means that you have the right to speak in
the name of someone because that someone has taken the floor, got visibility,
took the opportunity to state their views on the soil of collective discussion,
acquired the authority to enter the stage of common life. These are people
which, precisely because they are not members of the Government, but part of
citizenship that you autogoverna electing a representative body, hold the right
to weigh their ideas freely and publicly expressed, on issues of general
interest: and they do it through the media and other media. Why, indeed,
citizenship rights and media are inseparable: come together, grow in tune and
reflecting each other. This is demonstrated very clearly the many case
studies where the constant coincidence between, on the one hand, the
increase or decrease of interest in news and political commentary; and, on the
other hand, the strengthening or weakening of social norms relating to
liability and compliance with the law. When the desire for information appears
high civic spirit is stronger when the first fades, decreases the second (2).
Land ideas that flourish in the media contribute to the
formation of public sphere and became subject to direct and indirect
discussion. Only implicit and explicit dialogue, conversation and active action
publicum are able to transform the bare information in matter of living
reviews, points of view and shared ways of thinking. This is because the news
is something that is not about the individual, but public opinion. It is not,
i.e., its intrinsic importance that makes an event a news story, but his
surprising but not unexpected, unpredictable and expected, for which the first
reaction which results in an individual resides in the desire to repeat it to
someone else. This produces elicits comments and dialogue gives a debate that
glides quickly from the occurrence in question the implications that there are
contained. This exchange of ideas among the countless selects expressed, a list
of propositions that are angular coordinates of the current state of the collective
discourse (3).
It is therefore
starting from the interpretation of current events that the public sphere. This
ball actually gravitates around the axis formed by the climate of opinion: an
isogloss that describes the current situation of collectively shared opinions
and is more or less stable or varies as times, at different times, the
prevailing judgements about what happens crystallize differently giving rise in
turn to a more diffuse set of guidelinesothers considered to be legitimate,
others only barely recognized or finally completely prohibited and forbidden
and therefore expressed only covertly.
Supporting on the
climate of opinion, the public sphere is shaping around a slew of allegations
is not always consistent. Therefore constitutes a heterogeneous fabric capable
of holding together a varied positions. Takes shape, lives and changes in
attitudes of thought, feeling and action of individuals, i.e. in particular
with microculture they give birth and where identified. Microculture whose
action is to define a specific symbolic space, a certain territoriality by
which abstract values take root in the collective reality of people who are
carriers. Consider the notion of territoriality is extremely important because
only his presence makes concrete the process through which ideas, images and
views emerge in the practices of individuals or groups and are thus invested
with a particular symbolic value.
The public sphere
is manifested in two different but complementary axes: one concerning the
public knowledge (public knowledge) and
the other on popular culture (popular culture).The first refers to the conceptual and programmatic forms of
political communication, production and reception of information, collective or
private comparison between more or less contrasting opinions: objects
that define the specific point of rupture in which endlessly the social continuum
is interrupted and find new temporary platforms toRedial.
The second concerns the whole variety of cultural expressions and
ceremonial forms of everyday life: entertainment,
fiction, entertainment, entertainment genres. Ffootsteps plastic where
relatively favouring the relational plan on that expressive content, public
issues occur directly in social practices through gestures, rituals,
communication devices, to be dressed, lifestyles. Characteristic of these
practices is that form of cultures experienced, practical structuring of time
and space. The agents who bring in opera, IE, employ social knowledge to their
use and consumption and, according to the different situations, establish
individual ways of use and local paradigms of interpretation without
immediately accountable to none: ignoring too much of what is collectively
entitled or devalued.
Although the
first perimeter you prefer more explicit and concrete themes, while inside the
second you put in scene of situations whose value is more indirect and
metaphorical, in both cases it is only a spectacular product, but either you
have social dynamics through which social actors shall exchange information,
come into contact with one another and create a shared knowledge. In fact,
printed on paper, broadcast on radio or television, disclosed on the websites,
the information is not limited to Select actors who
give the word, choose the events that give relief, focus attention on specific
ways to address social problems, but offer their users even recreation,
psychotherapy and social membership: empowerment Act, i.e., as a means of
strengthening social ties and distracting object can produce phenomena of
psychological compensation.
In the public
sphere are numerous both forces in support of stability and the status quo
in favour of change, novelty, change. There is at work, in this sense, a
ceaseless antagonism between social integration work, which involves the
censorship of thorny themes and emphasis on simpler ones; and another innovation
that needs the conflict as a stimulus to draw attention and encourage action.
The first movement prefers reason general enough to be accepted by all so as to
encourage, through the show and fun, the collective sharing of spaces, times
and meanings. The second, instead, proposes problematic content, difficult and
not easily shareable: produces tension and nervousness in the then social body;
staging and metabolization of the great collective conflicts across the
company; legitimization of marginal viewpoints, minority and alternative.
Tensions geared
to stability and those oriented to transformation and change through both
leaders: is that concerning the public knowledge that
on popular culture.
2. by
the wired society mass
The new
possibilities of social interaction offered by technological innovation in the
field of transport and communication are long hampered by people's attachment
to an indefinite variety of traditions that are incompatible with each other.
It is in this context that goes including the work of the media in relation to
public knowledge and popular culture. The mass media are spreading everywhere,
firstly, national languages: getting that from one
corner to the other modern States citizens can communicate and understand each
other. And, secondly, collective behavior standards, hygiene habits, literacy,
civic education, ethical values, forms of do, because all share a common reference array. I offerno then the
entire community based cultural tools to form its own aesthetic taste and their
own political opinion. In this way, not only become dispersed and heterogeneous
populations in highly integrated social bodies at national level because with a
common sense language. But, also, making it accessible to the vast
majority of people ever higher knowledge, promote also an acute thirst for
experiences which, in turn, manifests itself in terms of greater individual
self-awareness and a more pronounced social diversification.
With the mass
society, in fact, the average education level increases so as to make most
citizens self-sufficient and capable to an extent never previously reached:
conscientious and responsible to a point that would no longer be confined
exclusively to support the local notables or political elites , but to
be able to intervene personally in the stage where you deal with the big
subjects of public life to treat social issues directlycultural, political and
more or less relevant.
Hand
in hand with this autonomy, the tendency to accept traditional behaviour
patterns and pre-established mental schemes seems increasingly weakened by a
new skill to reports AFP and reinventing them continuously. Which, if on the
one hand means the individual a very heavy burden, on the other hand allows
them a more fervent freedom, greater individualism, greater self-awareness and
a higher self esteem. Do so slowly, as road opposite ebb and flow of mass
society, the process of demassificazione: Dynamics of demolition of the
verticistici paradigms and their replacement with a culturally plural society
and morally polytheist (4).
Carefully spread
in all spaces of collective life, this movement is still more concretely
visible and evident in comparing the mode d ' use of mass media and those
relating to personal media: in comparison of the communication technologies
that focus on a national level and on a family size and those made specifically
for the individuals of the entire globe. On the one hand, the cinema as special
and festive event, the radio-television palimpsest monochord and uniform, the
mammoth stereo system, fixed telephony anchored to an outlet, city libraries
and museums where knowledge is totally separated from daily life. On the other
hand, blogs and political commentary, social networks, music and downloaded videos
on the net, web-tv and pay-per-view, cable and satellite tv, cd and dvd
players, phone, smartphone, iPhone, iPod, last minute diffuse tourism, the
world wide web.
Since the end of
the seventies of the 20th century, therefore, begin to get newlight and dynamic educational prerequisites of
dismantle social classes working a real mass society dissolution and giving
birth to a new model of the public sphere significantly different from the
previous one.The protagonist of this movement
of demassificazione un person who, with respect to
the past, enjoys a' heightened individual maturity and to a
strengthened cultural liberty (3).
The salient
features of this process are social, cultural, economic and political.
i. a surplus of
intellectual self-determination and economic self-sufficiency, people begin to
feel a larger need for distinction and emancipation. So give impetus to an
individualisation of the personalities and culture that, valuing the private
and personalized goods, introduces a disjointed and less confrontational
relationship between theinternal private life and theexternal social
life.
ii. In correlation
with the new supremacy of personal media on mediae, a new rule sees the light.
Moving from a collective interest focused mainly on mainstream culture
to a radical pluralization of the experience, a fragmentation of public gaze
and a multiplication of aesthetic judgement criteria that make it notable above
all the so-called civilization and culture vernacular grassroots:
blogosphere, websites, wikis and mashups,
podcasting, independent productions, materials underground, niche content,
eclectic works, cult series for individual segments of the population, products
that previously could not be offered because anti-economic, IE not able to
produce enough profit (5).
iii. An economy
of prosumers based on production for use on long tail and on the
self-determination of the user, who sees the market as a simple Exchange,
network starts to achieve dominance over an economic system founded on the
primacy of the production and consumption of status symbol.
iv. Media Arenas
, social networks and microblogging platforms, eCommunity (digital), community
uCommunity (community ubique), discussion forums, newsgroups, chat
rooms, online dating start to integrate and then, progressively, at
least partially to replace the parties, trade unions and other organizations to
develop, debate and political mobilization.
Thanks to the
prevalence of this new social world gradually emerges the modern public sphere
in which the collective reflection on the foundations of the social order
maintains a configuration of models that
enhance the status symbols against the symbols of status and values related to
the physical and psychological well-being, as opposed to those related to
complacency and rivalry. It considers inseparable individual or collective
treatment of cultural products from micro context to which the latter inspired
by or to which they belong: that believes, that is, inseparable, opinions and
collective tastes from cultural practices in which the actors are enrolled and
the social networks to which they adhere.
This training
does not neglect the context in which the interactions and considers,
therefore, that the different communication platforms produce different types
of relationships between the interlocutors. It also gives particular importance
to the desire of participating in cultural events to share, through them, of
intellectual values, and distinguishes between event and theme meetings,
between content of Exchange and linkup. Considers, therefore, a cultural event
as a social circumstance and ritual, as a time of spreading and sharing a
language and a know plurals: situation where the social body staged knowingly
and unknowingly their symbolic worlds and its intellectual values to broaden
dissemination, increase collective awareness and allow the transformation over
time.
In conclusion, at
the time of the networks and social networks, the public sphere is
looming as the environment where, by definition, different cultural worlds
intersect. Terrain of struggle, from one side, to the social construction of
reality; and, secondly, to the formation and strengthening of individual and
group identity. Place where the collective problems are discussed, selected,
defined, classified, dramatized, packaged and presented to the public (6).
This sphere is
divided into three main components.
i. Social groups
competing who is promoting different issues and different ways of looking at
the same issue, initiate and constantly in motion a process of competition
among a large number of social problems.
ii. The various
arenas that serve as symbolic environment where social issues vie for
recognition, are fighting for greater relevance and rival for his statement.
Arenas that have each, in the first instance, of a specific volume of Kent Act
to limit the number of issues in the race to gain more attention from the publicum
and impact on the strengthening of the competing issues. And, in the second
instance, of a peculiar intersection capacity and synergy with other arenas
through which propagate its action.
iii. Operational
networks that promote and seek to control the definition of problems and whose
communication channels through the different arenas.
The main carrier
of this new sphere consists of the political communication: ground-collision
collusion that takes different aspects depending on whether you are in ordinary
economic phase, in time of crisis or the election. In this Act, in the first
instance, three speeches in mutual interaction, the politician, the media and
the public; and, in the second bar, three competing actors, economic forces,
the media and the electoral body.
It is mandatory
that this type of communication the correlation of forces between the careful
is more or less in favour of one or the other always and only temporarily. The
balance between the actors and the speeches of acts from discriminating between
democracy and the more or less undemocratic regimes and totalitarian regimes.
Because this
balance is always alive and does not crystallize permanently is never required
that four conditions are met without exception:
i. insurance of indisputable democratic legitimacy of the
three different kinds of speech;
ii. la protection that these three speeches will deal with
in a condition such that the prevalence of one or the other cannot be predicted
in advance.
iii. ensuring that the established balance of power is
always temporary and never definitively;
iv. the protection of the separation of the three speeches
and autonomy of the instances that you are loading.
Note
(1) The article was published
in Davide
Borrelli, Mihaela Gavrila (ed.), Changing Media, Words remain, Franco
Angeli, Milan, 2013, 1st reprint 2014
(2) Franco Crespi, public sphere and private sphere in
complex societies, in "Sociologia", XXXVI, 1, 2002
(3) David Rios Insua, Simon
French, edd., E-democracy: a group decision and negotiation perspective,
Springer: Heidelberg, London, New York, 2010
(4) Majo Hansotte, Les intelligences citoyennes: comment
se prend et s ' invente la parole collective, De Boek: Brussels, 2005
(5) Zizi Papacharissi, A
private sphere: democracy in a digital age, Polity Press: Cambridge, 2010
(6) Asa Briggs, Peter Burke, Social history of the media: from Gutenberg to the internet, Polity Press: Cambridge, 2009
(7) Angela m. Crack, Global
communication and transnational public sphere, Macmillan: Basingstoke, 2008
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