Internet and Political Development: Public Sphere in Cyberspace
Subject Areas : Research in Theoritical PoliticsKeywords: Internet Public Sphere Democracy Ideal Speach Habermas,
Abstract :
During the last decade of the 20th century, along with extraordinarily fast developments and evolutions in computer-based communication, and also the increasingly widespread access of different societies to the internet and cyber-networks, considerable efforts have been made to find an appropriate pattern for studying internet and the dimensions of its political and social impacts. Among these efforts, the concept of public sphere defined according to sociological ideas of Jurgen Habermas has gained an outstanding status. In this field, researchers are usually interested in answering the question that whether computer-based communication in the net can pave the way for political development and reinforcement of democracy through the revival of public sphere? In order to answer this question, we have to basically know whether the idea of public sphere is an appropriate theoretical pattern for researching this field or not? Each of the theoretical works and researches accomplished during recent years -of which some are mentioned in this article- have taken some aspects of the concept of public sphere into consideration and have used the concept to study the relation between internet, politics and power, and also their reciprocal impacts. These studies suggest that according to many researchers the concept of public sphere proves to be an appropriate theoretical pattern; but except few scholars, all believe that this pattern needs some modification or adaptation to specific conditions of computer-based communication and the recent evolutions in different societies.