[Air-l] habermas on the internet

[Christian Fuchs]

I don't think that Habermas is right in pointing out that intellectuals lose
their power to create focus because there is a decentered, multi-focus
public sphere emerging by computer-mediated communication. The question is
not how much online communication there is, but how much relevance it has,
i.e. how much it is recognized and how influential it is. I think that also
cyberspace is to a certain extent still shaped by old centres like corporate
media (compare e.g. the overall public interest in cnn.com to the one in
Indymedia). It is a nice political goal that all people can become
intellectuals that talk in the public and to whom many others listen and
answer and that CMC enables and empowers such processes. But today this is
not yet the case, therefore I think Habermas is not right, there is no death
of intellectuals as well as no death of powerful interests caused by the
Internet. There is a general underrepresentation of intellectual thinking in
mass media and cyberspace, this is not due to the effects the Internet on
the public, but due to (in Habermas' own theoretical categories) the
colonizing effects of monetarization/capitalization and bureaucratization on
lifeworld communication processes in the private and the public sphere
(including Internet communication and mass media communication)

If one applies Habermas' own theory to cyberspace consequently, I think one
will arrive at other results: Cyberspace as a realm of communication belongs
to the lifeworld, but like other lifeworld aspects it is today shaped and
colonized by the steering media money and power which results in a lack of
communicative action and rational discourse. But on the other hand also
great potentials for a new critical public sphere emerge that can
transcends the colonization of the lifeworld because cyberspace creates new
forms of networked commons and communicative action that can bypass
colonization processes of the life world. I think that there are both
colonization and decolonization processes of lifeworlds going on in
cyberspace which are antagonistic and constitute new types of conflicts.

I think what Habermas also wants to point out is what he calls
"deformalization of the public sphere" (in another paragraph in the same
article that has not been translated into English). And here I think he is
right: The claims of validity of communication that Habermas identifies in
his Theory of Communicative Action (truth, truthfulness, rightness,
comprehensibility) are much harder to obtain in online communication than in
face to face communication. I think that this can result in a loss of
critical reflection in online communication, but not in a reduced importance
of intellectuals in communication.

Overall I am happy that Habermas has finally commented on the Internet
because this was really overdue.

Christian

_________________________________
Christian Fuchs
Assistant Professor for Internet & Society
ICT&S Center - Advanced Studies and Research in
Information and Communication Technologies & Society
(http://www.icts.sbg.ac.at)
University of Salzburg
Sigmund Haffner-Gasse 18
A-5020 Salzburg
Austria
christian.fuchs at sbg.ac.at
Phone +43 0662 8044 4823
Fax +43 0662 6389 4800
Information-Society-Technology: http://cartoon.iguw.tuwien.ac.at/christian/
Managing Editor of tripleC - Cognition Communication Co-operation
Open Access Online Journal for the Foundations of Information Science
http://triplec.uti.at/

 


Am 28.03.2006 14:58 Uhr schrieb "Jeremy Hunsinger" unter <jhuns at vt.edu>:

> "Use of the Internet has both broadened and fragmented the contexts
> of communication. This is why the Internet can have a subversive
> effect on intellectual life in authoritarian regimes. But at the same
> time, the less formal, horizontal cross-linking of communication
> channels weakens the achievements of traditional media. This focuses
> the attention of an anonymous and dispersed public on select topics
> and information, allowing citizens to concentrate on the same
> critically filtered issues and journalistic pieces at any given time.
> The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the
> Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this
> medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to create a
> focus."
> 
>  From Habermas's  Kreisky prize lecture printed in Der Standard March
> 10-11 translated in part in signandsight.com.   thoughts?
> 
> 
> jeremy hunsinger
> jhuns at vt.edu
> www.cddc.vt.edu
> wiki.tmttlt.com
> www.tmttlt.com
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