[Air-l] habermas on the internet

Tue Mar 28 11:06:36 PST 2006

Thank you Jeremy and Christian for bringing this very interesting piece of 
information to the attention of AoIRs. I wonder if any of our 
German-speaking colleagues could translate the few sections of the speech 
dealing with the Internet and post them to the list. My German is too rusty 
and it would take me hours to make sense of the text on my own.

Habermas, I think, is making a useful juxtaposition between the traditional 
media and the Internet on the one hand, and access and focus, on the other. 
Generally, the relationship between the traditional media and the more open 
and dialogic Internet-based media has been underconceptualized, in my 
opinion. So it would valuable to find out how the great theorist thinks 
about them.

Thanks again!

Maria

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Christian Fuchs" <Christian.Fuchs at sbg.ac.at>
To: <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Sent: Tuesday, March 28, 2006 8:03 AM
Subject: Re: [Air-l] habermas on the internet

>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
>>
>> ()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail
>> /\                        - against microsoft attachments
>> http://www.stswiki.org/  sts wiki
>> http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/  LI-the journal
>>
>>
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