[Air-L] Public Sphere Article?

[Nathaniel Poor]

My first published piece was about a case study of an online public sphere:
"Mechanisms of an Online Public Sphere: The Website Slashdot"
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/poor.html

When I was a professor I had my undergrads read it and they seemed to do fine with it.

Abstract:
Both the theory of the public sphere and the utopian rhetoric surrounding the Internet have been a focus of scholars for some time. Given the ability of people to connect with others around the globe through the Internet, could the Internet give rise to online public spheres? If so, how would such spaces work? This article proposes that public spheres do exist on the Internet, and details how one functions. The case under study is the website Slashdot (http://slashdot.org), an online community of computer enthusiasts. The article studies the mechanisms, both normative and in code, that are vital to Slashdot's functioning, and shows how they help Slashdot function as a public sphere.


If I recall, Susan Herring (editor at the time) improved the heck out of it with a few edits here and there, and I'd still want her to edit anything I write. (Hopefully I have become a better writer in the intervening years...)

-Nat Poor.




On Aug 14, 2012, at 10:27 AM, Christian Fuchs wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I have used the following syllabus for a lecture and an accompanying seminar on (digital) public sphere and do think it is crucial for the development of the general intellect and the academic culture of higher education that our students read texts by Habermas etc. that are not as easily consumable as hot dogs, otherwise we may end up with a fast brain food-higher education culture, which is probably already much too advanced...
> 
> Best, Christian
> 
> 1) Thompson, John B. 1995. The media and modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Chapters 2+4.
> 2) Habermas, Jürgen. 2006. Political communication in media sociey. Communication Theory 16 (4): 411-426.
> 3) Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Further reflections on the public sphere and concluding remarks. In Habermas and the public sphere, ed. Craig Calhoun, 421-479. Cambridge, MA: MIT
> 
> 1) Sparks, Colin. 2001. The Internet and the global public sphere. In Mediated politics. Communication in the future of society, eds. W. Lance Bennett and Robert M. Entman, 75-95. New York: Cambridge University Press.
> 2) Fuchs, Christian. 2008. The Internet and society. New York: Routledge. Chapter 8.2: Digital inclusion: eParticipation as grassroots digital democracy (pp. 225-252)
> 3) Dahlberg, Lincoln. 2004. Net-public sphere research: beyond the ‘first phase’. Javnost – The Public 11 (1): 27-44.
> 
> 
> Am 8/14/12 3:43 PM, schrieb Nathan Stolero:
>> Hey Adam,
>> 
>> Alongside other recommendations that you might get, I would recommend:
>> Papacharissi, Z., (2002). The Virtual Sphere: The Internet as the Public
>> Sphere, New Media & Society, 4(1), 5‐23.
>> 
>> In this article that writer discusses the (im)possible transformation of
>> Habermas' public sphere to web 2.0 technologies and etc.
>> 
>> Nathan
>> 
>> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Adam Fish <rawbird at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Dear List,
>>> 
>>> I am teaching an undergraduate course on media and the public sphere
>>> and looking for an article that introduces the public sphere. Habermas
>>> is too dense; Nancy Fraser probably too. The article could be an
>>> anthropological case study that frames the data in the theory of the
>>> public sphere or a more straight theoretical article. Any ideas?
>>> 
>>> Thank you!
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Adam Fish, PhD
>>> Lecturer, Media Studies
>>> Sociology Department, Lancaster University
>>> mediacultures.org, @mediacultures
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> 
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-------------------------------
Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
@natpoor
http://natpoor.blogspot.com/
https://sites.google.com/site/natpoor/
http://www.xboxgamertag.com/search/natpoor/
http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xnH4wiYAAAAJ