Journal of Communication, March 2004

The Public Sphere as a Sphere of Publics:

Rethinking Habermas’s Theory of the
Public Sphere

A review essay by Tanni Haas

Cybering Democracy: Public Space and the Internet by Diana Saco. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2002. xxviii + 296 pp. $54.95 (hard), $19.95 (soft).

Inclusion and Democracy by Iris Marion Young. New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002. x + 304 pp. $29.95 (hard), $18.95 (soft).

Media and Power by James Curran. London: Routledge, 2002. x + 308 pp. $75.00
(hard), $22.95 (soft).

Principles of Publicity and Press Freedom by Slavko Splichal. Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield, 2002. xv + 228. $75.00 (hard), $32.95 (soft).

Publicity’s Secret: How Technoculture Capitalizes on Democracy by Jodi Dean.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. xi + 211 pp. $39.95 (hard), $17.95 (soft).

There can be little doubt that the German political philosopher Jürgen Habermas’s
notion of the public sphere occupies a central, if highly contentious, position in
contemporary democratic theorizing. Since the appearance of Habermas’s (1989,
orig. 1962) seminal account of the rise and fall of the liberal bourgeois public, his
continuously evolving theory of the public sphere has inspired numerous works
on deliberative democracy (e.g., Cohen, 1989; Dryzek, 1990; Fishkin, 1991) and
served as the conceptual foundation for many efforts to suggest the structural and
discursive contours of a more democratic media system (e.g., Garnham, 1992;
Keane, 1991; Scannell, 1989). Most recently, advocates of the journalistic reform
movement known as “public” or “civic” journalism have applied the normative
ideals underlying Habermas’s work to specify the role and responsibility of jour-

Tanni Haas (PhD, Rutgers) is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech Communication Arts
and Sciences at Brooklyn College. The author would like to thank Linda Steiner for critical readings of
and thoughtful suggestions to earlier versions of this essay. This work was supported by a grant from
the City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Awards Program.

Copyright © 2004 International Communication Association

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Review and Criticism

nalists in a democratic society (e.g., Anderson, Dardenne, & Killenberg, 1997;

Glasser & Bowers, 1999; Haas, 1999). Whereas these and other scholars find
Habermas’s notion of the public sphere indispensable to democratic theorizing,
many others have questioned its applicability to contemporary, mass-mediated
societies. Critics have argued, among other issues, that Habermas’s work is based
upon outdated ideals of public discourse that valorize face-to-face dialogue over
mediated deliberation (e.g., Page, 1996; Schudson, 1997; Thompson, 1995), main-
tains untenable distinctions between rationality and irrationality, reason and emo-
tion, information and entertainment (e.g., Buckingham, 1997; Peters, 1993; Phillips,
1996), and thereby incorrectly posits that the form and content of contemporary
political communication has led to a dissolution of any meaningful public debate
(e.g., Curran, 1991; Stevenson, 1993, Verstraeten, 1996). In this review, I critically
review five recent books that engage with Habermas’s work as a way to contrib-
ute to the important, ongoing debate about the potential relevance of the notion
of the public sphere to contemporary democratic theorizing.
In Publicity’s Secret, Jodi Dean offers a wide-ranging, but not entirely accurate,
critique of Habermas’s notion of publicness, which she equates with “publicity.”
Dean argues that the ideal of publicity, or the assumption that “a democratic
public is within reach . . . as soon as everything is known” (p. 10), legitimizes the
news media’s relentless pursuit of politically compromising information and, in
the process, produces what she calls “suspicious subjects in a system of distrust”
(p. 44). Although Dean’s critique directs attention to significant issues, notably the
news media’s increasingly sensationalist reporting on politics, it is arguably based
on a highly selective, if not distorted, interpretation of Habermas’s notion of pub-
licness. Contrary to what Dean implies, Habermas’s theory of the public sphere is
based upon the ideal of a “deliberative,” as opposed to merely “informed,” public.
As the space between civil society and the state in which citizens can debate
issues of common concern, a well-functioning public sphere depends both on
access to pertinent information about the actions of governmental institutions and
opportunities for citizens to engage in rational-critical deliberation that result in
the formation of public opinion and the shaping of governmental conduct. From
a Habermasian perspective, the central problem with contemporary political com-
munication is not the quantity, but rather the quality of political information and
the lack of genuine opportunities for citizens to engage in public deliberation.
Indeed, the suspicion and distrust on the part of citizens to which Dean correctly
draws attention may, as numerous journalism and mass communication scholars
have noted, be attributed to the news media’s propensity for episodic, as opposed
to thematic, news reporting, focus on the personal attributes and private lives of
political actors rather than their positions on substantive policy issues, and horse-
race coverage of strategies, tactics, and polls (e.g., Bennett, 2003; Iyengar, 1991;
Patterson, 1993). Advocates of public or civic journalism have been involved in
various efforts to enhance the news media’s informational and deliberative ca-
pacities. These include reporting on issues of concern to citizens, elaborating
on what citizens can do to address those issues, and organizing sites for citizen
deliberation, such as roundtables, community forums, and voluntary civic organi-
zations (e.g., Charity, 1995; Merritt, 1998; Rosen, 1999).

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Unlike Dean, Diana Saco argues in Cybering Democracy that Habermas’s no-
tion of publicness offers the means to assess the news media’s democratic poten-
tial. Contrary to the earlier-mentioned claim that Habermas valorizes face-to-face
dialogue over mediated deliberation, Saco notes that he promotes a “democratic
sociability” that is neither inherently dialogical or deliberative in orientation. “What
matters for Habermas,” Saco correctly argues, “is not the physical co-presence of
others, but rather the existence of shared social spaces” (p. 70). Indeed, Habermas
(1992, p. 451) has not only emphasized that the idea of the public must be di-
vorced from the ideal of “physically present, participating, and jointly deciding
members of a collectivity” but, more importantly, advanced normative ideals for
public discourse that privilege neither face-to-face dialogue nor mediated delib-
eration. In his Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas (1984, 1987) argued
that a genuinely democratic public sphere comes into being when the interactions
are focused on issues of common concern to citizens, equally accessible to all
those potentially affected by those issues, based on rational-critical deliberation,
and subject to normative standards of evaluation. These ideals can, as Saco cor-
rectly notes, be applied to assess the democratic potential of face-to-face dia-
logue, mediated deliberation, and more complex, hybrid forms like those found
in Internet discussion forums.
Although Dean and Saco primarily debate the democratic potential of the nor-
mative ideals underlying Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, Iris Marion Young
modifies and extends those ideals to draw out the structural and discursive basis
of a genuinely democratic society. Building upon her earlier calls for a “communi-
cative democracy” (see Young, 1990, 1993, 1996), Young outlines in Inclusion
and Democracy what she calls a more “inclusive” democracy. Central to Young’s
vision is the establishment of a single, overarching public sphere composed of
multiple publics. Although she agrees with Fraser (1990) that modern, stratified
societies require discursive spaces where subordinate social groups can articulate
and debate their particular concerns to an extent equaling what dominant social
groups already enjoy, she concurs with Habermas (1989) that unless these publics
are brought to bear on one another, they are only parochial enclaves with little
ability to address issues across and between different social groups. Young’s con-
tribution to democratic theorizing is not confined to rethinking the structural fea-
tures of the public sphere, but extends to its discursive basis. Although Young
agrees with Habermas that a genuinely democratic public sphere depends upon
certain “external” participatory guarantees, notably inclusiveness, equality, and
reasonableness, she correctly notes that Habermas has failed to consider the exist-
ence of certain “internal” participatory barriers, or the “ways that people lack
effective opportunity to influence the thinking of others even when they have
access to fora and procedures” of the public sphere (p. 55). Like many of Habermas’s
other feminist critics (e.g., Benhabib, 1992; Chambers, 1995; McLaughlin, 1993),
Young challenges his valorization of rational over emotional forms of public dis-
course. She does not simply assert the primacy of the latter, however. Instead,
Young promotes three additional modes of interaction, “greeting,” “rhetoric,” and
“narrative,” which, taken together, represent what Ryfe (2002) calls “relational”
forms of deliberation. Greeting refers to a mode of interaction whereby partici-

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pants recognize the presence and points of view of others, thereby acknowledg-
ing relations of discursive equality and promoting mutual respect and trust. It
obliges participants to listen carefully to the opinions of others and take them
seriously. Greeting thus precedes rational-critical deliberation because participants
who do not recognize and acknowledge one another are unlikely to seriously
attend to their arguments. Rhetoric, which accompanies all rational-critical delib-
eration by situating those seeking to persuade others in relation to their audience
and giving arguments embodied style and tone, refers to the ways opinions and
reasons are expressed as distinct from their assertoric value. It includes the affec-
tive dimensions of discourse, the use of figures of speech, and forms of making a
point that do not involve speech. Narrative refers to how participants whose ex-
periences and beliefs differ so much that they do not share enough premises to
engage in fruitful deliberation can reach mutual understanding. Narratives often
complement rational-critical deliberation by being integral parts of larger argu-
ment, supplying steps in arguments, and offering means of conveying the situated
knowledge of differently situated participants.
Slavko Splichal takes an important step in outlining how the news media, as
some of the central institutions of the public sphere, could help further Young’s
vision of an inclusive democracy. In Principles of Publicity and Press Freedom,
Splichal offers an insightful and richly illustrated historical account of modern-day
understandings of press freedom and responsibility by tracing the liberal demo-
cratic ideal of news media as “public watchdogs” and Habermas’s ideal of news
media as “public forums” back to Jeremy Bentham’s and Immanuel Kant’s radi-
cally different conceptions of publicity. Splichal shows that the ideal of news
media as public watchdogs ever-vigilant in exposing governmental misconduct is
rooted in Bentham’s notion of “publicity as distrustful surveillance,” which implies
that the news media should surveil governmental institutions and offer citizens
information about their actions. The problem with this notion of press responsibil-
ity, Splichal argues, is that it limits direct citizen access to public deliberation and
fails to further Kant’s more expansive notion of “publicity as the public use of
reason,” which implies that the news media should promote enlightened judg-
ment in the form of rational-critical deliberation among citizens. Although Splichal,
like Saco and many other observers (e.g., Abramson, Arterton, & Orren, 1988;
Davis & Owen, 1998; Rheingold, 1993), sees a strong democratic potential in the
various opportunities the Internet offers citizens to articulate and debate their
opinions, he maintains that only a radical democratization of the news media
would truly stimulate citizens to organize and express their opinions in public.
Such a democratization is best furthered, Splichal emphasizes, by a revival of
public service news media, notably broadcasting. These were established not
merely to offer citizens information about the actions of governmental institutions
but, more importantly, to enable citizens to participate both in mediated public
deliberation aimed at influencing governmental institutions and in the formation
and expression of public opinion.
In Media and Power, James Curran combines Splichal’s call for a revival of
public service broadcasting with Young’s vision of a public sphere consisting of
multiple publics in the form of a proposal for a more democratic media system.

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Much like Dahlgren’s (1995) earlier proposal for a media system consisting of a
“common” and an “advocacy” domain, Curran argues that Habermas’s notion of
the public sphere is best furthered through the development of a media system
that includes a “core sector” of public service television encircled by various “pe-
ripheral sectors.” The peripheral sectors, Curran notes, should help different so-
cial groups constitute themselves, clarify their objectives, and communicate their
concerns externally by offering them opportunities to recruit support for their
causes; enabling them to explore, articulate, and debate their particular concerns;
and transmit their policy proposals to wider publics. To create a common space
for the mediation of different group interests, Curran envisions the establishment
of a core sector that serves as a source of social cohesion and regulates conflicts
by bringing different social groups together in reciprocal debate based on an
open discussion of differences, and in a form that promotes mutual understanding
and furthers a shared search for solutions through agreement or compromise.
Taken together, the five books reviewed here attest to the continuing relevance
of Habermas’s notion of the public sphere to democratic theorizing. Through
critical engagement with Habermas, these scholars not only articulate a coherent
vision for the public sphere, but also outline the role and responsibility of news
media as some of the central institutions of the public sphere. Future research
should consider how a more democratic media system, like the one advanced by
Curran, could be furthered in practice. This seems particularly urgent in an age of
worldwide deregulation of commercial media and declining political support for
public service media.

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