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Book Summary

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Book Summary

Summary of the Book

Habermas concept focussing on public spheres emphasizes that public sphere is accepted as a space of where political communication is carried out and that citizens are able to participate in this kind of space if resources are available. As such, this concept is important in evaluating and analysing whether the contemporary society lives up to what it expects. In simple terms, it permits testing whether the freedom associated with the speech and the opinion of the public are realized or limited by the distribution of material and educational resources. The book goes ahead to indicate that some digital platforms such as twitter cannot be classified as a public sphere. For this reason, it cannot be used as a subject of guaranteeing publication and democracy nor the cause of concerns for terrorism, violence, crime, online harassment, misogyny and riots. According to Fuchs (2017), what should the policy makers take into account first is the societal inequality and how to reduce it. For this reason, Habermas notion has not been focusing on social media but rather on the establishment if a concept that permits the structural criticisms on matters lacking public concerns on common goods and reduce the availability of shared resources to all people.

Social media are entrenched into contradictions and the modern society’s power structures. In essence, they do not limit, amplify or dampen social change. However, they cause contradictory potentials that appears in contradiction with influences by other media, the state, capitalism and the ideology. The article also indicates that the modern day societies are experiencing highly-damaged common services and goods because of extended years of neoliberalism. In the end, the result has been an extended worldly crisis of capitalism which permits individuals to think about the idea of strengthening the commons. As such, this needs a common struggle which might as well encompass common communication. For this reason, the stratified twitter structures are an expression of the public sphere limits. Fuchs (2017) pens out by asking whether another twitter is possible because there is a possibility of having another society.

Reference

Fuchs, C. (2017). Social media: A critical introduction. Sage.