Public sphere
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Richard Rudin, Broad-
casting in the 21st Century (Palgrave Macmillan,
2011).
Public sphere With the development of capital-
ism in the mid-seventeenth century, argues
Jürgen Habermas, a public sphere of debate
and communicative interchange was opened
up, mainly among the bourgeoisie, in Western
society. Economic independence provided by
private property, the expansion of published
literature such as novels that encouraged critical
reflection, and the growth of a market-based
press created a new public awareness of politics
and involvement in public debate.
Th e public sphere existed between the econ-
omy and the state and represented a nascent
form of supervision of government. However,
Habermas believed that from the middle of the
nineteenth century the public sphere came to be
dominated by the expanded state and organized
economic interests. The media ceased to be
agencies of empowerment, surrendered much
of their role as a watchdog and became a
further means by which the public were sidelined
and public opinion manipulated. According
to Habermas, the public sphere ceased to be a
‘neutral zone’.
Today, commentators see the internet as a
welcome extension of the public sphere, while at
the same time expressing doubts as to how long
this agora will remain a space of free exchange
for communities of interest in the face of
corporate ambitions to occupy – to commercial-
ize – that space. At the same time that space is
seen as being increasingly subject to government
surveillance. See blogging; blogosphere;
information commons; mediasphere;
mediapolis; surveillance society.
▶Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the
Evolution of Society (Beacon, 1979); Habermas, Th e
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
(Polity, 1989); Peter Dahlgren and Colin Sparks, eds,
Communication and Citizenship: Journalism and
the Public Sphere (Routledge, 1993); John Hartley,
Popular Reality: Journalism, Modernity, Popular
Culture (Arnold, 1996); Michael Bromley, ed., No
News is Bad News: Radio, Television and the Public
(Longman, 2001); Bob Franklin, ed., British Television
Policy: A Reader (Routledge, 2001); James Watson,
Media Communication: An Introduction to Th eory
and Process (Palgrave Macmillan, 3rd edition, 2008);
(Zizi Papacharissi, ed., Journalism and Citizenship:
New Agendas in Communication (Routledge, 2009).
Pulitzer prizes for journalism American
awards made annually for breaking news,
national reporting, criticism, editorial writingnew technology and dominant ideologies work-
ing towards the privatization of the airways,
to the point at which some commentators fear
for its future.
Pressure on governments by multi-national
corporations seeking to extend their media
portfolios (see murdoch effect), and viewing
PSB as an obstacle to their ambitions, has been
unrelenting (see british media industry
group). As long ago as 1991, Peter Golding and
Graham Murdock in ‘Culture, communications,
and political economy’ in Mass Media and
Society (Edward Arnold, 1991), edited by James
Curran and Michael Gurevitch, were writing
that assaults on PSB are ‘part of a wider histori-
cal process whereby the state in capitalist societ-
ies has increasingly assumed a greater role in
managing communicative activity’. Th is process,
the authors point out, has occurred hand in
glove with big business: modern communication
media are signifi cant for their ‘growing incorpo-
ration into a capitalist economic system’.
Th at PSB continues to be defi ned as an issue
rather than a crisis is partly due to a determina-
tion to maintain a central place in audience use
of broadcasting, and this has meant matching
the commercial sector in terms of programme
popularity and thus of ratings (see audience
measurement). The fear is that quality
programming (a vital principle of PSB) will be
sacrifi ced in the pursuit of quantity. Debate over
what has been termed the dumbing-down of PSB
has been lively but generally inconclusive.
What might be seen as the greatest opportu-
nity and at the same time the greatest hazard
facing PSB have been the profound changes
brought about through digitization and the
energy with which PSB has carried the battle
with private sector broadcasting on to the
internet. Th e online services off ered by the
BBC led the fi eld until cutbacks were forced on
the Corporation in 2011.
Th e degree to which governments support PSB
in future, and the degree to which governments
concede to the demands of media corporations,
will continue to dominate the scenarios of broad-
casting throughout the European community.
See audience fragmentation; democracy
and the media; deregulation, five myths
of; mcquail’s accountability of media
model, 1997; mediasphere; mediapolis;
ofcom: office of communications (uk);
public sphere; radio broadcasting. See
also topic guide under broadcasting.
▶Petros Iosifides, ed., Reinventing Public Service
Communication: European Broadcasters and Beyond