| This project clarifies definitions of public spheres, subaltern publics, and counter-publics by taking into consideration the material and discursive needs and resources particular publics have at any given point in time. Through a survey of the history of Black-produced media, a typology has been created upon which to map the progress and effectiveness of particular communities' discourse and political activism. Not only should one be able to compare different publics on the basis of cultural-linguistic differences, but also along the axes of institutional and political power. Such a model can map more clearly the links between a given public's discourses, culture, and political effectiveness. The model presented in this dissertation classifies four types of subaltern publics using the aforementioned criteria: enclave publics, oscillating publics, counter-publics, and parallel publics. Each type is illustrated through either historical or contemporary cases from the Black public sphere and its media institutions.;The first chapter reviews the literature on the public sphere, mass media and democratic theory. In the following three chapters, the model of the four types is presented and explained through analysis of Black-owned newspapers, mass-published slave narratives, mass meetings, and their relationship to the increasing political organization of the Black public. The fifth chapter analyzes Black media in the contemporary Black public sphere, which is classified as utilizing the strategies of both an oscillating and an enclave public sphere, using an original ethnographic study of WVON-AM, a Black-owned radio station in Chicago, Illinois. The sixth chapter presents the ideal of the parallel public, and the concluding chapter assesses the likelihood of the Black public to become a parallel public in American civil society. |
