The Public Sphere And The Internet

This thesis researches the views of Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas on the "Public Sphere", analyzes their differences of thinking ways resulting from different historical environment and media conditions, in order to bring the precursors' researches into a developing process.As expounded in this thesis, the idea of "Elites/ the Masses" inherently existing among the pre-modern scholars like Arendt, impeded the view of "Public Sphere" with the demand for "fairness" to proceed. However, their successors, the modern scholars like Habermas dealt with this problem more deliberately and impersonally. Because of his practicality and precise style, Habermas had reached his upper limit to build the theory of "Public Sphere", without striding across practical media conditions to study the ideal beyond the bounds of possibility. In the traditional media environment of his age, it was impossible for the masses to enter the narrow quene of disseminators; in a reverse manner, the theory he had built had to be based on mass media. With the limit of traditional media technological conditions, disseminators and audience were separated, so were the elites and the masses. The media were always controlled by the elites.In the age of network medium, changes take place in the world. As media, networks technologically make it possible for everybody to become a disseminator. Therefore, the power of media distribute among all the people, the fair right to expression is possible. This dissertation narrates the innovative advantages of...