The Possibility Of Constructing “the Public Sphere” In The Internet

The “public sphere” is an ideal type developed from the oriental thought, especially from the Chinese sources that built upon the epistemology of the monism of subject and object. In contrast, the concept of current public sphere is constructed in the cultural environment of the West. The emphasis of this thesis is to try to develop an alternative concept of public sphere under the concept developed by Jürgen Habermas. The new technology of computer network in the 21 st century gives the medium of linguistic a new face and then brings the possibility of public sphere of people.Therefore, this thesis intends to discuss how the Western concept such as the public sphere can be brought into the analysis of the non-Western culture. Under these circumstances, it is important to know what kind of problems we might encounter and how could we solve them? The public sphere of people has both the characteristics of plebeian public sphere and civil public sphere which mentioned in the preface of Jürgen Habermas’ s “The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere” published in 1990 s. On the other hand, public sphere of people has nowadays the characteristics of postmodern conditions, such as deterritorization, decentering, plurality, ambiguity and fragmenting, implemented by the computer network while it is as a medium.Even so, this study also found out that it still has the feature of centralization in certain dimensions such as the single topic or different subjects of the same theme. That is to say, the public sphere of people may still have some social drives to become potentially powerful after a long period of time. Therefore, the public sphere of people is indeed a field generated by the people and could also contribute to the spirit of a democratic public sphere.