Habermas was a germansociologist/ philospher- the public sphere
Habermas believes that democracy depends on a public which is informed aware and which debates the issue of the day.
“A PUBLIC SPACE BETWEEN THE PRIVATE DOMAIN AND THE STATE IN WHICH PUBLIC OPINION WAS FORMED AND ‘POPULAR’ SUPERVISION OF GOVERNMENT WAS ESTABLISHED” (P. 82: 1996)
we started off isolated before we could read and write
the public sphere connected people horizontally of class and not vertically
one point was that we were connecting in community spaces eg coffee shops, libraries
we were more venerable as a society when we could read or write as we had all of our trust and reliability in the vertically high class.
from communicating spaces in to mass media companies they try to control and dominate the public sphere so the direction of information became vertical again
the whole idea of the internet was to change the public sphere to connect with friends better but after a couple years the mass media was controlling the space more by placing in there
haber, as belies that the mass media has resulted in a reduction in plurality there are fewer voices discussing the news