Media Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Media - Essay Example In the article â€Å"New media, counter publicity and the public sphere† the authors provide the overview of the work of Habermas and his main ideas. In the works of Habermas, where he depicts the ups and downs of the public sphere, the special attention is paid to the special place of the public that criticizes media. He noticed that because of some changes, which happened due to the development of mass media, the public sphere had to change as well. It is unacceptable to allow media to create certain pattern of the vision that is imposed on the society. Moreover, the horizontal communication was changed to the vertical one. Dawney and Fenton state that â€Å"in other words, horizontal communication between citizens is increasingly replaced by vertical communication between mass media, greatly influenced by both the state and capital, and consumers. The space for participatory communication is severely constricted† (Dawney and Fenton 2003:185). Habermas would like to p reserve the rational essence from becoming the ideological one. The public sphere is the unique field for citizens to communicate equally and it is the direct way to form the democratic society. Habermas presented his own vision of the public sphere of the 20th century. ... In the modern society media actively communicates with people. We can see that non-mass media has been developing in different forms. Habermas raises important issue in his work trying to find the answer to the question, whether the independent public fields are able to create a debate with the help of mass media. He also notices that such independent public fields influence the mass media in general, but only in special conditions. According to Dawney and Fenton, â€Å"Habermas recognizes not only the existence of alternative public spheres but also their capacity for challenging domination. While he maintains that his analysis of the public sphere infrastructure still pertains to a mass media largely subordinate to the interests of capital on the one hand, and the state on the other, he has in the meantime revised his pessimistic opinion of the public.†(Dawney and Fenton 2003:187) It has become clear that we are going through the crisis and need to find the solution. It was mentioned above that Internet provides a great variety of opportunities making necessary information accessible (Sunstein, 2001). World web makes its possible to find any information very quickly and represents a perfect platform for advertising. It represents a perfect tool for communication and information exchange. However, despite all the pluses, the word web has it minuses Pluralism is one of them. It is essential to remember that Internet can be used in different purposes and it can be used by everybody. The fact that modern society is created by the mass media and not vice versa is the most dangerous (Verstraeten, 1995). It should be said that the political public fields arising as a part of the independent public fields can cause the fragmentations in the