Habermas,mass communication technology and the future of the public sphere

This paper focuses on Habermas’s analysis of the bourgeois public sphere and its inextricable relationship to mass communication technology – particularly in relation to his pioneering work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Within this investigation, it will be argued that while Habermas’s views are still to be regarded as being highly insightful and relevant when attempting to gain an understanding of what it is that a legitimate public sphere actually encompasses, along with what the necessary preconditions entail in order for a public sphere to be established, Habermas’s critical analysis is not without its shortcomings. As insightful as Habermas’s views may be, they do require a certain amount of revision and updating. As such, Habermas’s insights are to be understood as providing the contemporary critical researcher with a solid, yet flexible, basis from where it is that the notion of the modern, electronically infused, public sphere of the 21st century is to be critically gauged.