ABSTRACT
Scholars researching strategic communication, public relations, communication management or other related fields, at least in the Western world, have a tendency to treat the public sphere as a given. Although sociologists, philosophers and political theorists quarrel about the details, common sense reassures us that by and large the public is aware of what Öffentlichkeit, as is called in German, is about. But as soon as one engages in discussion it becomes clear that common sense is, in fact, not commonly understood. The concept is disputed along with others such as political, soc i ety or democracy. Even people from the same country do not always agree on what is public and what is private. And the question of what belongs in the public sphere, what normatively should be the object of public debate while in reality something else is being debated publicly, while others think it should not be debated, seems to be particularly complex. The following chapter traces the influential conceptualization of the public sphere in the works of Jürgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt respectively and builds further theory on this continental or ‘European’ tradition of thinking about the public sphere.
