ABSTRACT
This entry provides an overview of the notion of ‘the public’, the tensions inherent in the multiplicity of publics, the idea of public good, as well as the process of public formation in relation to the changing media landscape. The discussion begins with the Habermasian notion of ‘public sphere’, understood as an institutionalised arena of discursive interaction. Based on a historical depiction of a rising bourgeois class, Habermas (1991) developed this concept to postulate the existence of a public whose ‘public opinion’ served as ‘the abstract counterpart of public authority’. This historically specific bourgeois public sphere, however, was both exclusive and transient. A post-bourgeois modern public sphere is necessarily defined by multiple publics in changing relations and conjuncture alliances instead of one of any singular, foundational form. Such publics are self-creating and self-organised through discourses, therefore both powerful and elusive. The modern sense of the public as the social totality only exists on the basis of partial publics of discourse. In this sense, the publics are emergent. They are formed in ‘open-ended flows of communication that enable socially distant interlocutors to bridge social-network positions, formulate collective orientations, and generate psychical ‘working alliances, in pursuit of influence over issues of common concern’ (Emirbayer and Sheller 1999: 156). During this process, differences are articulated and notions of the public good constituted.
