Social Media and the Public Sphere - QUT ePrints · PDF fileof a nationwide audience, creating a shared attention space that at least came close to the ideal public sphere described

4IsHabermasonTwitter?

SocialMediaandthePublicSphere

AxelBrunsandTimHighfield

IntroductionThe concept of the public sphere, first introduced by JürgenHabermas in his seminal bookStrukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1962), translated into English as The StructuralTransformation of the Public Sphere (1989), has proven to be an influential model for ourunderstanding of media and communication processes, especially in the political arena.Habermas described a significant structural transformation—the Strukturwandel of theGerman title—which led to the replacement of the rational-critical public sphere of 18th-centurycoffeehousesandcivicsocietieswithamuchmoreheavilymediatisedpublicsphereatthedawnof the20thcentury,asaresultof thearrivalofmass-circulationdailynewspapersand the growing popularity of radio. This largely transitioned political and societaldeliberationtothismediatisedrealm,whereitwasnowcarriedoutbyarangeofstate,civic,andcommercialactorsonbehalfofthepublic,removingmoredirectformsofparticipationonsuchdebateanddeliberationfromthepublic.

HabermasthusconceivedofhisÖffentlichkeit—thepublicsphere—asaspacethatisframedandstructuredbytheoperationsofthemassmedia(primarilyprintandbroadcast),andwhere“mediated political communication” is thus “carried on by an elite” (Habermas 2006: 416)composedofjournaliststhemselvesaswellasofthosepublicactorswhomjournalismaffordsan opportunity to speak; by contrast, ordinary people—the public—are cast in the role ofaudiencememberswhoforthemostpartaremerelyabletowatchtheeventsunfoldingonthis“virtualstageofmediatedcommunication”(2006:415).

Infollowingthishighlyhierarchical,top-downmodel,thepublicsphereconceptbetraysitsoriginsinthe1950sand1960s,attheheightofthemassmediaagewhenasmallnumberofmainstreammediaorganisations—inHabermas’snativeGermanyandelsewhere inWesternEurope,chieflyalsoincludingahandfulofdominantpublicservicebroadcasters—wereindeedpositioned ashighly influential, agenda-setting andopinion-leading institutions.The leadingnewspapersandbroadcastnewsbulletinsofthedaycouldrightlyclaimtoprovidea‘virtualstage’onwhichthedailydramaofnationalandinternationalpoliticswasplayedoutinfront

Enli, GunnBruns, AxelChristensen, ChristianLarsson, Anders OlofSkogerbo, Eli. The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. : Taylor and Francis, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central. Web. 26 July 2016.Created from QUT on 2016-07-26 21:39:06.

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ofanationwideaudience,creatingasharedattentionspacethatatleastcameclosetotheidealpublicspheredescribedbyHabermas.Butthemodelthusalsopresupposestheexistenceofamedia sector that adheres to a strongpublic service ethic even amongst commercialmediaorganisations,whicharedrivenasmuchbytheirsocialandsocietalresponsibilitiesasbytheirprofitmotives, and it assumes the presence of a politically engaged, rationally deliberatingpublic.

Consideringsuchimpliedpreconditions,itisapparentthatifcritiquesofthepublicsphereconceptcouldberaisedduringthemassmediaage,thentodaythereareevenmoresignificantchallengestoourconceptualisationofthepublicsphere.Notleast,themodel’sexplicitfocusonsocietalelitesinsteadofordinarycitizensisnotnecessarilywell-alignedwithcontemporarycontexts.TheprocessesofStrukturwandelwhichHabermas identified in the transition fromthe coffeehouses tomassmedia didnot stop there but continued further beyond themassmediaage,and thecontemporarymediaecology is thusconsiderablydifferent fromthatofthe 1960s: the dominance of a small number of public as well as commercial mediaorganisationshasdeclined substantially inmostdevelopednations,while a rangeof readilyavailable alternative media forms and platforms have emerged at local, national, andtransnationallevels.Televisionaudienceshavedispersedacrossagrowingrangeofbroadcastand cable options, and are now increasingly alsomaking use of streaming and on-demandonlineoptions:2013and2014datafromtheU.S.,forexample,pointstoanaverage10percentdrop in year-on-year viewer numbers for conventional TV (Evans, 2015). Newspaperreadershipissimilarlydeclininginmanymediamarkets:intheUK,forinstance,2014figuresshowanaverageannualdecreaseofcirculationfiguresofsome8percent(Greenslade,2014).Whilesomeofthisshiftawayfromtraditionalbroadcastandprintandtowardsonlinecontentconstitutesasimplechangeoftechnologies,withviewersremainingloyaltoestablishedmediaorganisations,manyother users also endup exploring thewider variety of content optionsnow available to them. This necessarily reduces the dominance which leading mediaorganisations enjoyed in a pre-digital era, when receiving broadcast or print content fromoutsideofone’sowngeographicalareawasoftenprohibitivelydifficult.

SuchchangeshavebeendriventoasignificantdegreebytheemergenceoftheInternetandtheWorldWideWebasleadingchannelsforthedisseminationofnews,amongsttheirmanyotherfunctions.Sincethe1990s,theWebhasgainedasubstantialshareofthenewsmarket,tothe detriment of print and broadcast news and to the point that such conventional newsorganisationsarenowthemselvesusingtheWebasakeychannelforthedisseminationofthenews; even more importantly, the instant global connectivity provided by the Web hasfundamentally disrupted local news markets and forced regional and domestic newsorganisations to compete on an international level for audience attention. Themore recentemergence of social media as even more connected, even more rapid, even more diversespaces for the dissemination and discussion of news and public affairs, and formediatising


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everyday life, has only served to increase the complexity of the contemporary mediaenvironment.Thishasfurtherblendedandmergedtheindividualnationalpublicspheresthatmayexistintoanincreasinglyglobalnetworkofinformationflows.

News and public affairs reporting as it presents itself to the everyday user has thustransformedfromalargelyoligopolisticmediaenvironment,dominatedbyafewmajorpublicand commercial media organisations providing mass market news products for generalconsumption by a domestic audience, to a diverse, complex and even confusing mediaecology.Here,massandnichenewsservicesfromallovertheworldcompeteforincreasinglyspecific audience segments that are definedmore by shared interests rather than by sharedgeographicoriginsornationalidentities.Theconceptofaunifieddomesticpublicsphere,then,must necessarily be questioned. In the present environment, even the leading mainstreammedia outlets no longer command a truly ‘mass’ audience: the ‘virtual stage’ that eachorganisationcontinuestopresentisnowwatchedbyanevershrinkingsubsetof‘thepublic’,whilethetotalnumberof ‘virtualstages’availabletothese increasinglynicheaudienceshasmultipliedbeyondcounting.

Indeed,suchtrendstowardsafragmentationofthenational‘public’,positedastheaudienceobservingandreactingtotheprocessesunfoldinginthepublicsphere,mayhaveacceleratedsincetheemergenceoftheWebasamassmedium.However,criticsoftheideaof‘the’publicspherehavelongpointedoutthattheassumedunifiednatureofthepublicsphereasanall-encompassingspaceofpublicdebate isan“explicitly idealistconcept” (Webster2013:25)atanyrate:evenattheheightofthemassmediaage,thepublic’sattentiontopublicmatterswasneveruniform,asindividualaudiencemembersexercisedtheirownagencyinselectingissuesof interest from all of the themes and topics covered by themedia.AsHartley andGreen(2006)bluntlyputit,“‘the’publicsphereisaconvenientfantasy”(347).

If today the existing cracks in the idea of ‘the’ public sphere havemerely becomemoreobviouslyvisible,andifthepublicsphereconceptinitsoriginalHabermasianformulationnolonger appears to be able to fully represent the complexities of the contemporary globalmedia ecology, thenwe are facing the question of how the public sphere conceptmay beadjustedtobetterdescribepresentexperiences,orinfactofwhetherthe‘publicsphere’asanideaisstillrelevantatall.AsWebster(2013)suggests,perhapsweare“reachingatimewhenweneed…toconsiderabandoningtheconcept”(Webster2013:25)?Thischapterexploresthesequestions by examining some of the extensions and alternatives to ‘the’ public sphere thathavebeenproposedinrecentyears,andbyexaminingtheevidencefortheexistenceofsuchalternativestructureswhichmaybeestablishedthroughempiricalresearchespeciallyonsocialmedia platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. It suggests that there may be a need toaugmentorevenreplacetheHabermasianpublicsphereinitsmostorthodoxformulationbyembracingamorecomplex,dynamic,andmultifacetedmodelthatallowsforconnectionsandoverlapsbetweenamultitudeofcoexistingpublicspheres.Inthesecondhalfofthischapter,


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we apply such conceptualisations to the extended network ofAustralian Twitter users (theAustralian ‘Twittersphere’): thisexaminationofsocialmediaconnectionsandpublics,withaviewtodevelopinganalternativeoradaptedpublicspheremodel,alsoactsasanexampleofhowtotraceandidentifysuchaggregations,theiroverlaps,divisions,andinteractions.

Callsforacriticalreassessmentofthepublicsphereidea,orevenforitsreplacementbyamodelthatinherentlyallowsformultiplecoexistingandcompetingpublicspheresatthesametime, are not new, even if they appear to have grown more insistent as a result of theincreasing importanceofglobalanddigitalmediaspaces.FentonandDowney, forexample,point to “the rise of counter-publicity,” resulting inmultiple “counter-public spheres” (2003:16). In doing so, they build on a rich tradition of research that examines the tactics ofresistancebygroupsandcommunitiesthataremarginalisedinthepredominantlybourgeoispublic spherewhichHabermasdescribes.ButasCalhoun (1992)notes inHabermasand thePublic Sphere, a major collection of critical responses to Habermas’s work thatmarked itstranslation into English, if such critiques are accurate, how do we understand the morecomplexstructureswemustnowdescribe?Hewarnsthat

to say that there are many public spheres…will leaves us groping for a new term todescribe the communicative relationships among them. Itmightbeproductive rather tothinkofthepublicsphereasinvolvingafieldofdiscursiveconnections.(Calhoun1992:37)

TheContinuedStructuralTransformationofthePublicSphereAreappraisalofthepublicsphereconcepthasalwaysbeenapossibility:afterall,Habermas’soriginalworkexplicitlydescribesthestructuraltransformation(Strukturwandel)ofthepublicspheretowardsitsthen-currentstateratherthanastable,static,unchangingsystem.Iftheriseofthemassmediasawatransformationtowardsauniversal,nationwidepublicsphere—‘the’public sphere, as Hartley and Green (2006) describe it—then its subsequent decline simplysignals a further period of transformation thatmay ormaynot result in a new, stable, buttemporaryequilibriummodel.

Itisimportanttostateherethatthepointofthisdiscussion,atleastforourpresentpurposesin the context of this volume, is not somuch the continuation of Habermasian theoreticalframeworks as such, as if they are somehow inherentlymorevaluable thanother, differentmodels.MuchcontemporarymediatheorymakesonlyverypassingreferencetoHabermas’sframeworks, even when it explicitly uses the term ‘public sphere’ itself; Fraser (1992) haslamentedthatsuchresearch“involvestheuseoftheverysameexpression‘publicsphere’butin a sense that is less precise and less useful thanHabermas’s” (1992: 110).Alternatively, amore positive perspective on this proliferation of the term, detached from itsHabermasianorigins, in media and communication studies is that ‘public sphere’ itself has proven so


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productiveanideathatithasgivenrisetoawidevarietyofcompetingconceptualisations,inthesamemannerastermslike‘society’,‘culture’,or‘community’,forexample.Someofthesevariations on the Habermasian theme may be just as useful as the original public spheremodel,eveniftheyhaverelativelylittleincommonwithit.Inthefaceofthisdivergenceofstreamsofthoughtandtheoryon‘the’publicsphere,whichutiliseHabermas’sownworkasapointofdeparturetoagreaterorlesserextent,then,thischapterseekstoreviewanumberofthe key contributions to reimagining public sphere concepts—including, indeed, some ofHabermas’sownrecentwork.

Itseemsobviousthatthecentralfeatureofsuchanewmodelmustbethefragmentationofthe unified public sphere into a range of diverging yet potentially overlapping publics. InHabermas’sGermany,mainstreammediamanagedtoattract trulymassaudiences,andthusconstructedwhat can genuinely be described as a unified, nationwide public sphere: in the1960s, the prime-timepublic service televisionnewsbulletinTagesschau regularly attractedmorethan50percentof thetotal televisionaudience(Launer1981),andmajornewspapersachievedcomparablemasscirculationthroughoutthecountry.Butthegradualdiversificationof media channels and audiences, combined with fundamental technological and lifestylechanges (as on-demand access to news online has replaced the daily ritual of morningnewspaper and evening TV news), has caused an irreversible decline in audience sizes: thegrowingnumberofnewssourcesandmediachannelsmaystillbeable toattract theirownpublics, but these no longer join together to form a unified public sphere in the way thatexistingtheoryhadimaginedit.

Suchpublicsmaybedefinedatdifferentlevelsofresolution,anditisusefultoexplorethediverseconstructsofpublics(andindeed,publicspheres)thathavebeenproposedbyvariousscholarsinrecentyearsbeforeweattempttofindanyempiricalevidencefortheminsocialmediaspaces.First,at themostgeneral level,anumberofscholarsenvisageaseparationofthepublicsphereintobroaddomainpublics:Dahlgren(2009)andWebster(2013)bothrefertothe ‘political public sphere’,whileHartley andGreen (2006) also describe a ‘cultural publicsphere’—andarangeofotherpotentialcandidatesforsuchsubordinatespheres(thebusinesspublicsphere,thesportingpublicsphere,andsoon)readilycometomind.

Cuttingacrosssuchbroaddomainpublicsaremore technologicallydrivenpublicspheres,definedbytheirchiefmediumofcommunication—Benkler(2006),forexample,developstheideaofa‘networkedpublicsphere’thatdrawscentrallyononlinecommunicationplatforms,and analogous partial public spheres defined by print, radio, or television may also beimagined; indeed, the existence of individual platform-specific public spheres is at leastimpliedintermssuchastheblogosphereandTwittersphere,encompassingallusersofspecificsocialmediaplatformsaswellastheirpubliccommunicativeactivities.

However,given theconsiderableoverlapand interweavingbetweensuchdifferentmediachannels, such technocentric definitions of specific public spheres may not be particularly


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productive. Theremay still be significant generational differences inmedia usage practiceswhich result in somewhat divergent dynamics within newspaper and online publics, forexample,but feweverydaycitizenswill engageexclusivelyonly inoneoranotherof thesetechnologicallydefinedpublicspheres. Indeed,evenuserscontinuing to favourconventionalmassmedia channels such asnewspapers and televisionwill increasingly access thesenewssources through Internet technologies, given the continuing shift towards on-demand andmobileaccesstocontentandthedeclineinsubscriptionratesandliveviewing.AstheInternetbecomes the chief backbone for any kind of media distribution, distinctions betweennetworkedandnon-networkedpublicspheresareincreasinglymeaningless.

Asimilarargumentalsoapplies,infact,tothebroaddomainpublicspheresweencounteredabove:fewparticipantsarelikelytobeinterestedonlyinpoliticsbutnotinculture,oronlyinbusinessbutnot insports; fewnewsstoriesareclearlyoneortheother,ratherthanplayingintoanumberofthesedomains.Newsabouteconomicpolicy,forexample,isclearlypartofboth thepoliticaland thebusinesspublicsphere,whilearticlesaboutsports fandomaddressbothcultureandsports.Thinkingthroughacombinationofdomain-andtechnology-specificpublicspheresmakesitespeciallyclearthatthesedeceptivelysimplemodelsareanythingbutstraightforward:aTVnewsreportaboutanewgovernmentpolicyinitiativemayoriginateinthe television and politics public spheres, for example, but be disseminated across thenetworkedpublicsphereviasocialmedia,leadingtodiscussionsaboutitseconomicandsocialimplications on online news sites and blogs (and thus entering those respective domain-specificpublicspheres)and in face-to-faceconversations, thusonceagain transitioning fromtheonlinetotheofflinepublicsphere.Thesetechnology-anddomain-specificpublicspheresmerelyconstitutedifferentoverlappingsectorswithintheoverallHabermasianpublicsphere,without substantially departing from the idea;most centrally, they also continue to assumethatasociety-wideconductofcurrentpublicdebatesispossibleandevenlikely.

Asecond,alternativeperspectiveemergesnotfromthesegmentationof‘the’publicsphereinto a small number of relatively broad domain- or technology-based subsets, but from amuchmorespecificandfine-grainedobservationofthetemporarypublicsthatemergearoundparticularthemes.Thisiswhereanumberofscholarssituate‘publicsphericules’(Gitlin1998;Cunningham2001;Bruns2008),describedas“socialfragmentsthatdonothavecriticalmass[but] share many of the characteristics of the classically conceived public sphere”(Cunningham2001: 135). Suchpublic sphericulesno longer claim to reflect publicdiscoursewithinentiredomainsbacktosocietyatlarge;rather,theyaddressparticularthematicdebateswithin and across the broader domains, and in doing so draw on a smaller subset ofparticipants with a specific interest in these themes. This reduction in size and reach mayindeedimprovethequalityofthedeliberationwhichtakesplaceinsuchpublicsphericules,asacertainlevelofsharedinterestandknowledgeamongstparticipantsmaybeassumed.Givenenough popular interest, such debates may come to transcend their public sphericules and


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reachawider,lessdirectlyengagedaudience,butevenwheretheyfailtodosotheyarestilllikelytoinvolveanarrowbutinherentlyinterestedpublic.

Third,anevenmorespecificandbespokeformofpublicdebatemaybeconductedinthe“issuepublics”alreadyenvisagedbyHabermas(e.g.2006:422)andexploredinmoredetailbyarangeofotherscholars.Suchissuepublicsnolongerserveasa‘virtualstage’forthemasspublic, but in keeping with the metaphor instead represent studio spaces where specificdebates between stakeholders are rehearsed amongst a smaller, self-selecting company ofinterestedactors.Issuepublicsformespeciallyaroundshorter-livedtopicsandeventsandarethusconsiderablymoretemporaryanddynamicthansomeoftheotherformationswehavealreadyencountered—they“emerge,existforvaryingdurations,andtheneventuallydissolve”(Dahlgren2009:74)aspublicdebatemoveson. Issuepublicsare themselves thusrelated to,andarguablyformsubsetsof,thewiderpublicsphericulesthatexistaroundspecificthemes—but while a sphericule may address, for example, the overall longer-term challenge ofanthropogenic climate change, the issue publics it contains would form around specificresearchreports,policyinitiatives,andothershort-termaspectsthatdrivepublicdebateonthetopic.Nonetheless,public“attitudesareinfluencedbyeverydaytalkintheinformalsettingsorepisodicpublicsofeverydaysocietyatleastasmuchastheyarebypayingattentiontoprintorelectronicmedia”(Habermas2006:416).

Theincreasingspecificityofdebateswhichwearelikelytoencounterasweprogressfrombroad domain-based public spheres through thematic public sphericules to narrow topicalissuepublics is likely tobe reflectedalso in the rangeofmediaoutlets that such subsetsof‘the’publicspheredrawon.Wheretheconventionalpublicspheremodelislargelypredicatedonthehegemonicroleofdominantmassmediainstitutions,thelower-orderpublicsarelikelytobeincreasinglymorereliantonspecialistandnichemedia,inkeepingwiththeirownmuchmore narrowly defined interests. This is also a transition from broadcast to interactivecommunication structures, and frommainstream to alternative and amateurmedia outlets,then: in this second and third tier of ‘the’ public sphere, trusted non-mainstream voicesengaging inwhatCastells (2009)describesas ‘mass self-publication’can,potentially,gainasmuchinfluenceasprofessionaljournalists.

Finally, a further extension of conventional public sphere concepts must ultimately alsochallengetheveryboundariesofwhatitmeanstobepublic.Inmanyways,issuepublicsmayreallybebestdescribedasissuecommunities,andtodayaremostlikelytogatherinthespacesprovided by online community platforms—including, centrally, social media sites, such asFacebook and Twitter. Here, in particular, everyday social interaction between peers andpublic participation in issue publics overlap and are often inextricably intertwined, as usersmoveseamlesslybetweeninterpersonalandpublictopicsandregistersofexpressionfromoneFacebook post to the next, and from one tweet to another: within the AustralianTwittersphere,aswillbeseenlaterinthischapter,usersclustertogetherinhighlyconnected


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(but loosely thematic) groups around shared interests, with issue- and event-focusseddiscussionscrossingovertheseoverlappingassemblagesastheyaretakenupbyanaudiencebeyondthespecificcontextofthetopicinquestion.

Indeed, Schmidt (2011, 2014) explicitly describes even the egocentric networks—thecollectionsofFacebook‘friends’orTwitter‘followers’—whichexistaroundeachsocialmediaprofile as ‘personal publics’; similar such personal publics also exist in offline, face-to-facecontexts,ofcourse,andthecompletepersonalpublicofanyoneindividualthusencompassesthe totalityof their personal connections across anyandall such communicationsplatformsand media. The multitude of personal publics—overlapping with each other as friendshipconnectionsaresharedbetweenindividualusersandthusenableflowsofinformationthataredetermined by common sociodemographic identities, topical interests, and communicationpractices amongst users—in combination constitutes a global patchwork of interconnectedmicro-publics,tyingtogethersocialmedia,face-to-face,andothercommunicationformsandchannels,thatmaybeseenasthelowermostfoundationoftheoverallpublicsphere.

Alternativelyorsimultaneously,thepatchworkofpersonalpublicsalsoservesasapointoftransition into what Papacharissi (2010) describes as the “private sphere”: a liminal spacewheresocialmediaparticipantsareaffordedtheopportunitytoengagein“privatelypublic”conversationsthatareneitherconductedentirelybehindcloseddoorsnorinherentlyexist infullviewofthepublic.Asshedescribesit,“operatingfromacivicallyprivéenvironment,thecitizen enters the public spectrum by negotiating aspects of his/her privacy as necessary,depending on the urgency and relevance of particular situations” (2010, 131–132). Whatemerges from these observations is a considerable challenge to the very idea of a publicsphere, then: althoughwhat is public andwhat is privatehasnever been entirely clear, thefuzzyboundarybetweenthetwoisbeingexposedasproblematicevenmorestrikinglybythecurrentgenerationofsocialmediaplatforms.Theseplatformsactivelyreconfigurethecriteriabywhichwedistinguishpublicfromprivate,and/oroffertheirusersthetoolstodevelopanindividual and idiosyncratic range of transitional steps between ‘fully public’ and ‘fullyprivate’.EvenifcommunicationamongstfriendsonFacebookisnotfullypublic,forexample(in the sense of ‘visible to an outside observer’), its dissemination across the patchwork ofoverlapping personal micro-publics may nonetheless come to have widespread effects onpublicdebateifitachievessufficientreachandimpact.

Inmorerecentwork,Habermas(2006)acknowledgestheimportanceofthispatchworkofpublics as a foundation for ‘the’ public sphere at least in passing, in an update to hisframework: he notes that “the public sphere is rooted in networks for the wild flows ofmessages—news,reports,commentaries,talks,scenesandimages”(415).Itisunfortunatethatconventional public sphere theory,with its persistent focus on themassmedia, only rarelyacknowledges and investigates the network structures that enable this ‘wild flow’ ofinformation beyond the mainstream, which in the contemporary media ecology chiefly


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includetheleadingsocialmediaplatforms:theimpactofsuchmany-to-manycommunicationsmedia as amplifiers of or correctives to the mass media, and the structures of publiccommunicationwhichtheyenableandsupport,thusremaincomparativelyunder-theorised—atleastfromapublicsphereperspective.

Ifwedotakeseriouslythevariouspublicspaceswhichnowemergeassuccessorsto‘the’publicsphere,thenratherthanasaunified,mass-mediatedspacethroughwhichpublicdebateis conducted, the public sphere is thus revealed as a complex combination of multipleinterlockingelementsthatsometimescounteract,sometimesamplifyeachother,andthateachpossesstheirownspecificdynamics; thecontemporarypublicsphereis“comprisedofavastarrayof interactional constellations, some relativelymorepermanent, othersmore fleeting”(Dahlgren2009:74).Whatbecomesallthemoreimportant,then,istostudytheoperationofthese individual elements, and to develop a better understanding of just how they interactwith each other. As we will see, online and especially social media spaces provide aparticularlyusefulenvironmentfortheempiricalanalysisofsuchprocesses.

An investigation of the various interlocking parts that constitute this new multifacetedpublicspheremayalsoserveasausefulantidotetofearsofafragmentationofpublicdebateanddeliberationinthewakeofthedeclineofthedeceptivelysimpleandstablemodelofthemass-mediated public sphere. The abundance of publics in the contemporary environment,fromelitediscourseinleadingmainstreammediathroughnichedebatesinmoreorlessshort-lived issue publics to everyday interpersonal exchanges in face-to-face and online contexts,could be seen as lending support to dystopian scenarios of a multitude of ‘filter bubbles’(Pariser2011)thatareeachcaughtintheirownfeedbackloopsofself-reinforcing‘groupthink’andactivelydefendagainsttheintrusionofalternative,oppositionalpointsofview.Butwhilethe‘filterbubble’metaphorsuggeststhatsuchbubblesareeachhermeticallysealedfromoneanother, observable reality appears to point to a much greater degree of interpenetrationthrough shared connections and information flows; our brief discussion of the horizontalpatchworkofpersonalmicro-publics,aswellasoftheverticallylayerednatureofissuepublicswithinpublicsphericuleswithindomain-basedpublics,alreadypointstothisperspective,andlaterinthischapterwefurtherexploretheextenttowhichsuchfilterbubblescanpersist,byexaminingthestructuralcharacteristicsofanentirenationalTwittersphere.Indeed,Habermas(2006)himselfsuggeststhatas“alargernumberofpeopletendtotakeaninterestinalargernumber of issues, the overlap of issue publics may even serve to counter trends offragmentation”(2006:422).

The ‘wild flows’of information thatareenabledespeciallyby thepatchworkofpersonalpublicsmayplayaparticularlyimportantroleinthiscontext.Personalpublics,intheirrelativedisconnectionfromveryspecificthemesandtopics,canbeseenastheconduitswhichprovidefor a—perhaps random and unintentional, but nonetheless real and important—exchange ofinformationand ideasacross issuepublicsandpublic sphericules.A focuson thesecrucial if


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liminal spacesof communicationanddisseminationalso substantiallybroadens the rangeofactorswhichareseenascontributingtopublicdebateanddeliberation,sincepersonalpublicsin both offline and online forms present considerably lower barriers to entry for a largernumberofparticipants.This, then,movesbeyond the temporary restrictions,both invisibleparticipationandinscholarlyattentiontosuchparticipation,thatwerecommonattheheightof themassmedia age, and once againmoves to consider the public sphere (or its diverseconstituent elements) as a space that a wide range of citizens engage in, rather than assomethingthatisplayedoutforthembyeliteactorsona‘virtualstage’.

Asacomprehensiveanalysisoftheseliminalspacesintheofflineworldremainsdifficult,afocus on contemporary mass social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook asimperfect reflections of wider patterns of participation is valuable and instructive for thefurther exploration of the changing internal structures and dynamics of the wider publicsphere—not least also because, as Papacharissi (2010) suggests, “social network sites expandthenumberandrangeofindividualswhomayentertheprivatelypublicspaceoftheprivatesphere” (2010: 140). Similarly, social media encourage different ways of engaging with orparticipatingwithinpublic, civic communication,with ‘affectivepublics’ (Papacharissi, 2015)bringing highly individual interpretations and framing to discussions, providing anotherdimensiontoideasof‘personal’publics(Schmidt,2014).Withintheseplatforms,then,aswellasacrosstherangeofprivateandpublicformsofcommunicationtheyenable,itispossibletofindevidenceforthevariouspost-publicsphereconstructswehaveencounteredsofar.

SocialMediaCommunicationStructuresasReflectionsofPublicSphereConstructs

As widely adopted, versatile and global communication platforms, social media such asFacebookandTwitterenableanobservationofthedynamicsofmanyoftheextensionsandalternativestoconventionalpublicsphereconstructsthatwehaveencounteredsofar.Thisispossiblemost of all because these platforms offerApplication Programming Interfaces thatprovideaccesstounprecedentedlylargedatasetsonthepubliccommunicativeinteractionsoftheirhundredsofmillionsofusers—so-called‘bigsocialdata’(Manovich2012)thatconstitutean in-depth and second-by-second trace of individual users’ activities. Further, contrary toother research approaches, such data-driven observations of social media activities can bemadewithoutinfluencinguserbehavioursthemselves:usersremainunawareofthepresenceoftheresearcher,andcommunicativeprocessesareunaffectedbythedatabeinggatheredonthem.

Thisalsoraisessignificantethicalandprivacyconcerns,however,whichhavebeenoutlinedindetailinrecentscholarlyliterature(see,e.g.boyd&Crawford’s2012critiqueof‘bigdata’


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research in the humanities), and in the following discussionwe are therefore refer only toaggregateandnon-identifiableuseractivitypatternswhichrelatetoclearlypublic(ratherthanprivateorsemi-private)formsofcommunication.Forthesamereason,wearealsofocussingon Twitter rather than on Facebook in the examples we discuss. The simple distinctionbetween globally public and individually protected (private) accounts which Twitter hasinstituted, compared to Facebook’s considerably more complex system of graduated (andfrequentlychanging)privacyoptions,allowsustoassumethat,ingeneral,thedecisionby95per cent of the global Twitter user base to set their account visibility is set to ‘public’demonstratesanawarenessoftheconsequencesofthatchoice.

For both Twitter and Facebook, however, it is possible to map the various layers andstructures of public communication which we have outlined above onto specificcommunicativeprocessesandfunctionsenabledbythesocialmediaplatformsthemselves.Weexplore this here with particular focus on Twitter, drawing on a framework developed byBrunsandMoe(2014)thatidentifiesanumberofcommunicativelayersontheplatformthatare enabled by its technological features and sustained by the unwritten communicativeconventionsdevelopedovertimebytheTwitteruserbaseitself.

Central to both platforms are the profiles of individual users, of course, around whichSchmidt’s(2014) ‘personalpublics’emerge;theseself-selecting(andinthecaseofFacebook,reciprocal)networksof ‘friends’or ‘followers’serve in the firstplaceasanaudiencefor theaccount around which they have formed, and the account owner is likely to be at leastvaguely aware of the make-up and interests of that audience. Furthermore, the personalpublicsofvariousindividualaccountswillalsooverlaptoacertainextent,creatingtheloosenetworks of egocentric publics thatwe have described as part of the patchwork ofmicro-publics which exists at the very foundation of the overall public sphere framework. ThesepersonalpublicsaroundeachTwitterandFacebookaccountalsocomplementandspilloverintothepersonalpublicsthateachindividualdrawsonorperformstobyusingothermediachannels and platforms; in combination, the Twitter, Facebook, face-to-face, and otherchannel-specific personal publics thus form the complete personal publics for the individualbehindtheaccount.

Additionally, social media users are also able to bring into existence a narrower, moreexclusive, temporary personal public by directly addressing other users—on Twitter forexample by making a public @mention of other users’ account names. This brings the@mentioning tweet to the attention of the addressee(s), and—if the tweet begins with‘@user…’—is only visible to the sender and receiver aswell as any other userswho followthemboth;itthusconstitutesamorebespoke,dyadicpersonalpublicthatiscreatedadhocbythe firstuser andpersists only as longasboth sides continue the conversation.By contrast,tweetswhichcontain@mentionsanywhereelseintheirtextarevisibletoallfollowersofthesender;contrarytothefirstmodel,whichcreatesacommonpersonalpublicthatincorporates


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onlytheactiveparticipantsandasharedsubsetofalloftheirfollowers,then,thissecondformof @reply conversation in essence encompasses the union of both their follower bases.Already, it is evident that such casual, ad hoc connections between the personal publics ofindividualusersholdthepotentialtofacilitateawiderangeofliminalinformationflowsattheveryedgesof‘the’publicsphere.

A second form of social media communication that is particularly prevalent on Twittertranscends this liminality and moves further into outright and deliberately publiccommunication. Drawing on the hashtag, a technological feature that makes it easy toadvertisespecifictopicsforparticipationbyotherusersbyprependingthehashsymbol‘#’toathematic keyword (Halavais, 2014), any Twitter user can attempt to kick-start a discussionaboutthethemesthatinterestthem,whileotherscanuseTwittersearchfunctionalitytofindandfollowalltweetsthatcontainthesamehashtag.Thisissupportedbyappsandthird-partysoftware,suchasTweetdeck,whichenableuserstofollowkeywordandhashtagdiscussionsasspecific channels in addition to users’ individual following feeds. Such hashtags have beenshown to be crucial to Twitter’s response especially to breaking news events (Bruns et al.2012),butalsoenableuserstocometogetheraroundcommontopicsofinterestortoengageinsharedaudienceactivities(Highfield,Harrington,&Bruns2013;Page2012).

Thegroupsofuserswhichgatheraroundandengageinsharedhashtagscanbeseenasaform of ad hoc public (Bruns & Burgess 2011; 2015), and especially where they relate tospecificeventsandtopicsshouldbeunderstoodastheTwittersubsetofthewiderissuetopicsthataccompanysuchphenomena.ThelifecyclesofhashtagsastheyareobservableonTwitterprovide important insights into thedynamicsof issuepublicsmoregenerally,and itmaybepossibletodistinguishawiderangeofdynamicsthatrelatetothecharacteristicsoftheissuesaroundwhichsuchpublicshaveformed:inthecontextofbreakingnews,inwhichTwitterhasbeenobserved to act as an ‘ambientnewsnetwork’ (Hermida, 2010;Burns, 2010) can formveryrapidly,peakathighlevelsofactivity,andmaydissolvejustasquicklyoncethebreakingnews issue is resolved, while longer-term issuesmay result in less active, but longer-livedengagement.Indeed,verylong-termhashtagcommunitiesmayinfactbebetterunderstoodasconstitutingthekernelsfortheformationofpublicsphericulesratherthanrepresentingissuepublics. In either case, it is important to stress again that suchhashtag communities donotconstituteentireissuepublicsofpublicsphericules,butonlythatsubsetofsuchpublicswhichexistsonTwitter,andwhichisconnectedwithcorrespondingsubsetsinothercommunicationchannelsthroughcross-platforminterlinkages.

Evidence for the existence of public sphericules around broader themes within publicdebate can also be found by returning to the level of personal publics, but considering thenetwork of such micro-publics in its totality rather than focussing only on the egocentricnetworksaroundeach individualuser.Aswehavealreadynoted, these individualnetworksinterweaveandoverlapwith eachother, bothwithin specific platforms suchasTwitter and


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Facebookandfromoneplatformtoanother,andasthecreationoffriendorfollowerlinksislikely to be based at least in part on shared backgrounds, attitudes, or interests, suchoverlappingpersonalpublicsmaythenalsoserveasanearlystageintheformationofpublicsphericules:networksoflike-mindedfriendsinsocialmediaenvironmentsthatgrouptogethertodiscusscertainthemesthatareofmutualinterest.Commonplaceprocessesofstructurationinsocialnetworks,suchaspreferentialattachmenttotheidentifiedleadusers,overtimeleadto the formation of network clusters around such shared themes which constitute anincreasinglysolidbasisfortheoperationofsuchsphericules,andthenetworkstructureswhichthus emerge come to influence and structure the flow of information and communicationacross the network, facilitated on Twitter for example through the retweeting ofmessagesfrom one account to another. Retweets enable users to pass on publicmessages that werepostedbyoneoftheaccountstheyfollowtotheirownnetworkoffollowers,verbatimorwithadded commentary, and inmany cases constitute an implicit endorsementof the retweetedmessageasrelevantandimportanttothepersonalpublicoftheretweetinguser(thisdoesnotalways signal agreement, however: messages may also be passed on to encourage criticalresponses,forexample).Itislikelythatthechoicetoretweetamessageisusuallyinfluencedbytheretweetinguser’spictureof their imaginedaudience—that is,bythenetworkclusterstheyfeel theybelongto; retweetsandothermessagesare thusultimatelymore likely tobedirectedatandwidelydisseminatedthroughcloselyconnectedclustersofusersthantobridgethegaptoother,moreremotepartsofthenetwork.

Throughtheuseofadditionalcommunicationfeaturesofferedbysocialmediaplatforms—suchasFacebookgroupsandpagesandTwitterhashtags—thepublicinteractionssustainedbysuch broader networks may also articulate at times to the issue public level, especially asspecific events and topics trigger a phase of more intensive involvement, and in doing soattractadifferentsubsetoftheoverallpublicsphericulenetwork;attheconclusionoftheissuepublic’slifecycle,usersmaythenonceagainreturntomoregeneralparticipationinthematicdiscussions relation to their public sphericule. Once again, the existence of such structuralformationswithinsocialnetworksshouldnotbeseenas inherentlysupporting the ideaofa‘filterbubble’(Pariser2011);instead,theverticalinterrelationshipsbetweenhashtag-supportedissue publics and follower network-based public sphericules on the one hand, and thehorizontaloverlapsbetweenindividualhashtagpublicsornetworkclustersontheother,bothmake it less and not more likely that information will travel between and across theseformations.Only if theanalysisofempiricalevidence trulyshowsthere tobepracticallynoactiveconnectionswhatsoeverbetweenindividualhashtagcommunitiesornetworkclustersisitpossible that ‘filterbubbles’mightexistonTwitter—andeventhen itwouldstillbe likelythatoutsideinformationcouldreachthosebubblesthroughcross-platformlinkswhicharenotevidentfromtheTwitterdataalone.


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ReviewingtheEvidence:PublicSphereStructuresonTwitterAbrief explorationofpublic communication structuresas theycanbe identifiedonTwitterillustrates theobservationswehavemadehere. For this,wedrawon the resultsof a long-termstudythathasfocussedinthefirstplaceondeterminingthefollower/followeenetworkstructure of the Australian Twittersphere (for more details, see Bruns et al. 2014), and bySeptember 2013 had identified a total of 2.8 million Australian-based Twitter accounts. Byusing the force-directed Force Atlas 2 algorithm (Jacomy et al. 2012) to map the networkconnections of the 140,000most networked accounts in this overall user base—identified asthose accounts whose combined number of followers and followees amounted to 1,000connectionsormore—itbecomespossible todiscernanumberofobviousclustersofhighlymutuallyinterconnectedaccountswithinthisoverallnetwork,andtodeterminethedegreesofinterconnection between these individual clusters; additionally, a qualitative review of themostcentralaccounts ineachof theclustersalsoenablesus to identify thekey themesandtopicsaroundwhicheachsuchclusterhasformed.

Theoverallclustersemergingfromthismap(seeFigure4.1)canthusbeunderstoodastheTwitter components of broader public sphericules existing within Australian public debate,relatinginteraliaforexampletopolitics,sports,andteenculture,whilewithintheseclustersanumberofnarrowersubsetsthatmayrelatetotemporaryissuepublics,orformthekernelsofemerging public sphericules in their own right, can also be identified. The map alsodemonstratesthefactthatfewsuchclusterswouldfitthedescriptionoffilterbubbleswhichare far removed and difficult to reach from the remainder of the network; it is perhapsunsurprising that the large teen culture cluster appears to be themost inward-looking andleastinterconnectedofallsignificantclusterswithinthenetwork,butevenitislinkedtotherest of the network by a common interest in popular and celebrity culture. Furthermore, acomparison of thismapwith previous iterations produced by our project (e.g. Bruns et al.2014)alsoshows thecomparativestabilityof theoverall structureof thesenetworkclustersandthethematicinterestsrepresentedbythem:whiletheymaywaxandwaneinrelativesize(theteencultureclusterhasemergedonlysince2012,forexample,andhighturnoverintheuserbaseandintheidentitiesofrelevantculturaliconswithinateen-orientedclusterwouldbeexpectedinfuturemappingsofthenetwork),thepublicsphericulestheyreflectappeartobeconsistent.

While this overall network depicts the general structure of the patchwork of personalpublics that exists in the Australian Twittersphere, which we have already argued isrepresentativeofthedistributionofsharedinterestsacrosstheuserbase,andbyextensionalsoof the public sphericules likely to exist in wider Australian society, it is also important toexplore theday-to-dayactivitiesofAustralianTwitterusersas they relate to specific issues,topics,andthemes,manifestedforexampleintheirparticipationofspecifichashtags.Forthe


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purposesof illustration,we turnhere toadataset containingaccountswhichparticipated inthe#qandahashtagaccompanyingthepopularpolitical televisiontalkshowQ&A,broadcastby the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, over a period of several weeks in 2014, andindicate within the underlying network map the location of the most active accountsparticipatingwithinthehashtag(seeFigure4.2).

Figure.4.1 TheAustralianTwittersphere(datacurrenttoSep.2013)


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Figure4.2 #qandaHashtagParticipantsoverSeveralWeeksin2014

Giventhespecificthematicfocusofeachepisode,theQ&Aaudiencecanbeconsideredtobe the subset of ad hoc issue public forming around the topics addressed by the sharedtelevision text during each week’s broadcast; the #qanda hashtag community constitutes arelatedandsimilarlyadhocpublicwhosecompositionoverlapswiththetelevisionpublictosignificant extent. Such activity is encouraged by the broadcaster, too, as ABC editorsintegrateandhighlighttaggedtweetsonscreenduringeachepisodeofQ&A(seealsoGiven&Radywyl, 2013). The #qanda public and the television public are not entirely homologous,though:anecdotalevidencepointstothepresenceofanumberofTwitteruserswhorespondonlytotheTwitterdebateeachweek,withoutalsoviewingthetelevisionbroadcast,whileofcoursetherewillalsobeTVviewerswhodonotparticipateintheTwitterdebate.Inaddition,wemayalsopostulatetheexistenceofothermembersofthepublicwhoareinterestedinandvocal (throughothermediachannels)about the themesaddressedbyQ&A and#qanda,butparticipate in neither of these media texts. In combination, then, the Q&A audience, the#qandausers, and this thirdgroupof othernon-presentparticipants canbe regardedas thecompleteissuepublicwhichexistsaroundthetopicsdiscussedbyQ&A.

Furthermore, the subsetof this issuepublic that is activeonTwitter relates in interestingwaystothewiderpublicsphericulearoundAustralianpolitics.ThisisreflectedinthestructureofouroverallTwitterspheremap:while#qandarecruitsitsparticipantslargelyfromthelargerpoliticsclusterwithinthismap,itdoessopreferentiallyfromcertainsectorsofthecluster(inthe present case, mainly from that part of the cluster which represents more progressivepoliticalviews,thoughthismaybeanartefactofthespecifictopicsaddressedbyQ&Aduringthetimewegatheredourdata).Thelayerednatureofissuepublicsandpublicsphericulesis


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apparent here, with the former constituting, at least to some extent, a smaller and moretemporary outgrowth of the latter. At the same time, the #qanda hashtag also attractsinvolvementfromuserswhoarenotusuallyanintegralpartofthepoliticsclusterwithintheAustralianTwittersphere: this, in turn, supports theview that issuepublics arenot simplyasubsetofwiderpublicsphericules,butthattheirmorespecifictopicalfocusmayalsoenablethem to attract participants whose day-to-day interests are more strongly focussed on thethemes addressed by an alternative public sphericule. Issue publicsmay then also serve asbridgesbetweenpublicsphericules.

Eventhisdescriptionisnecessarilyoverlysimplistic,ofcourse.Individualsarerarelysimplypart of one public sphericule, or just one issue public. These constructs are not mutuallyexclusive, and the accounts found in theAustralianTwittersphere are similarly allocated tooneclusteroranotherbyouralgorithmbecauseof theirpredominantnetworkattachments,butmay address awide variety of themes in their day-to-day tweeting practices, similarlyreflectingdifferentmotivationstoparticipate.Butsuchcaveatsalsosimplyservetounderlinethepoint that thestructureof thepublic sphere,orof thevariouspublic spaceswhichhavecometoreplaceitasaresultofthecontinuingstructuraltransformationsof‘the’publicspherefollowingthedeclineofthemassmedia’shegemony,istodayhighlycomplex,dynamic,andchangeable—more so than orthodoxHabermasian public sphere theory can account for. AsDahlgren (2009) points out, “traditional perspectives on the public sphere do not help usunderstandhowpublics‘comealive,’…whattheirsocioculturaldynamicslooklike”(74).

ConclusionRevisitingtheHabermasianconceptofthepublicsphereforamediaecologyfeaturingmany-to-many channels including social media platforms, it appears that the idea of structuraltransformation can—and should—be extended beyond the public sphere as singular: amorecomplex systemofdistinctanddiverse,yet inter-connectedandoverlapping,publics canbeidentifiedwhichrepresentdifferenttopicsandapproachestomediatedcommunication(fromthe explicitly political to the tangential and otherwise). The threat of ‘cyberbalkanisation’(Sunstein,2008),whereinvoicesofaparticular ideologicalviewpointwouldcluster togetherand never become exposed to, or communicatewith, opposing views,was used to criticiseonlinediscoursethroughthepossibilityoffragmenteddiscussions;themultiplepublicsmodel,though, suggests that fragmentation does not necessarily beget isolation or completeseparation.Publicsexistatvariouslevels,fordifferentlifespans,fromthelong-standingtopicalclusters identified in theAustralianTwittersphere in Figure4.1 through egocentric personalpublics tomore ad hoc assemblages and issue publics developing in response to particularstimuli,which,while relevant to specific topical publics, are not restricted in their scope tothesegroups.


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Asthischapterhasargued,movingbeyondtheorthodoxmodelof thepublicspheretoamoredynamic and complex systemprovides the opportunity tomore clearly recognise thevaryingformspubliccommunicationcantakeonline.Unpackingthetraditionalpublicsphereintoaseriesofpublicsphericulesandmicro-publics,noneofwhicharemutuallyexclusivebutwhich coexist, intersecting and overlapping in multiple forms, is one approach tounderstandingtheongoingstructuraltransformationofthepublicsphere.Itisalsoimportanttonotethatthesepublicsmayfollowtheirownlogicsandnorms,makinguseofaffordancesofsocialmediaplatformsfortheirownpurposes,whichmaydifferfromestablishedpractices.The various publics, whether issue or personal, might operate in combination, providingfurther prominence or activity for each other, but they might also work in opposition,counteractingoneanother.Similarly,participationinonepublicisneitherapre-requisitenoran implication that participating in another will result. The publics identified here bothrepresentandbridgethemacro-,meso-,andmicro-levelsofpubliccommunicationonsocialmedia,asintroducedbyBrunsandMoe(2014),butparticipationremainsachoiceonthepartof the individual.Atthesametime, itremainsnoteworthythat thesheeravailabilityof thischoiceisarelativenoveltywithinthemass-mediatedpublicspheremodel.

The transformation frompublic sphere to public spheres—and the spread of political andpublicdebateacrossmultipleactors,platforms,andpublics—remainsanongoingprocess.Thischapterhasoutlinedacontemporaryconceptualisationof thepublic spherebasedespeciallyonourextensiveresearchintopubliccommunicationonTwitter.Thecurrentmainstreamandsocialmediaecology,though, isnotfixed;newplatformswillariseandbecomeadoptedforpubliccommunicationindifferentforms,providingafurtherfuzzinessaroundideasofpublic,semi-public,andprivatediscussions.Itisworthremembering,too,thatthetraditionalleadersand featured actors within public debate and the bourgeois public sphere (journalists, thetraditional media, and politicians) are often slower to officially adopt newer channels fordiscussion, from the Internet in general to specific platforms such as blogs, YouTube, orTwitter.Ifandwhennewsocialmediaplatformsemergeandareadoptedbyordinarycitizensforpublicdebate,includingas‘thirdspaces’(Wright,2012)wherepoliticaldiscussionisnotthefocusbutdevelopsalongsideandfromwithinothertopicsofconversation,furtherdisruptionsto the public sphere model may follow. Additional disjunctures between new and old,betweendifferentapproaches topublics,arepartof theprocessofanevolvingsocialmediaecologyandthemediasphere;whilefurtherenablingdebateanddiscussion,indifferentformsand with different affordances, they continue to complicate and challenge ourconceptualisationofa‘public’sphere—whetherinthesingularorplural.

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Social Media and the Public Sphere - QUT ePrints · PDF fileof a nationwide audience, creating a shared attention space that at least came close to the ideal public sphere described