Johnette Hawkins McCrery and John E. Newhagen’s “Conceptual Elasticity of the Public Sphere: Tracking Media and Psychological Determinants of Access” (E. P. Bucy & J. E. Newhagen (Eds.), Media Access, 2004) makes an interesting case for a conceptual expansion of J. Habermas’ “Public Sphere” (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, 1989). Habermas described the public sphere as the space where citizens gather and there is an exchange of political discourse and ideas. According to Habermas, the space for this public affairs deliberation was the coffeehouses and salons of 18th century Paris. The new moneyed middle class was increasing seeking access to policy-making circles long monopolized by the ruling power elite.
McCrery and Newhagen state the nature of the public sphere, as a physical space for political discourse remains a popular concept. They point out that critics depict the American policy process as becoming more detached from public opinion, a process where professional bureaucratic and technocratic power elites increasingly create policy and in the process increasingly marginalize the citizenry.
McCrery and Newhagen suggest that this trend calls for the rethinking of the static public sphere model. They propose that the sphere be conceptually split in two, one sphere is the “opinion sphere,” a forum where citizens gather for political and public affairs dialogues, and the second sphere is the “process sphere,” the arena here policymaking decisions are actually made. Where as Habermas, defined public sphere a physical space, the authors theorize that the two sphere can actual occur in different states of reality—physical and virtual—depending on the size on the participant pool and the participants view on interactive discourse. Populating the process sphere is a relatively small number of individuals—the power elite—who are congressional members, congressional staffers, or lobbyists. These participants look at interpersonal and newspapers as interactive means of communication and are confined to a small geographic area—Washington, DC. The small number of members allows a more physical arena of discourse to be effective.
Making up the opinion sphere is “likely” voters—non-elites—and includes a large, diverse group of individuals that are or can be geographically distant from one another. This group views interactivity differently and favor medium such talk radio and the Internet as more responsive to their ideas. The opinion sphere can exist as a physical local or a virtual space.
The McCrery and Newhagen study, indicated that these two spheres do exist and that the assumed participants do populate the appropriate spheres—power elite in the process sphere and non-elites in the opinion sphere and that each sphere does have a media preference—newspapers for the power elite and talk radio for the non-elites. The study also shows that there is overlap between the two spheres indicating a flow of opinion to policy action and back.
The study or rather the question the study wishes to explore I found to be interesting and useful in probing the model of public opinion, political participation, and policymaking. The original “public sphere” model as defined by Habermas, seems too rigid and static to explain the role of political empowerment, but is a relevant conceptual foundation on which to stand. McCrery and Newhagen make a good attempt at moving beyond the idealized concept and exploring an intriguing real world question.
As a beginning exploration, I find the study useful though limiting in its sample and its media assumptions. I question the narrow definition of the power elite—congressional members, congressional staffers, or lobbyists—and it leaves out corporate leaders, government agency or department heads and staffers, and state government leaders, to name a few. It also defined political participation as having held any elected office—including non-governmental ones such as high school offices and civic organizations, but excluding appointed office or NGOs—but does not account for working on campaigns or just politically engaged non-official leaders within a community. I would like to see a more inclusive media selection that includes Internet sites and television. I find it interesting that the primary media studied are two of the oldest “traditional” media—newspapers and radio.
I find the notion that the public sphere is actual multiple spheres—including, but not limited to the two spheres proposed in the study— that intercept and interact with one another a more elastic model to examine public and political discourse. The multi-sphere model would allow for changes we are seeing in society now and would be adaptive to future changes. Throw in a bit of popular culture and resistant communities theory and McCrery and Newhagen may be on to something.
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