Public sphere

The public sphere is a social space where people discuss public affairs and form opinions outside direct state control. It links private individuals to collective political judgment.

Public opinion: The collective judgments and attitudes people express about issues of public concern. Discussion in the public sphere forms, circulates, and contests these judgments.
Jürgen Habermas: A German philosopher and sociologist whose work shaped modern theories of the public sphere. His historical account made the concept central to social and political theory.
State: A political organization that claims authority over a territory and its population. The public sphere is defined partly by its independence from direct state control.
Nancy Fraser: An American philosopher whose work critiques exclusions in liberal political theory and develops the idea of subaltern counterpublics. Her critique challenges the assumption that one public sphere includes everyone equally.
Deliberative democracy: A model of democracy that grounds legitimate decisions in inclusive public reasoning and debate. It treats public discussion as a source of democratic legitimacy.
The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: Jürgen Habermas’s 1962 study of the rise and transformation of bourgeois public debate. This book established the influential historical model of the public sphere.
Private sphere: The domain of personal and household life, commonly distinguished from public affairs. The concept describes discussion that brings private individuals into public debate.
Public sphere and counterpublics: Nancy Fraser’s account of competing publics and the exclusion of subordinated groups from dominant debate. It explains why multiple publics may be needed to contest unequal access.
Freedom of the press: The principle that media should operate without undue government censorship or control. Independent publication lets debate escape direct state control.
Bourgeois public sphere: The eighteenth-century arena of debate associated with private citizens, print, salons, and coffeehouses. Habermas used it as the historical form through which to explain the concept.

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