Habermas states that when utilizing tools of free speech, people operate not like a business or like any private individual, but as a public body. He says that "access is granted to all citizens," and that the public body is able to trasmit information through various forms of media, such as news, cable television, and in our modern world view we can hitherto also include the Internet and the information production and delivery systems included therein, sweetly ignoring the idea that anyone is sitting at the healm of the information systems, ready at any time to hit a button called "Publish" or "Send," or that many people will never attain access to the control panels of information delivery. He also ignores ideas like those of Herman and Chomsky that media created, which comes from the "public body," might have already been sent through any kind of filtration system in order  to protect any individual or businesses' better interests.

Habermas says that the state operates in reaction and reflection of the greater public's notions and opinions, maintaining rules and standards of conduct that police or reflect the needs and amplify the voices of those in the public sphere. However his critics, as paraphrased by Nicholas Garnham in "The Media and the Public Sphere" argue that Habermas overlooks the lack of access to the media and public outlets of exchange for the "plebeian" classes, and focuses too much on the bourgeouis public sphere and its participation in the exchange of infortmation (359).

Critics also said that Habermas idealized the intentions of the early presses, always assuming that they behaved on the behalf of the greater good. He also failed to recognized "household economy" and its influence on the access of participants in the public, also overlooking genderized inequities both in the market and the home; failed to recognize pluralities in the public sphere; his arguments remained too dependent on the model of the "Culture Industry," as described by his predecessor, Adorno; failed to recognize distortion and manipulation of ibnformation; and left out analysis of the rhetorical and sometimes whimsical information products often released into public discourse.

Garnham says Habermas' model is still useful, however, because he shows and unbreakable link between the media and pubilc institutions, recognizes that the exchange of information largely exists outside of the state, (even if it is often influenced by the state) and supports the practices of democratic processes.

Equal access to the media and participation in public discourse (or, the public sphere), is not equal however. For one thing, access to the tools of gathering and delivering information varies greatly by class, Garnham points out.

For a practical example, take blogging. In recent years, the instantaneous and widely-accessibly ability to publish information to the Internet has opened up channels and canyons for private persons to post information freely, and without the umbrella of corporate sponsorship or the "filtering," editing and abridging of stories by corporate censors. The web has forever changed the face of news gathering with its ease of instant deliverability. Many see blogging as the most democratic form of participating in the public sphere.

However, participation in blogging is not an example of a full, completely democratic process, because it is still inaccessible to some. For those who have no access to a computer, no possible way of connecting to the Web, those who are illiterate or have physical disabilities such as sight or hearing impairments, the Web and blogging are not accessible and it is not possible to participate.

Another point that this week's readings touched upon is the tendency of dialogues in the public sphere to be steered by the two-party system. Garnham explains the problem of representation: "As Bobbio has argued, direct democracy works best wtih simple either/or choices (e.g. whether or not to have nuclear poiwer) but cannot deal with the variables that are more typical of political decisions in a complex and pluralistic modern society."

This model of the public sphere, though neat and tidy and capable of functioning fairly productively, is not capable of operating fully democratically. It is not possible to have full, fair and equal discourse, because someone will always be in charge of the tools of (information) productionand will thereby always be operating in his/her/its own best interest and working to censor dissenting positions. Furthermore, it is impossible to escape the proliferation of propaganda, because given only two options to choose from, there will always be a pool of "undecided" persons or skeptics who must be wrangled in or persuaded to lean towards one side or the other for there to be a majority leaning that leads to a decision made between the gien two options.

Not every voice can be heard; only the voices of the dominant two parties are given precedence and value and allowed to participate in the "public sphere." The system denies equal access to all of those individuals whose opinions fall between or outside of the black-or-white range.

While the idea of a fair, equal and fully democratic public sphere to represent all peoples is a nice ideal, it is rie with shortcomings that inevitably always excludes certain third parties and leads to feelings of isolation and alienation for some, and for others disproportionate pools of wealth and power which are given and maintained by only a few "representatives."

9:54 ET: Maverick! Drink!

I'm all for debates but I was ambivalent about watching the VP one tonight. It's too temping to watch Twitter the whole time and play McCain's drinking game. Jezebel brings "Maverick" down to the people's level liveblogging the drinking game tonight. "Maverick" is be the new slang. It's not the first time.

Etymology: Webster Online Dictionary

Samuel A. Maverick 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves

1: an unbranded range animal ; especially : a motherless calf

2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

Why I love Clusterflock

On an individual level, I see much hope. Men of my generation are more accepting of women who make more money than they do. My own boyfriend claims that he wouldn’t mind being a SAHD. But what can society do about this issue? If women are moving into the public sphere, can’t men move into the private sphere? And how can we shift our negative perceptions of the private sphere?

Photo Credits

The sheer scale of the balderdash, the confidence of its users, the lack of media criticism and the rise of a highly paid and unproductive elite suggest that perhaps something rather serious has happened.

It is of course a problem for public discourse when participants will not or cannot speak plainly. In most cases nothing very remarkable is being said; the jargon merely masks a vacuous lack of originality. What is remarkable is the lack of a challenging voice and the failure of media to clarify. It is worrying to think that there is a protective consensus around nonsense.

Anyone troubled by this consensus would be wide of the mark to blame capitalists or business. In trying to identify who gains, look not to the super rich but to a new elite who master the language of obscurity. These are the composers of mission statements, the change managers, the authors of impenetrable reports and pointless restructuring. They are many, they are relatively wealthy, they exhibit an extraordinary degree of solidarity and they are not subjected to public scrutiny. They are a nuisance - possibly, a menace - in that they smother innovation, creativity, and argument. A fake progressive and fake business lexicon is used to mask a layer of drones.

By all means let's have fun with this. Let's make the utterance of "key performance indicator" a capital offence! Let's call for the closure of the Podge and Rodge School of Management! But, let us also begin to end this nonsense. Sooner rather than later searing clarity will be needed in government, business and the public sphere.

Your personalized Internet. You can add what you like and remove what you don't like and it's totally simple. - Pageflakes* -

Pageflakes is only one of the dozen sites that offer to personalize your internet experience by creating a personal start page for you. The amount of websites offering this personalization of these start pages reflects the need for a more personal, or even a more private part in the online public sphere. While every site tries to win over the user by stating that they are not just another personalized start page, they all claim that via this personal start page the user will be able to personalize their part in the private sphere.

One way in which these sites try to make the feel of the start page more personal is by stating that the user will be able to customize not only the content of the page, but also its form. Most sites offer the possibility to chose a specific lay-out or theme for the page. When trying to make a start page in IGoogle, the first thing that needs to be picked is the theme of the page. The site Mygetgo has even got three examples of these themes online and with that is trying to connect to three different user groups.** Apart from this theme, the form of the pages is also made more personal by the option of giving one's pictures a prominent place on the website. The content of the personal start pages is said to be totally up to the user. Personal widgets, links to personal sites, email, favorite blogs and so on can all be implemented on the start page. When looking at some reviews, these options are considered to be an important factor in choosing where to start the personal start page. For example, the review of Favoor reads:

‘It's three main competitors are probably PageFlakes, ProptoPage and NetVibes, all of which offer considerably more widgets (components) as well as better functionality from those components, plus the now obligatory customization options (e.g. colour themes, etc.).'***

These personal start pages can be thought of as a way to give the subject a personal place online. The start page becomes more than just an application, it becomes a home from which the user can enter the online public sphere. One site even calls itself iGlobeCityiHome: indeed being a home for the user in this so called global city. This private part in the public sphere is created through the personalization of the content as well as the form of the start page. Pictures can be hung up and notes to oneself can be left on the start page - almost as leaving a quick note at the table. The user uses the self-chosen links to read its favorite blogs, go to its online communities such as Facebook or read its email. The most interesting option one site offers is to keep some links private. In this Virtual Home one can shield of specific links from public users. The amount of websites offering these personal start pages clearly reflects the need to claim back a part of this current public sphere and customize it so it feels familiar again- like being home.

While some sites just offer the option to personalize one's start page, more and more sites are trying to recreate the desktop on these start pages. Creating the feel of your own desktop online enhances the idea of a Virtual Home by letting your -personal- computer be accessible from multiple places. The transition from personalized start pages to online personal desktops is clearly noticeable on websites such as Goowy and Schmedley that use widgets to create the feel of an web desktop/webtop. Goowy actually offers some of the same options that the start pages offer - such as having calculator or calendar widgets - but also creates the look of a web-based desktop by the design and the possibility to upload and create files. The development of these site into offering a true webtop is still in process. At this moment, Goowy is no longer accepting new accounts and Schmedley is ten days away from being public as again as Schmedley Beta. Looking at some other web-based desktops it is interesting to see that some popular ones such as G.H.O.S.T are under construction too. In one review 21 of these webtops were analyzed and the number one - ajaxWindows- is noted to be ‘...the closest to being a usable web-based desktop at the moment.'****

One interesting feature of these online desktops is that they are able to store up to 3G of files online. Using ajaxWindows the user can browse through these files by using ‘my computer' and old files can be thrown into the recycling bin. The feel of actually being on your desktop is enhanced by the option of opening a search engine that opens in another window as if you were just going online. The feature of customizing the personal start pages by letting the user pick certain themes for the look of the personal page can also be found at ajaxWindows which lets the user pick between different background themes. Even though this development is still ongoing it is an interesting to see this transformation from the online personal start page into the online personal desktop. These personal pages can again be thought of as the private gateway to the online public sphere. As much as the physical personal computer now serves as a ‘home' from where to the user goes online, the development of the webtop is transforming the use of the personal computer into the use of the Virtual Computer. This personal Virtual Computer will be able to reached from every computer and make this private place online even more visible. Right now the personal start page is the beginning of the creation of online private places that is interestingly transforming into the use of the Virtual Computer as a home base in this online public sphere.

* http://www.neobinaries.com/apps/Category/Start%20Pages/Pageflakes.aspx

** 3 examples:

1.http://daz.mygetgo.com/

2.http://funkychicken.mygetgo.com/

3.http://micheleloves.mygetgo.com/

***http://www.neobinaries.com/apps/Category/Start%20Pages/Favoor.aspx

**** http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/your-desktop-anywhere-21-web-based-desktops.html

For this blog post I've analyzed the following sites:

http://www.google.com/ig

http://www.widgetop.com/desktop.html

http://ihm.igcity.net/

http://www.webwag.com/

http://www.favoor.com/index.php?lang=en

http://www.pageflakes.com/

http://www.goowy.com/index.aspx

http://schmedley.com/

www.ajaxwindows.com/

http://www.netvibes.com/#Algemeen:

http://www.feedly.com/

http://mygetgo.com/index.html

http://demo.eyeos.org/?lang=en:

As EUROPE DIRECT CATANIA, we are working to realize a book which will be an instrument of presentation of the EUROPE DIRECT network at local level. The aim of this book is to improve the setting of an EUROPEAN LOCAL PUBLIC SPHERE.

This book (Europe of Thousand Cities - L'Europa delle Mille Città) will be composed by two main sections:  the first one will be something about local (territorial) information and communication policies made by municipalities, while the second section is related to the local governance through EUROPE DIRECT network in Europe.

If you agree, please send a presentation article of your center, with two or three photos (institutional, but also very coloured).  Please, do the effort to tell and explain the relation between the activities of your center and the concept of European Public Sphere.

Send the articles within the 15 of October.

No financiary contribution is requested.

Thank you for your careful attention

EUROPE DIRECT CATANIA
via Tempio 60, 95100 Catania
+39(0)957424629, fax +39(0)957424599

take a look also to the EUROPEAN PUBLIC OPEN SPHERE PROJECT

Whilst the image of the world we live in, presented by this documentary made me rather sad, it also made me ponder... What is the cost of freedom? What is the value of human life? How can we justify the deaths of so many for the actions of a few? And most of all, what can we believe in if everything - be it religion, facts or knowledge - is shaped and easily distorted? To draw on Castoriadis, for autonomy to exist, society must recognise that we are the creators, source and keepers of these laws. That we create our Gods and religion just as our democratic laws and rules stem from us and that there is no absolute.  Therefore, everything can, and should be questioned.

Yet the public sphere of debate is arguably disappearing. Some argue that blogs are part of a new public sphere, as they provide a space in which debate and critical discussion can occur. Whilst some might achieve this, I believe it a lot of blogs, including my own are full of shit.

However, having said that the source of all rules is society itself - where can we place our faith, if not in others?  And without critical discussion, is true democracy but an elusive dream?

1. Class and gender difference (as preconditions):

"Tho' the other Papers which are publish'd for the Use of the Good People of England have certainly very wholesome Effects, and are laudable in their Particular Kinds, they do not seem to come up to the Main Design of such Narrations, which, I humbly presume, should be principally intended for the Use of Politick Persons, who are so publick-spirited as to neglect their own Affairs to look into Transactions of State. Now these Gentlemen, for the most Part, being Persons of strong Zeal and weak Intellects, it is both a Charitable and Necessary Work to offer something, whereby such worthy and well-affected Members of the Commonwealth may be instructed, after their Reading, what to think: Which shall be the End and Purpose of this my Paper, wherein I shall from Time to Time Report and Consider all Matters of what Kind soever that shall occur to Me, and publish such my Advices and Reflections every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, in the Week, for the Convenience of the Post. I resolve also to have something which may be of Entertainment to the Fair Sex, in Honour of Whom I have invented the Title of this Paper."

(inaugural issue of The Tatler, April 12, 1709, Richard Steele, aka Isaac Bickerstaff)

2: Subtractive theory of taste:

"In a Nation of Liberty, there is hardly a Person in the whole Mass of the People more absolutely necessary than a Censor. It is allowed, that I have no Authority for assuming this important Appellation; and that I am Censor of these Nations, just as one is chosen King at the Game of Questions and Commands. But if in the Execution of this fantastical Dignity, I observe upon Things which do not fall within the Cognizance of real Authority, I hope it will be granted, that an idle Man could not be more usefully employed."

("Censor of Great Britain," Tatler #144, March 11, 1710)

3. Commerce as the moderation of 'extremes'

3a. Abstract equality as the basis for nonviolent competition:

"Equality is the Life of Conversation; and he is as much out who assumes to himself any Part above another, as he who considers himself below the rest of Society. Familiarity in Inferiors is Sauciness; in Superiors, Condescension; neither of which are to have Being among Companions, the very Word implying that they are to be equal. When therefore we have abstracted the Company from all Considerations of their Quality or Fortune, it will immediately appear, that to make it happy and polite, there must nothing be started which shall discover that our Thoughts run upon any such Distinctions. Hence it will arise, that Benevolence must become the Rule of Society, and he that is most obliging must be most diverting."

(from Tatler #225, September 16, 1710)

3b The expansion of attention (keeping the sphere open to novel experiences):

"It is my Custom, in a Dearth of News, to entertain my self with those Collections of Advertisements that appear at the End of all publick Prints. These I consider as Accounts of News from the little World, in the same Manner that the foregoing Parts of the Paper are from the great. If in one we hear that a Sovereign Prince is fled from his Capital City, in the other we hear of a Tradesman who hath shut up his Shop, and run away. If in one we find the Victory of a General, in the other we see the Desertion of a private Soldier. I must confess, I have a certain Weakness in my Temper, that is often very much of affected by these little Domestick Occurrences, and have frequently been caught with Tears in my Eyes over a melancholy Advertisement.

...

The great Art in writing Advertisements, is the finding out a proper Method to catch the Reader's Eye; without which, a good Thing may pass over unobserved, or be lost among Commissions of Bankrupt...But the great Skill in an Advertizer, is chiefly seen in the Style which he makes use of. He is to mention the universal Esteem, or general Reputation, of Things that were never heard of."

(Tatler #224, September 14, 1710)

Not explicitly mentioned here except by me is the fact of competition -- 'cultural' competition for public recognition as a compensatory field for defunct aristocratic or ideals and justification for the brutal material competition keeping everyone in business. History of 'crises' as the illusion of their division becomes increasingly untenable, until by now they've become formally and sometimes practically the same thing.

According to Habermas, participation in the bourgeois public sphere was/is the privilege and responsibility of any proprietor, and the sign of their common humanity. This humanity itself, insofar as it is tied to expressive capacities, becomes increasingly subject to the laws of the market, including its many quirky exceptions. A human body is worth 6.9 million USD, a decline in value relative to other more precious resources. Uncounted human bodies tend to have negative value (sure sign of a burst bubble). A humanistic opinion, "every life is precious," being a cliche, is also declining in value, following the unprecedented expansion of communication networks and access to them. When a public figure like George W. Bush uses it while publicly sanctioning mass murder, its value declines even further. Overpopulation as a political-economic problem is mirrored by overpopulation as cultural problem.

Warren Ellis on the new cultural crisis:

The years 2001-2007, approximately, on the web were the crazy years. The patchwork years. The years the web was massively and chaotically pumped full of Stuff. 1995-2001 were pretty crazy, of course, but they were checked by connection speed and the limitations of personal publishing. By 2002, broadband was happening over a broader swathe of the world, and blogging had bitten in. Followed by the takeup of bit torrent, YouTube, podcasting, and every other damn thing.

One of the few sane responses to this explosion of production was to assume the role of curator. (Other sane responses include moving to the woods and considering a completion of the work Ted Kaczynski started.) The two most famous examples of same are Jorn Barger’s Robot Wisdom (est. 1997) — Barger is said to have coined the term "weblog" — and Mark Frauenfelder’s Boing Boing (est. 2000 as a weblog, previously a print magazine est. 1988), co-produced for much of its life by Cory Doctorow, David Pescovitz, and Xeni Jardin. The latter, in particular, has spawned countless imitators, all deeply involved in doing the web-work of 2001-2007 — sorting out all the weird crap that’s out there and re-presenting it in some kind of ordered and aesthetically or politically filtered manner for our consideration.

...

Anyway. That’s been the job of half the web, for the last several years — collating links from the other half of the web. Last year, I started getting a little itchy about this.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could stand up now and say, okay, these are the post-curation years? The world does not need another linkblog. What is required, frankly, is what we’re supposed to call “content” these days. When I were a lad, back in the age of steam, we called this “original material.” Put another way: we like it when Cory and Xeni are the copy/paste editors for the internet, but we like it better when Cory writes a book and Xeni makes an episode of BoingBoingTV.

In the face of oversaturation, Warren Ellis is trying to persuade us of the value of humanity-as-expressive-capacity, against our deeply ingrained economic rationality and its "sane response" of "curating" or starting a linkblog. Addison & Steele's "Mr. Spectator" persona announces himself as an ideal apparatus; not a singular perspective, but a portal to other perspectives, the most representative parts of the world:

"Thus I live in the World, rather as a Spectator of Mankind, than as one of the Species, by which means I have made my self a Speculative Statesman, Soldier, Merchant and Artizan, without ever medling with any Practical Part in Life. I am very well versed in the Theory of an Husband, or a Father, and can discern the Errors in the Oeconomy, Business, and Diversion of others, better than those who are engaged in them; as Standers-by discover Blots, which are apt to escape those who are in the Game. I never espoused any Party with Violence, and am resolved to observe an exact Neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall be forc'd to declare my self by the Hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my Life as a Looker-on, which is the Character I intend to preserve in this Paper."

(Joseph Addison, Spectator #1, March 1, 1711)

The linkblogger adopts the position of invisibility and disinterestedness not to 'real life' but to the content of the Internet. Each link is a like a snapshot; a documentary record that doubles as the coordinates of an aesthetic, one which may be indirectly critical but is always civil. Civility online is less a function of urbane rhetorical style than it is the almost complete subtraction of rhetoric.

But in this direction, Ellis and Geert Lovink warn us, still lie all the old vices fought by Addison & Steele in the early years of the 18th century -- news addiction, derivativeness, sycophantism, distraction from local concerns, etc. etc. Still, the only alternatives to neutral distance risk worse embarrassments; blogland is characterized by a reticence toward displays of passion. Whether the (over)investment is self or world doesn't matter so much. One does not blog full-time. It's hard to imagine Ellis's idealized producers of "content" would do much more than fail to comprehend their environment, entering it instead as passive, dead matter to be arranged. Getting one's name in print used to be a form of insurance; uploading it is closer to hedonism.

Maybe we can look at the explosion of virtual public life as a kind of overspeculation on real life. A new metaphysic with its own set of generative complexes. We bloggers are often told not to let ourselves get 'carried away,' but all of this is just a symptom of the real, collective danger. While I could care less about the fate of media conglomerates, they guarantee the currency of the value they exploit: the human 'soul.' (We now inevitably stumble into territory claimed on behalf of Agamben/Arendt.) The problem with dissolving the self is that we're still allotted only one body each. That body is protected by laws which have to be enforced. Without public support, there's no reason for them to be. Assuming a public both constituted by its communicative powers (as ours is) and 'freed' from their attendant institutions (the hypothesized 'takeover' by participatory media), one which has deconstructed its means of representation without the authority to justify itself or the organization to establish itself outside of corporate ownership, all in an environment where the economic value of its individual members approaches negative -- given all this, can the sanctity of human life be defended civilly, or will it have to be fought for?

UPDATE

Not the most precise example, but notice the David Foster Wallace obits -- check the blogs (as always) where the writers are more candid -- that express their sorrow at his death based exclusively on his literary output, speculating on how many great masterpieces we were 'robbed' of because he decided to kill himself. The biggest cliche of celebrity, but perhaps increasingly relevant for the rest of us: the tragedy of being known only by one's work, when that work is, or is supposed to be, honest, fearless, joyful human expression, about alienation maybe but not itself alienated. Tragedy because in fact no one escapes, and all we are left with really is just 'the work itself.'

When the internet was first fired up and early computer enthusiasts from around the world got together to chat with one another, the internet was heralded as some kind of digital version of the Habermasian Public Sphere; a neo-Athenian forum that would accommodate, facilitate and stimulate discussion and debate about all manner of things.

People like Nicholas Negroponte encouraged people onto the bandwagon and urged them to embrace their digital future.

The problem was that it didn't exactly turn out that way. There are many reasons why blogs don't mesh with this myth. And these are the issues I want to address.

1)There are way too many blogs. (or are there?) No one seems to know this one exists and I'm sure I'm not alone there. How can you have a discussion if you're only broadcasting one way? Should you just keep at it?

2)Blogs are hard to build from scratch, I've tried. It's way easier to use a host, like Wordpress or Blogger, these hosts have terms and conditions and will ban you if you break the rules. No one to my knowledge has been banned based on ideology, but the potential for censorship is definitely there. Just because that control is not exercised now does not mean it won't be in the future. And so on.

3)The infamous "echo chamber effect" the downfall of any non parliamentary public forum. The old notion that people will only read and interact with blogs that appeal to their existing beliefs and values. How true is this? Are there exceptions to this? 

4) And so on.

These are all things that I intend to grapple with as I write a paper over the next, say, five or six weeks. I will let you know of the conclusions when I reach them.

Now, off to write the proposal!

As Habermas points out, within the public sphere it’s often quite small groups with specific interests who are aiming to influence political opinion. 

Medical blogs are a particularly good example of this.

The one I’m particularly interested in is The NHS Blog Doctor – Dr Crippen.  That name might ring a few bells for people, but for those who don’t know about the original Dr Crippen, he was a medic who murdered his wife in 1910 and was the first murderer to be caught by the use of forensic science.  The pseudonym is a medical pun – an in joke which includes the medical profession and excludes those outside it, a practice of inclusion/exclusion typical of alternative media. 

The general background – the chronic issue - to these medical blogs is that the NHS is currently being restructured – again!  Doctors are pretty much being deskilled while nurses are being upskilled.  This process appears irrational to NHS doctors and they would like to put a stop to it.

Right now – the acute issue, if you like – is a site named iwantgreatcare.org.  This is a site that, in theory, allows patients to comment on the treatment they receive from their doctors.  Fine, in principle, you might say.  However, a great many of the doctors actually listed on the site turn out to have either retired or died, while even more doctors who are actually in practice are not listed on the site.  Added to which the site does not employ enough moderators to check posts before they are submitted, resulting in posts appearing on the site that are not very complimentary … there have been rumblings to the effect that some of them might be libellous.    

So the object of the exercise – blogging – is for doctors to express their objections to the process, explain their reasoning behind it and hope to influence political and public opinion in their favour. 

These voices are certainly not impartial – the use of terms such as “quacktitioners” for the new upskilled nurses implies a great contempt for newly acquired Nurse Practitioner skills and the possibility of an underlying fear of a future NHS peopled by upskilled nurses with little room for the professional doctor and consultant with consequences for patient care. 

Fear of reprisals – from the GMC, apparently - is evident in the use of pseudonyms rather than real names, which echoes the use of pseudonyms in zine culture.  Some of the names are quite fanciful – The Ferret Fancier, for example.  But the use of pseudonyms suggests a fear of the consequences of overtly rocking the NHS boat.

The practice of blogging is certainly giving a voice to those who consider themselves voiceless.  Like zines, these blogs are generally focused on just one area – that of NHS medicine and related issues.  They are hoping to provide a counterpoint to what they perceive as mainstream media portraying them in negative ways – fact cat doctors ripping off the NHS, for example.  How many of us assume that they are all paid towards the £250K mark, for example?  In fact the average is less than half that, with a great many “only” being paid £80K.  Poor them, you might say, but there is a big difference between these figures and one could hardly describe a doctor being paid £80k as a “fat cat”. 

Mainstream media political agenda setting focuses on the tiny minority who earn more, is the argument from these bloggers, when the reality is that most doctors earn far less.

The point is that we are seeing the development of a sub culture in the medical “blogosphere” which fits Habermas’ description of the purpose of the public sphere outlined at the beginning of this post – opposed to established authority, with the “public-ness”, if you like, of the expression of opposition as an underlying principle.  They have found the established methods of opposition and influence to have failed them and are therefore using the alternative means of the public space of the internet as a way of getting their message across. 

To return to Habermas’ idea of the public sphere being a zone where private persons aim to convert political authority to what they consider rational authority, the question is whether blogging with respect to the NHS has influence on the exercise of political power.

Overtly, the answer is that: no, it doesn’t.  The government are pressing ahead with their restructuring and are continuing to “brief against” the medical profession in order to progress their cost cutting agenda. 

However, these blogs do have influence within the profession – they’re talking to each other. 

These blogs also appear to be stimulating some reaction from their voices of authority – one at least has removed a post concerning a sensitive subject on the principle that discretion is the better part of valour and another has closed until further notice.

Equally, because of the nature of our democracy the Opposition is listening.  Ian Dale, a Conservative blogger with links to Conservative Central Office, often refers to one or more of the medical blogs in his posts on NHS reform. 

Will medical blogs have any influence on political policy in relation to the NHS in the future?

: : : : : : : : : : :

Jun-E Tan and Zawawi Ibrahim have written a most timely (and readable) book. The blogging phenomenon has been credited with playing an important part in the historic results of the 2008 General Election. It has also been lauded with the democratization of Malaysian public life in general. Here the authors have put together hard data coupled with interesting interviews with the main players to bring the discussion of blogs out of the realm of punditry and the anecdotal into a more studied empirical sociological sphere. For that, it is a significant work which hopefully would pave the way for similar efforts at studying the impact of new technologies on democracy in Malaysia.

Azmi Sharom, Faculty of Law, University of Malaya

It's the next in a series of short vids we're making (mainly Greg) for AUT's New Media Journalism class.

In this clip Greg asked me about digital optimism and digital pessimism and the impact of online journalism and blogging on the public sphere - what he likes to call the "national conversation".

Our first series of interviews, with NZ Herald Online editor Jeremy Rees, and Scoop managing editor, Selwyn Manning, covers the differences between a more mainstream news outfit and a web-only start-up.

Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge's "Toward an Analysis of the Organization of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Spheres." (a critical response to Habermas' "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere"), puts forward their belief that there is more than one public sphere, and that it is not the exclusive property of the bourgeoisie. They contend that there are at any one time various public spheres that exist simultaneously, formed by different and often competing constituencies, often constituting themselves in contexts that are not usually recognized as legitimate public spheres.

Whilst Negt and Kluge wrote this in 1972, before the development of Web2.0 this can be seen as a direct link and the use of open source software and social networking sites. Craig Calhoun, in his essay ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere’ discusses this as ‘a “space” for communication and as a result transcends any particular place, and weaves together conversations from many. It also transcends particular social groups involving people who are strangers to each other. Publics grow less place-based as communication media proliferates, yet the spatial image remains apt.’

There is no documentation. The video's, photographs, manifesto, magazine works etc are all equal and relevant, even more so, as the original moment. All these contexts and mediums are variations of the same work. The dissemination of the work is paramount, and the idea of making something is with the intention to distribute it further.

They equate it to a protest chant, where one person shouts out a slogan, someone else hears it, agrees with it and repeats it and so on and so on. The intention is to copy or repeat and activate and empower the statement, the difference between, as Freee say the slogan and the modernist art object.

Summize is a popular service for searching Twitter and keeping up with emerging trends in real-time. Like Twitter, Summize offers an API so other products and services can filter the constant queue of updates in a variety of ways. The Summize service and API will be merged with our own and integrated under the Twitter brand.

There is an undeniable need to search, filter, and otherwise interact with the volumes of news and information being transmitted to Twitter every second. We will be adding search and its related features to the core offering of Twitter in the very near future. In the meantime, everyone is welcome to access search.twitter.com—there’s no need for a Twitter account.

It was a smart purchase and a good fit, something Twitter was absolutely lacking.

Still, the important question to me is, how is Twitter going to eventually make money? And will that decision completely ruin any chance of Twitter serving the public interest as a space for dialog and discourse?

The quote by the American Conceptual artist Douglas Huebler acts as one of the many points of possible departures for me when I decided to undertake a project with Freee Art Collective. As an artist myself dealing with the many issues and beliefs I have concerning contemporary art and its function within the modern world, I realised that I personally did not have any real want to add to it, or at least not in the way the current art scenes expects me to, and especially within the local context.

Nicolas Bourriaud brings a connection to this in his 2002 text 'Postproduction' where he believes that 'Contemporary Art does not position itself as the termination point of the "creative process" but as a site of navigation, a portal, a generator of activities...Artwork functions as the temporary terminal of interconnected elements and reinterprets preceding narratives. Each exhibition encloses within it the script of another...The artwork is is no longer an end point but a simple moment in an infinite chain of contributions'.

I see the work I am doing with Freee as a part of both these statements, I do not intend to create another object, (one reason for making it an online project), but using the slogan by Freee and advancing and disseminating it further within its written form. The medium of it may change, but the text remains the same but can be repeated in 'an infinite chain of contributions'.

This centres on my concept »Kraut Atlantik«, a chronotope exemplifying newsmaking as a media-specific mode of narrativity. Alike Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic” »Kraut Atlantik« is synonymous for a spatio-temporal matrix covering the transatlantic area and creating collective values: a mobile term of intrinsically generic significance, that expresses a specific worldview, and thereby a culture-specific stratum of information in the global media sphere.