Re-Draft of Intro, First and Second Paragraph for Media Essay:

How might the influence of new media be said to strengthen or weaken the public sphere?

The influence of new media can be said to strengthen or perhaps even weaken the public sphere due to new technologies and forms of convergence evolving, in particular, in the news industry whereby technologies such as mobile phones, laptops and small camera’s allow members of the public to become ‘an active role’ in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing and distributing news and information onto websites. Clearly, this has brought about the influence of new media as on one end of the scale it provides lots of opportunity for communication and debate, for instance, comments can be discussed about news stories on websites such as ‘Bloggers, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter’, whilst on the other hand there is that impact of anonymity – comments are unaccountable as in today’s climate people don’t necessarily have to say who they are on the internet and can express their more extreme opinions which they wouldn’t do as much if it were a face to face interaction. However, Habermas, a German sociologist, has written extensively on the way that information; news and events are processed in ‘the public sphere’ discussing the way in which news is talked about and discussed by the public sphere. For Habermas, the principles of ‘the public sphere’ are beginning to weaken in the 20^th Century, however forms of new media which have been used in Syria illustrating to the world what is going on via a mixture of eye witness accounts and footage of protests via their mobile phones and so on can be used to refute this statement.

Referring back to the impact of new media in Syria, we are now able to see how with a variety of eye witness footage being shot on mobile phones and in some cases, small cameras that have been smuggled into the country, the footage can usually be uploaded by computer shortly afterwards. Evidently, this is a convergence of new media, it is a platform whereby media can now be collected, reported and distributed across the internet. This shows that uploading content is the first step of how the influence of new media can be said to strengthen the public sphere as once the content has been uploaded onto the internet for citizens to view, the next stage is for the public to discuss this and share with others. Clearly, this allows the public sphere to bypass censorship from traditional media as the Syrian government originally banned TV/news feeds and cameras. According to Habermas, ‘the public is no longer made out of “masses of individuals” but organised people that institutionally exerts their influence on the public sphere’, and those “masses of individuals” are those who when creating media in the past had a big broadcasting company filled with individuals who were equipped with big recording devices, big camera’s and so on if you wanted to distribute news out to the world. Yet, in this particular case study it was the Syrian individuals who acted as journalists and were able to film events on their phones and distribute it out to everyone, which clearly is a form of citizen journalism and a way of highlight how the influence of new media in today’s climate is beginning to strengthen the public sphere.

What is more, is that Habermas believes that the mass media has resulted in censorship and repression, for instance, if you think about newspaper’s globally, “The Wall Street, News of the World and The Australian” all of these examples of papers are each owned by the same person, for instance, Rupert Murdoch. Habermas elucidates how this is damaging democracy because it’s an example of how certain ideas and ideologies of voices are dominating the world. However the headache for Syria, which has banned journalists, is not just from the protesters; videos taken by members of the army and security forces, often mocking those they are abusing or showing bloody dead bodies, have also leaked out due to the accessibility of being able to record footage on devices such as mobile phones etc which has added to the influence of new media. Nonetheless, even with a ban in Syria for journalists, Syria was expecting another internet outrage on Friday 10^th June 2011, as the week before they had experienced the internet being turned off across the majority of the country for the day. Yet, videos still emerged in areas where internet was still working and from other areas in the country just a day later highlighting that citizens do not want to feel oppressed by Syrian government.