Date: Mon, 22 Apr 1996 10:11:07 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Brian A. Connery" <connery-AT-oakland.edu>
Subject: Re: HAB: INTERNET and the public sphere



On Sat, 20 Apr 1996, Alinta Thornton wrote:

> I am researching a thesis (which I must begin writing in a few weeks!) about
> internet and democracy, with reference to Habermas' work. Does anyone know
> of materials relating his work to democracy or the internet?

I've got an essay forthcoming (in *Internet Culture*, Routledge '96) that has
Habermasian roots (I know this because it keeps getting criticized for not
being Foucauldian enough), but isn't at all an attempt to do a doctrinaire
Habermasian critique of the internet. 

Basically, like H., I go back to 18th c. London coffeehouse culture
(*Structural Transformation*) to show some analogies to the internet:
real-time discussion in an environment (theoretically) without a priori
authority (coffeehouses; newsgroups and discussion lists); increased rapidity
in communication and publication (introduction of the penny-post; improved
printing presses; lapse of the Licensing Act); and a proliferation of
"information" (this might interest Alinta particularly) through the invention
and proliferation of the modern newspaper.  So basically what I'm saying is
that the internet replicates the material and cultural conditions that were
instrumental in the emergence of what H terms the public sphere. 

Since neither Habermas nor the internet are subjects that I know 
particularly well, the essay's intended simply as a preliminary 
investigation, the laying of some groundwork--with the hope that others  
continue the discussion.

I do touch on a couple of potential topics for further discussion: the
proliferation of hoaxes and rumors and the potential for misinformation and
disinformation in an unregulated discursive space; anonymity; the relation
between the press and the internet (based on the symbiotic relationship
between the press and the coffeehouses); the emergence of authority
structures in an anti-authoritative discursive space; and the relation
between conventions of conversation (coffeehouse discussion;  conversational
style in discussion lists and newsgroups) and print culture (newspapers; 
postings to newsgroups and discussion lists). 

More recently I've been thinking about the emergence of netiquette as it
relates to the emergence of politeness (as opposed to courtesy) in early 18th
C. England, very much the product of coffeehouse culture, as a means of
re-figuring social relations.  And, similarly, about the ways in which
internet discourse has to invent its own dialogical conventions, in
opposition to the prevalent monological models.

As I said, the essay is meant to be no more than exploratory, saying,
"Hey--look at some of the similarities here!"  How much of what I've said
may, in fact, be "Habermasian," I don't know.  I think that there's a lot to
be talked about once the similarities are recognized, and Habermasians may be
the ones to do a lot of it. 

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Brian Connery			
connery-AT-oakland.edu 
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