Informal title of paper for article review 1

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Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media.

Article Title: Kruse, L. M., Norris, D. R., & Flinchum, J. R. (2018) “Social Media as a Public Sphere? Politics on Social Media”. The Sociological Quarterly, 59 (1) 62-84.

Find article online: https://doi-org.proxy.library.brocku.ca/10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143

DOI: 10.1080/00380253.2017.1383143

Context

The number of users that are on social media platforms is almost the entirety of Earth’s population. People on various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter can discuss freely with other users across the world. This increased version of free speech can allow people to also speak on their political views and this could potentially have major influences on politics, both as citizens and politicians.

Overview

The article by Kruse, Norris and Flinchum (2018) discusses how social media is attracting billions of people to various platforms, and how some people believe that it has prompted the return of Habermas’ teaching of the public sphere. It is interesting because the free speech and identification of societal problems that can spurt from public spheres could potentially have political implications. The authors used data from interviews with Millennials and Gen Xers to go against this notion. Their findings suggest that the participants of their research do not indulge in communication activities that are typical of the public sphere, because they stay away from online political discourse. The three reasons for this: are the fear of being harassed online and being watched in their workplace, only having relationships with others who are politically similar, and the characterization of social media as a happy place. Additionally, they found that these three factors were correlated, often in sequence, and they looked for the similarities and nuances of each factor between Millennials and Gen Xers.

Strengths and Weaknesses

The first strength of this article is that the authors start by tying Habermas to the public sphere since it is his teaching. The article does an excellent job of describing the public sphere, in ways that even a child would understand what it means. It also gives deeper insight as to how the public sphere functions, like when they state, “The public sphere requires unlimited access to information, equal and protected participation, and the absence of institutional influence, particularly regarding the economy” (p. 63). This is important because knowing how the public sphere functions allow readers to understand how social media relates to it. Another strength of this article is how the authors argued two different perspectives: the argument for social media as a public sphere and the argument against social media as a public sphere. Their argument for social media as a public sphere was strong and supported by multiple scholarly sources. For example, it was mentioned that the results of a few studies saw limited amounts of civilized discourses on websites like the White House page on Facebook. Also, social media allows for access to almost unlimited information and the internet has become accessible across the globe, so in reality, this can allow anyone to share their thoughts and information freely. Essentially, users can be allowed to participate and acquire information, “free from outside influence” (p. 63). Another strength was in the research method. They used 29 participants, which is a decent amount of people, and they had enough diversity amongst the participants as well—Caucasian, Hispanic, African American, male and female.

Although this article comes with many strengths, it does have its weaknesses, however, there aren’t many. The first instance is its argument against social media as a public sphere. They only mentioned that a few credited scholars, including Habermas himself, have criticized the idea that social media has led to the rebirth of the public sphere. There wasn’t enough information for this argument for it to be significant. It would have been better off just arguing about social media as a public sphere.

Assessment

In conclusion, the article argued that social media did not support the re-emergence of Habermas’ public sphere. The participants from their research showed that communicative action hardly transpired on social media. Out of their 29 participants, “21 of them reported a lack of civil discourse on social media, 7 did not bring up civil discourse at all, and only 1 reported successfully engaging in civil political discourse on social media” (p. 69).

--DSamaka 17:30, 1 April 2022

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