A Sociological Study on the Formation of Public Spheres in the Internet

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This project aimed to examine theoretically and empirically the possibilities of the formation of public spheres, the social spaces in which citizens construct public opinions through rational communications and debates, on the basis of the Internet.Habermas's ideal conception of the public sphere is characterized by two essential aspects, (a) the construction of social spaces reproduced by rational communicative actions,(b) self-referential critique : public opinions constructed in the public sphere criticize not only political system, but also the civil society and the public sphere itself.From the theoretical point of view, the Internet is considered to be an ideal circumstance for realizing these two aspects. However, from the empirical point of view, ambivalent orientations has been found in the Internet : on the one hand, the Internet made possible to form autonomous social networks independent of existing social relations, but on the other, it made possible various social deviations by anonymous actors.Before analyzing empirical cases, public spheres in the Internet are divided into two models : micro and macro. Micro public spheres are the social spaces in which individual citizens participate and they construct their identities through communications and debates on cultural, social or political problems. Macro public spheres are the social spaces in which organized actors like NGO or NPO play the central role and they criticize political system or participate in policy-makings. Empirical cases were examined in Japan and United States through secondary and primary data (including on the Internet). As a result, the formation of micro public spheres on the Internet are often found in both countries. However, concrete examples of macro public spheres are already found in United States, but hardly found in Japan yet.