Wellsangels

Digital media’s potential to recreate something like public sphere that Habermas idealizes is a popular question. And reading Habermas’ note that in 1789 Paris, “between February and May alone, 450 clubs and over 200 journals,” were started by people wishing to organize and express themselves, it’s hard not to think of the number of people today who, equipped with a laptop and an internet connection, are free to blog to their hearts’ content.

There are some notable similarities between the journals of the bourgeois public sphere and the blogs of our blogosphere. The most important may be the ownership by non-elite individuals (probably more non-elite in our time), and the dedication of the journals and blogs to mainly non-commercial information and opinion sharing. (In our time, the cost of blogging is almost entirely a cost of time, whereas Habermas notes that the journals of the late 18^th century required enough capital that their editors often took losses in exchange for spreading their message.) And Habermas doesn’t address the issue, but we probably can assume that like today’s bloggers, certain journal authors attained a much greater degree of success and circulation than others, based on the preferences of the audience. Comparing the two forms of public communication raise a number of interesting questions about blogs’ potential in a digitally-literate society.

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