Week 9: Essay Plan

Habermas' concept of the public sphere and its relationship with citizen journalism

The required readings several weeks earlier relating to citizen journalism and produsage were of considerable interest to me, and prompted me to choose the practice of citizen journalism as the main topic of the essay.

I was unsure how to frame the question though, and when Stephen's lecture yesterday touched on Habermas and the notion of the public sphere, this sparked a great interest in me.

I have since come across many resources that look at concepts on citizen or public journalism, as well as the public sphere. Haas and Steiner (2001) look at how criticism of Habermas' 'public sphere' affects the advent of public journalism, and this paper among others will provide for me an apt springboard for understanding the relationship between Habermas' public sphere and citizen journalism, a practice of journalism that empowers democracy and is seeing tremendous growth.

I aim to frame the topic even more closely, and to try and use existing literature and criticism on the topic to make a meaningful connection or observation. I aim to, however, more fully grasp both the concept of the public sphere and citizen journalism, and current theoretical approaches, before I make a plan for my essay as to what I will analyse.

I will do some research over the next few days and hopefully this will guide me in a direction for my essay, and something I can effectively write about in such a small word count. 

This does not mean that I do not already have a position on the topic, however. I am fully supportive of citizen journalism, and it is a great tool for communication in a democratic society. My tutor suggested I explore Dan Gillmor's 'We The Media' as well, which looks at grassroots journalism 'by the people'.

It should be an interesting research area! I'm looking forward to diving into the research this week.

Resources

Compton, J 2000, 'Communicative Politics and Public Journalism', Journalism Studies, vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 449-467

Gillmour, D 2004, We The Media, O'Reilly Publishing

Haas, T & Steiner, L 2001, 'Public Journalism as a journalism of publics: Implications of the Habermas-Fraser debate for online journalism', Journalism, vol. 2, pp. 123- 147