A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age

Digital Media and Society Series

by Zizi Papacharissi

Online technologies excite the public imagination with narratives of democratization. The Internet is a political medium, borne of democracy, but is it democratizing? Late modern democracies are characterized by civic apathy, public skepticism, disillusionment with politics, and general disinterest in conventional political process. And yet, public interest in blogging, online news, net-based activism, collaborative news filtering, and online networking reveal an electorate that is not disinterested, but rather, fatigued with political conventions of the mainstream. This book examines how online digital media shape and are shaped by contemporary democracies, by addressing the following How do online technologies remake how we function as citizens in contemporary democracies? What happens to our understanding of public and private as digitalized democracies converge technologies, spaces and practices? How do citizens of today understand and practice their civic responsibilities, and how do they compare to citizens of the past? How do discourses of globalization, commercialization and convergence inform audience/producer, citizen/consumer, personal/political, public/private roles individuals must take on? Are resulting political behaviors atomized or collective? Is there a public sphere anymore, and if not, what model of civic engagement expresses current tendencies and tensions best? Students and scholars of media studies, political science, and critical theory will find this to be a fresh engagement with some of the most important questions facing democracies today.

Genres: Research

208 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 7, 2010

About the author

Zizi Papacharissi is professor and head of the Communication Department at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Her work focuses on the social and political consequences of online media. Her books include A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age (Polity Press, 2010), A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites (Routledge, 2010), and Journalism and Citizenship: New Agendas (Taylor & Francis, 2009). She has also authored over 50 journal articles, book chapters or reviews, and serves on the editorial board of eleven journals, including the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, and New Media and Society. Zizi is the editor of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, and the founding and current Editor of the new open access Sage journal Social Media and Society. She has collaborated with Apple, Microsoft, and has participated in closed consultations with the Obama 2012 election campaign. She sits on the Committee on the Health and Well-Being of Young Adults, funded by the National Academies of Science, the National Research Council, and the Institute of Medicine, and has been invited to lecture about her work on social media in several Universities and Research Institutes in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the US. Her work has been translated in Greek, German, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, Turkish, and Persian. Her fourth book is titled Affective Publics: Sentiment, Technology and Politics (Oxford University Press) and recently won the National CommunicatIon Association Human Communication and Technology Division Best Book Award.

Zizi was born and raised in Thessaloniki, Greece, and graduated from Anatolia College in 1991. She received a full scholarship to Mount Holyoke College, where she completed a double BA in Economics and Media Studies (1995), and to Kent State University, where she received a Masters degree in Communication Studies (1997). Her studies were fully funded by fellowships and scholarships from both the Onassis Foundation and the University of Texas of Austin, where she received her PhD (2000) in New Media Technologies and Political Communication. She was recently recognized by her alma mater, UT-Austin, as a high-impact scholar, an honor bestowed to a handful of the School's most productive and impactful doctoral graduates

Reviews

[Astrid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good book. She makes some very interesting points. Hard to get through though.

[Casey Browne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good book. She makes some very interesting points. Hard to get through though. The simplicity of style maybe one of the most important features of this book about politics and personal life in a networked society. A well-balanced account of the concept of "Public Sphere" and its contemporary changes, the author claims that internet environments such as Facebook, blogs and youtube might enable new forms of citizenship, but may also lead to bad changes in the way people deal with their own political engagement. Very good reading.

[Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The simplicity of style maybe one of the most important features of this book about politics and personal life in a networked society. A well balanced account of the concept of "Public Sphere" and its contemporary changes, the author claims that internet environments such as facebook, blogs and youtube might enable new forms of citizenship, but may also lead to bad changes in the way people deal with their own political engajement. Very good reading.