CMN 3109 Chapter Notes - Chapter 1: Fourth Estate, Satellite Television, Jürgen Habermas

• School: University of Ottawa
• Department: Communication
• Course: CMN 3109
• Professor: Dina Salha

Document Summary

The new mass media of the 20th century threatened to subvert the public sphere and democracy. Movies, radio and television has great propaganda potential to truncate (cut) the range of ideas in the public sphere and restrict debate. New theories of mass culture and mass society explained the vulnerability of modern democracies and the power of radio and film as tools for propaganda. Central to such theory was the use of media for propaganda to bind the population to the fascist state. Habermas"s theory of the bourgeois public sphere addresses questions about what makes democracy work. Its primary focus is the origins of bourgeois public sphere in 18th century social institutions and political philosophy. There"s a second tradition, of publics, rooted in social rather than political concepts and theory, framed in terms of different issues and questions, but also placing mass media at the center of the idea of publics.