• Nem Talált Eredményt

Private sphere, public sphere and mass communication

In document Philosophy of the Internet (Pldal 82-85)

3. Communication in the late modern age

3.2 Communication media and technologies

3.2.4 Private sphere, public sphere and mass communication

3.2.4 Private sphere, public sphere and mass communic-ation

Many types of communities can be developed with the help of communication. The features of the desired com-munities can be determined well through the adequate shaping of communication situations. Numerous factors participate in the shaping of communicative situations: natural conditions, technological endowment, the available media, the abilities, knowledge and intentions of the participants of the situation, the preliminary expectations toward the community to be developed, and so on. Theorganizing force, which unites the various factors can be mainly naturally given (as for example in the community of parents and children), but it can be the result of the situation creating activity of man (as in the case of creating friendships or political communities). How the forces that shape the situation are distributed might also have a decisive significance: do the participants of the situationcontrolthe situation, or are they subjected to the circumstances that unconditionally operate in the situation? In other words:

are the people who participate in the situation forced to communicate in a given way or can they influence or shape the characteristics of the communication with their own decisions and thereby the features of the community that can be created? Usually, the parties participating in a communication cannot directly influence their own position, since the situations are given for them. Communication “engineers”, the experts of communication technology (clerics, politicians, priests, certain artists, journalists, intellectuals, etc.) know how to build up and operate situations, and this social mission is mostly theirs. Of course, the activity of communication engineers does not take place in a vacuum; historically given social pressures also operate in the choice of their methods. Thus, the forces which shape communication situations work on the basis of interests and values built on naturally given factors. The applied system of interests and values (in other words: an ideology) necessarily operates in the situation, including the physical and mental activities of the parties participating in the situation. (Think for example of the value laden nature of the situations that secure the regular functioning of political institutions, production processes, artistic styles, scientific paradigms, or religious ceremonies.) Consequently, the development of situations always has moral and politicaldimensions as well. Insofar as we do not regard communication or any versions of it value neutral (our experiences with technological images can for example provide a strong motivation for this), the situation is even more value laden, and it acquires an opaque quality.

Thus, the political and moral questions connected to communication are not new at all, since they are “built into”

the communication situation. Communication situations are clearly separable units of society in which the relations of the whole society are reflected.32For example, they often take away, reinterpret or fix the political rights of the

32At this point, we would like to point out that we are consistently trying to differentiate betweencommunityandsociety.According to the view discussed above, we create communities through communication, while society is a system of communities in which factors other than communities (e.g. culture) can be found as well. Thus, when we talk about the social values that determine the organization of communicative

Communication in the late modern age

participants of the communication (e.g. they prescribe which party can say, show, watch, read what and how, they make continuous participation possible for individual parties or they exclude them from certain phases of commu-nication as well as from certain spheres of the publicity that shape public opinion, they can use secret codes, etc.).

The most important question is probably how theyregulatethe exercise of such rights in a given society. Of course, general political rights appear in a specific (concrete and particular) form in communication situations.

From the point of view of the control of the participants over a communication situation the following levels can be differentiated in the modern age:

We can consider a situation personal if the control of the communicating person is full fledged. Its diametric op-posite is the situation of masses, where personal control is completely lacking. (In such cases control over the situation is exercised by a general social or public institution.) In situations of the private sphere and the public we can observe different levels of control. Among other things, this is why the relationship between the private sphere and the public is often problematic, since the level of a certain type of control can be evaluated and interpreted in different ways. A situation of the public sphere constructs the individual who belongs to the given community, and a situation of the public constructs the community which is made up of individuals. At the same time, the borderline (sharp to any degree) between the private sphere and publicity also makes the necessity of their togeth-erness obvious. The personal and the private sphere is not only different as regards the level of control, but the situation of the private sphere is also larger “in extension” than a personal situation, and it also includes public issues.

The case is similar in the relationship of the public and the masses: a situation of the public contains personal issues as well, but a mass situation does not. We can see that the extension of personal issues coincides with the sphere of the total control over personal situations, and the extension of public issues coincides with the sphere of the unattainability of total control over the situation. This is a quite natural connection, since on the one hand it refers to the area of individual activity, on the other, to the sphere of the necessary cooperation with other individuals.

Private opinion is public opinion represented by an individual, and public opinion is the totality of private opinions – and both are the result of communicative acts. The control that can be reached in any situation is complemented by responsibility, whether we talk about the individuals who participate in the communication or the institutions that represent public issues. Occasionally, moral discussions can help in solving practical problems connected to the personal, the private sphere and the public; mostly political and legal trains of thought help us figure out matters of the masses, the public and the private.

We get a different division of the “communication field” created by communication situations if on the one hand we consider the “the themes” of communication as aspects of the classification (on the basis of this, we can talk about private and public issues), on the other, if we also differentiate between the public and non-public accessib-ility of “communicative acts” (Heller 2001). In this case, the following might be the possible spheres of the

“communication field”: public communication about private issues, public communication about public issues, non-public communication about private issues and non-public communication about public issues. We can see that this classification corresponds to what we said above, though a more thorough analysis might reveal nontrivial disharmonies.

It is also worth mentioning a few further problematic issues besides the classification of communication situations:

the historical changes of the relationship between the private sphere and the public and the problems generated by the usage of the new information technologies, which has become obvious by now, thus for example the question of the ownership of the communicated data and content.

Habermas’s classic work (Habermas 1999) provides an extensive presentation of the historical development of the public which creates public opinion (and the private sphere necessarily connected to it), especially about the pecu-liarities of modern civic development and the structure of civic publicity. Here we only point out from this complex question that in its initial stage, civic publicity did not develop in a political dimension but rather in the dimension of literature and culture, and the political dimension became decisive only gradually (for example, in England at the beginning of the 18thcentury). Perhaps we might also say that the development of the literary “communities”

preceded the development of the political “communities”, but of course, what happens in both cases is that various

situations, we ascribe a different level of existence to the „force that organizes society” and to the „product” of the situation. We will deal with the characterization of the relationships of communities and society later on in detail.

Communication in the late modern age

systems of value (made aware of in various measures) “settle on” the community building based on various com-munication technologies and shape the characteristics of each specific social group. The technologies that played an important role in the initial development of civic publicity are extensive reading and the communicative envir-onment that made it possible, the radical advance of printing, the proliferation of newspapers, the circulation of popular publications in great numbers, the creation of libraries, clubs, salons and associations.

We can also observe interesting processes in connection withwriting. Writing lost some of its personal nature with the appearance of printed texts, but with the use ofhandwritingthey were able to preserve a significant amount of individuality, mostly in the private sphere and in personal matters. Obviously, in situations of the public and the masses the use of printed text is the typical. At the same time, it is also notable in this respect that handwriting makes the authentication of texts or even their encryption possible. We can observe a peculiar turn with the appear-ance oftyping(1880). Texts written with a typewriter – similarly to the processes that we can identify in the rela-tionship of cameras and photos – on the one hand widen the accessibility of the “press” to a significant degree and thereby make printing somewhat more democratic, and on the other hand, since typed texts are technologically in between handwriting and printing and are usually created with the help of a personally operated technology, they are also able to express some kind of individuality. The appearance ofword processorsused on computers effectively meant a revolution. This is mostly becausevirtual textscreated with the help of information technology devices can be shaped and changed easily without any trace, and their various versions transformed into a real medium equally seem to be complete, original, and authentic. As a result of digital technology, the originality and authen-ticity of texts (similarly to what we mentioned in connection with images) becomes questionable to a greater degree.33 Technical devices which make the digitalization of handwriting possible realize a peculiar transformation between the personal and the impersonal.

Of course, the occasional transformation of information technologies does not only cause changes in the technology of writing, but it significantly shapes the whole context of publicity. We can more or less separatetwosuccessive phasesin the reorganization of the modern sphere of communication. As a result of thefirst“structural change”, the private sphere and the public “shows a tendency of interpenetration” (Habermas 1999); their differences become blurred, the whole sphere of communication displays the characteristics of the private sphere. It is not exactly the changes of communication technologies which are behind this change but the full realization of striving for power in modern society, which makes the subordination of the public sphere to private interests possible. This realignment of power also develops the communication situations that correspond to its aims. The spreading ofcopyrightis also an evidence of the transformation of the power relations of communication situations (Scott 2001), as well as its widespread use, the growing importance of telecommunication devices (mostly the radio and the television) and in general the tendency of the unhindered enforcement of market relations in communication situations. The individual is transformed into the consumer of public opinion (and public resources), and communities are trans-formed into communities of consumption. The operation ofmass communication, mostly built on telecommunication devices, goes with the development of the relationships between the masses and the private sphere, which results in the loss of the significance of the public sphere.

We can observe the revival of the public sphere in thesecondphase of the realignment of the sphere of communic-ation, but publicity now reveals itself in a markedly pluralized form,34aspublicitiesof various levels and various orientations (Heller 2001). This phase of the changes is actually the result of the changing communication technology (mostly the activities connected to the Internet). In contrast with the widely accepted view, according to which Internet use can lead to the dissolution of communities and extreme individualization, it seems that the creation of the Internet might lead to opposite processes, and the Internet might be the tool of developing various publicities.

The web citizen who uses the Internet is usually not attached to a single publicity, but, plunging into communication situations, he radically multiplies his personal participation and at the same time he creates or builds various communities. Many studies analyze the role of the Internet in the creation and maintenance of various publicities (Poster 1995a; Dahlberg 2001; Baoill 2000; Manninen 2000; Lafayette 2001). One direction of the changes shows the revival of “traditional” economical, cultural and political publicities. Thus for example the possibility of “direct”

33A peculiar symptom of this problem is notably present in education as well. Because of the widely used practice ofplagiarism, examination based on written papers has become practically impossible. According to an American survey, college students “purchase” or “procure” their papers occasionally in increasing numbers (in 2001 more than 70 percent) from electronic databases, the Internet or from acquaintances and friends.

34Publicity did have a certain type of plurality before. The criticism and the reflections that followed the publication of Habermas’s book suggest so, which – in his foreword to a more recent edition of his book – Habermas himself appreciates.

Communication in the late modern age

democracy based on Internet use seems to be viable in many respects,35from orientation and administration of public affairs on the Internet, the direct and perpetual connection with the elected representatives, to direct voting on various issues (Democracies Online; Clift 1999; Clift 2002; PROceedings 2002; The Berkman Center; UNESCO Observatory; Pew Internet; Cybersoc; Virtual Society? ). Another direction of the changes aims for the development ofnewversions of publicity. The many different types of online communities (Preece 2000) are invigorated by the operation of the various versions and levels of publicity, as can be seen for example in the case of chat channels, discussion lists, and news groups.

In spite of their different structures, which express their different aims, the communication situations of the new type of publicity share some common characteristics. The possibility of theanonymityor pseudonymity of the participants of communication is among their most important common characteristics (Wallace 1999; Nissenbaum 1999). The communicating parties can hide their real identity, they can virtually multiply themselves, they can program their presence or make it permanent,36and they can use similar tricks – and experience tells us that they do. All these radically extend the possibilities of the structuredness of the private sphere and the public, especially if we take into consideration the possibility of combining the traditional and the new, “online” and “offline” com-munication. The pursued and the pursuers can hide behind anonymity as well; political refugees, terrorists, agents, policemen, and the prophets of hate speech also readily resort to its help. The question of the possibility of “bugging”

Internet activity and monitoring it continuously is often discussed among Internet users. Various news and bits of news spread occasionally about the special devices implanted at the Internet providers by the secret services, with the help of which for example all email traffic can be monitored and analyzed. For instance, it seems that the sur-veillance system, “Carnivore” developed in the United States serves this purpose, but we could also read about installing similar devices at Hungarian Internet providers. The issue appears to be somewhat enigmatic by nature, but there is no doubt that the laws of many countries permit the operation of this type of system. The case is probably different with the “Echelon” interception system operated by the English speaking countries, which per-forms surveillance with an even wider scope, and about the lawfulness of which opinions are more divergent.

Nevertheless, it is good to know that it is not only the state authorities that observe the area of publicity. Surveillance aimed at gaining business advantage is frequent as well. The biggest part of the torrent of “spams” (most of which are unasked and unwanted) which fill our mailboxes are sent on the basis of such surveillance.

One of the significant differences between the traditional and the new type of publicity becomes clear in connection with the question of anonymity. The Internet users whose aim is to resurrect traditional publicity strive for the secure preservation of the personal and that we can use it safely when needed, the striving of the followers of the new type of publicity is on the other hand the impersonal, the secure preservation of anonymity and its safe (free of the danger of being caught) usage. Of course, in reality the aim of both camps isthe personal which can be controlled by the person who participates in the communication, the controlled drawing of the boundaries of the personal and its operation, which can be reached through our own control over our own communication situations.

The need to control our own communication situations can be found in other Internet activities, as for example in creating and maintaining our own website, the actions of a movement popularizing free speech on the Internet, spreading tricks that help download texts, music, images, and films freely, preferring open-source software and in many other activities. We will discuss some of these later on.

In document Philosophy of the Internet (Pldal 82-85)