What is the public sphere? -- more confusions.
Howard believes the use of the internet for hypermedia campaigns differentiates online political practices from traditional political communication in a considerable way. Beyond hypermedia’s more direct differences, such as the lack of information waste in online communication, a heterarchical organizational structure, and the short-term existence of these types of campaigns, Howard thinks hypermedia also fundamentally limit the possibility for democratic political communication.
He argues that “in redlining some constituents and communities and then narrowcasting political content, hypermedia campaigns diminish the amount of shared text in the public sphere.” In his view, hypermedia limit citizens’ ability not only to learn about a variety of political views and information for themselves, but also to share their knowledge to broaden the scope of discussion within the public sphere. He also states, “Even though new media technologies have diffused quickly, there are still significant portions of the population either without the technology or without the informational skills to participate in the public sphere online” (183). The digital and educational divide, he argues, also influence the amount of information that enters public sphere dialogue.
I am conflicted about Howard’s position. On the one hand, I find his argument useful to contradict the early starry-eyed views of the Internet’s unlimited potential for democratic involvement. Hypermedia, at least in the way that Howard portrays it, is indeed exploitative and undemocratic. But another part of me doesn’t fully believe that things are really this black and white. Just because certain portions of the population get targeted with certain messages that they, based on their purchasing records and online activities, are supposed to be supportive of does not imply that the Internet itself, outside of the hypermedia sphere, cannot be used to gather further information. It does not mean that the Internet itself is wholly undemocratic for the purposes of gathering political information.
Howard does point out a unique characteristic of Internet-based political communication. The ability to control what portion of the whole picture is received by whom does create a more one-on-one relationship between the individual and the campaign. Such a space does privatize political communication in a market-based fashion. However, citizens still have the ability to find alternative information sources, and indeed they have a hard time avoiding other sources in day-to-day interaction with other citizens and with mass media. The public sphere doesn't have to be limited to certain sectors of communication -- they can be broad, or, at least, information learned in one can be combined with the influence of life's many other public spheres. Howard’s argument would make more sense if all people were tied to their computers with no person-to-person contact with society. Thankfully, real life isn’t symptomatic of the Parable of the Cave. A political campaign, which is designed to attract audiences even when it does not personalize its messages, is by no means the only outlet from which people gather knowledge about politics. Let’s hope things stay this way.