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The Liquefaction of Publicness: Communication, Democracy and the Public Sphere in the Internet Age, Vol. 25 - 2018, No. 1

Visibility and the Public Sphere: A Normative Conceptualisation

, pages: 35-42

The concept of visibility has been associated with the public sphere conception for a long time. However, the public sphere has not been explicitly defined in terms of visibility. This paper reconstructs from a range of relevant critical and poststructuralist theory a set of public sphere conditions for which the concept of visibility, drawing upon a variety of its connotations, can be understood as central. The paper also suggests roles that communications media, and particularly the new digital “social media,” can play in the conditions’ realisation and identifies some of the current impediments to the fulfilment of these roles.

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