Media and New Revelation of Public Sphere

I personally agree to skeptical opinion of Habermas in his prediction that mass media (pollster and media experts) will more likely emerge the public opinion. Pollster is one of the ways of shaping the public opinion. From our education, we are trained to complete our argumentation which is based on evidence, statistic, or number. Therefore, when we see statistic somehow we think that it is the whole fact without considering the methodological and validity of the statistic. United State have pre-polling (polling before election), and I found that certain media sometimes make one candidate win and other loose or at least slightly loose in pre polling because this media is the align of one candidate. 

In 2008, CNN polling reported that 55% of people think Obama cared to more people, and 30% think McCain cared to more people (Oct/7). Interestingly, FOX created polling and made McCain slightly win than Obama, which is 45% for McCain and 42% for Obama (Sept/8). This is aimed to create public opinion in each group of audience. In another aspect, mass media such as newspaper or online news has power to transform editorial opinion to public opinion because of the strong power of message dissemination and if the society is weak in their critical thinking or society already agree on the opinion but need confirmation from media, therefore it is ‘a piece of cake’ to shape public opinion. For example CNN editorial which I think tend to refer to the idea of Democratic Party, would usually create editorial that send the message which they hold on such as “peace, freedom, and equality”. 

As a sample, the editorial of Dean Obeidallah who is an award-winning comedian Arab-American. He has appeared on "Axis of Evil", "The View, "What the Week", etc. He portrayed clearly in the value of Democratic Party and obviously pointed at FOX as those who demonize religion or race. I think CNN can create public opinion about certain value and strengthen the opinion which co-exist within their permanent audience and ‘brainwash’ their newbie audience by bringing them to media owner opinion.

New media, such as blog, facebook, twitter, e-group discussion, in my opinion bring new atmosphere in the debate of public sphere. It is an alternative path to find public dialogue, debate, and permeate the boundaries of equality, geographic, and social structure (you can be anonymous in internet, thus “nobody know you are an intelligent dolphin or the genius penguin Madagascar in the internet”). Even though there are many weakness of internet in facilitating public sphere, but Arab spring has proved that national revolution could be organize through Facebook, or Burma movement against Junta Military could be formed through SMS, even one hundred thousand dollar for donation could be reach through Twitter from Justin Bieber who make sympathy status statement to Christchurch. This era, somehow bring conventional media (TV, radio, Newspaper) change their strategy to fulfill the society spirit to engage in citizen participation and mediate the public sphere in more optimistic way. I am calling this the new revelation of public sphere. It brings new spirit, new direction of life and new hope, just like the revelation era of mega churches in 1950. Maybe I am too optimistic to contemporary media, and too pessimistic to traditional media, but I believe when society participate in all kind of media and the access for the emerging democracy will appear. 

"Hot" Ideas for Further Research:

 a. Comparing political polling framing in conventional media. Find out who is the winner in media A and who is the winner in media B.

b. How digital media engage citizens in political conversations? Good question, can you do the research?

c. You can also explore this one: The participation forms of particular group such as young people, mother, senior citizens, veteran, etc in digital media and politic (choose one and focus).