An Analysis of Habermas Jurgen Habermas defines the public sphere as the sphere of private people who come together

by a common interest and reach a common opinion to form a public. According to him, public sphere is the sphere which creates the public opinion. Habermas defines the press as the public sphere's "preeminent institution", because of the fact that it provides the communication among the public. The shift in the function of the principle of publicity is based on a shift in the function of the public sphere as a special realm. This shift can be clearly documented with regard to the transformation of the public sphere's preeminent institution, the press (Habermas 181). Habermas believes that the private sphere is important for every persons self-development, and lately the privacy of people is disappearing. For him, the line between public and private is fading away. The main factor of this process was the press and its commercialization. The interest of the people and the press slipped into privacy. Habermas acts towards the press as the responsible of the changes that occurred in the public sphere. In the past, the press was the mirror of the state and society, merely reflecting it, not shaping it. However, the development of advertising changed this situation. Advertising, which developed later on, is the representation of private interests to the public in an attempt to influence the public. Advertising is a result of the private interests dominance in the public sphere. Another similar branch is public relations. It directly manipulates the public opinions. This people get manipulated unconsciously. They believe that all the necessary information is given to them and that they could criticize the given information in a fair way. But the truth is they are directed and manipulated so that they get the sense that whatever policy the politicians present to them is true.

The great power of the press shapes the public opinion. The manipulation of the press makes people lose their own personalities and point of views and make everyone almost the same. On the other hand there is also the disappearance of the line between the public and the private which makes the same issue occur. The absence of privacy makes people act like someone else in order not to be judged. The anxiety of the other peoples opinion made everyone become actors. According to the results Habermas who gives a great importance in people being as true individuals said that he believed in that the reassertion of a real public sphere is necessary and that it can be possible. Asl Zeren 04.11.2009

Jurgen Habermas, Introduction: Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere and The Transformation of the Public Spheres Political Function [extract] from The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962; trans, Thomas Burger, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 1-26, 181-195.