Sunstein also likens the ability to have "unanticipated encounters" to the experience of the public street:

" Of course, this is not entirely different from what has come before. People have always had a great deal of power to filter out unwanted materials. People who read newspapers do not read the same newspaper; some people do not read any newspaper at all. People make choices among magazines based on their tastes and their point of view. But in the emerging situation, there is a difference of degree if not of kind. What is different is a dramatic increase in individual control over content, and a corresponding decrease in the power of general interest intermediaries. These include newspapers, magazines and broadcasters.

People who rely on such intermediaries have a range of chance encounters, involving shared experience with diverse others, and also exposure to material that they did not exactly choose. You might, for example, read the city newspaper, and in the process come across a range of stories that you would not have selected if you had the power to do so. Your eyes may come across a story about Germany, or crime in Los Angeles, or innovative business practices in Tokyo, and you may read those stories although you would hardly have placed them in your “Daily Me.” You might watch a particular television channel — perhaps you prefer Channel 4 — and when your favourite programme ends, you might see the beginning of another show, one that you would not have chosen in advance. Reading Time magazine, you might come across a discussion of endangered species in Madagascar, and this discussion might interest you, even affect your behaviour, although you would not have sought it out in the first instance. A system in which individuals lack control over the particular content that they see has a great deal in common with a public street, where you might encounter not only friends, but a heterogeneous variety of people engaged in a wide array of activities (including perhaps political protests and begging)."

Ryan I am looking forward to our discussion in class. You posted some good questions to consider. And from the looks of the posts, more questions are brewing! Sunstein acknowledges that it has always been our propensity to seek out those of like opinion. His concern with internet is that technology can allow us to filter out pretty much everything that doesn't agree with our views. He says this carries an additional danger- that our views tend to become more extreme. He says: " For democracy, there is a special problem. Social scientists have long known that when like-minded people are deliberating together they tend to end up thinking the same thing they thought before—but in more extreme form. Those who believe tax rates are too high will, after talking together, come to think that large, immediate tax reductions are a really good idea. People who think the world economy is in trouble are likely, after discussion, to fear economic catastrophe." continued below...

Katz and Lazarsfeld's "two step flow" model (cited by Habermas on page 213) holds that public opinion is swayed in two steps: first ideas flow from the media to opinion leaders and then from opinion leaders to less influential portions of the population. This theory has been rejected on the basis of being simplistic and Habermas too notes that political discussions tend to be "confined to in-groups, to family, friends and neighbors who generate a rather homogeneous climate of opinion anyway." This, he says, highlights how little these discussions contribute to a process of influencing public opinion. As an aside, this relates to another critique of the claim that the internet would provide for more deliberative democracy: People tend to read or find websites that tend to support and reinforce beliefs that they already hold. There is an interesting discussion of this phenomenon (sometimes referred to as "the Daily Me") in Cass Sunstein's book Republic.com.

Good Post. As to Habermas's statement on p.246 - "The group's communication processes are under the influence of the mass media either directly or, more frequently, mediated through opinion leaders," as early as 1922 Walter Lippman published Public Opinion, addressing the ways in which media perform an agenda setting function for public opinion. In a chapter called "The World Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads," Lippman argued that the pictures in our heads are dictated by the news media. The agenda-setting influence of the news media is not limited to the initial step of focusing public attention on a particular topic. It also influences the next step in the communication process, our understanding and perspective on the topics in the news. Agenda Setting theory in communication studies highlights not only the role that media plays in determining *what* issues are important for us (the audience) to think about, but also that the media shapes *how* we think about those issues.

Habermas put “particular importance” on the rise of the press (the critical journals and moral weeklies that appeared in the late 1600s and 1700s, as well as coffee houses and salons) in the development of the the public sphere. An important part of the decline of the public sphere was the radical change of its key institutions, including the commercialization of the media in the 1800s and 1900s. This process turned “rational–critical debate” into “cultural consumption.” Hopefully we can discuss more in class the role of the press in the rise of the public sphere.

Thanks, Alex. I remember in another post you had mentioned you read Structural Transformation last semester- (when you talked about "double speak") - Your point is a good one, as Habermas states that the world fashioned by mass media is a public sphere in appearance only. (p. 171) As you know, there is SO much in this text to talk about. I will be 'facilitating" discussion for our class Wednesday, focusing on the first part (pp. 1-140) of the book.( Ryan will be addressing the second part next week!)

I enjoyed reading this post. Nowadays, men are also subject to the media's constant refrain that there is something inherently wrong with us the way we are...something that can be improved/cured/changed so we can be beautiful/successful/loved if we just buy.. whatever it is that's being sold. Bordo is correct however, pointing out that women are disproportionately burdened by these messages. "In its proliferation of stereotypes, the culture industry enforces a certain image of beauty, a commodified beauty. . .advertisements for weight-loss programs, gyms, and cosmetic surgeons insist on the idea that a person's body is a work of art, one which he or she must sculpt. Of course, the form to which such sculpting adheres is the one that the culture industry identifies as the ideal." This made me think of the Aura (again) and of plastic surgery as a mechanical reproduction of the Ideal as a way of becoming the ideal.

You raise an interesting question when you ask whether the Aura is really in the eye of a beholder. As Benjamin describes the Aura as that quality which makes the object unique, does reproduction thus rob the original of its uniqueness or Aura? Like you, I am not convinced that the experience of viewing a representation of a great work of art in, for instance, a coffee table book, is the same experience as standing in the presence of that work of art. People seem to treat the latter experience with a heightened sense of importance. But I wonder why this is. Might it have some connection to the idea that the aura has its roots in the "sacred" or cult? A sacred object is not owned by the individual but rather by the community and is endowed with, or at least attributed, some special power. This made me think that the easy reproduction serves not only to make everyone a critic, as Joe pointed out in his excellent presentation, but it also makes everyone a consumer. Instead of the object holding some special power, now with its availability to be owned or consumed, we take power over it. What do you think?
Best,
Margaret