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This book is a critique of the public sphere, both as the centrepiece of some liberal theory about political communications, and as a description of actually existing media practice in Ireland and beyond - in traditional commercial news media and in social media. Written in an accessible style, but with endnotes as necessary, it is a call to more and deeper critical thinking about media, old and new, as well as a consideration of the communicative needs of a present and future movement for transformative political and economic change. Our media systems, many scholars argue, have moved from an economics of information to an economics of attention, whereby getting us to look, to click, is the constant and central objective.

"The Public Sphere" published on by Oxford University Press.

The article has been written as an entry for the Critical Dictionary of Civil Society. In the first part of the paper defining components of the notion of public sphere are examined. Public sphere is related to two social phenomena a) making deliberate efforts to develop an art of persuasion and to produce systematic spreading of publicity; b) arranging a set of institutions that are establishing public accessibility. Therefore, the definition of the public sphere is ambiguous: a) in the first meaning it is opposed to the secret and refers to the open, and visible, and accessible; b) in the second meaning it is opposed to the private and refers to a conceptual and physical area established by institutions. In each of the two meaning the focus is on the political relevance of the public sphere. The second part of the paper is a brief historical reconstruction of the different conceptions developed over time. In the third part some issues raised in current discussions on the significance and structure of the public sphere are introduced. ; Javnost se odnosi a) na činjenje smišljenih napora u pravcu razvijanja veštine ubeđivanja i sistematskog širenja publiciteta, koje je pratio i b) na odgovarajući razvoj ustanova Pojam javnosti ima dvostruko značenje: u jednom smislu on se suprostavlja pojmu tajnog i odnosi se na ono što je otvoreno vidljivo, pristupačno drugim ljudima, u drugom smislu on označava poseban konceptualni i fizički prostor uređen ustanovama koji je suprostavljen pojmu privatnog, kao sferi diskrecionog odlučivanja pojedinca. Posebna pažnja, u oba slučaja, posvećena je političkom značaju pojma javnosti. Drugi deo teksta sastoji se od kratke istorijske rekonstrukcije promena u razumevanju pojma javnosti. U trećem delu teksta su izloženi neki problemi iz savremenih rasprava koji se tiču značaja i strukture sfere javnosti.

Robert Fanuzzi illustrates how the dissemination of abolitionist tracts served to create an "imaginary public" that promoted and provoked the discussion of slavery. He critically examines the writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and their massive abolition publicity campaign geared to an audience of white male citizens, free black noncitizens, women, and the enslaved.

Robert Fanuzzi illustrates how the dissemination of abolitionist tracts served to create an "imaginary public" that promoted and provoked the discussion of slavery. He critically examines the writings of William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, and Sarah and Angelina Grimke, and their massive abolition publicity campaign geared to an audience of white male citizens, free black noncitizens, women, and the enslaved

At this moment in New Zealand's history there is a need for healthy political debate on a range of issues. Specifically, the foreshore and seabed issue has created division and fears between Māori and Pakeha and brought the Treaty of Waitangi to the fore again. As well, settlements of historic grievances with Māori have added to growing Pakeha unease. In this climate there is a need for wide-ranging public discussion of these issues, and the news media seem the obvious site for those discussions. But how well are the New Zealand news media fulfilling that role? This commentary takes the public sphere to be the sum total of all visible decision-making processes within a culture and uses this concept as an analytical tool to examine aspects of the health of New Zealand's democracy. It uses discourse analysis approaches to show how the mainstream media are in fact isolating Māori from the general public sphere and, after outlining some general aspects of the Māori public sphere, argues that the news media's methodologies, grounded in European-based techniques and approaches, are incapable of interacting with the Māori public sphere. I am arguing that while there is an appearance of an increased awareness and discussion of cultural issues, the mainstream media are, in reality, sidelining Māori voices and controlling the political discussion in favour of the dominant culture. They are therefore not fulfilling their self-assigned role of providing information for people to function within our democracy. Keywords: