Saturday, March 15, 2008

Quello che Habermas ha da dire su internet

The Internet has certainly reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public of writers and readers. However, computer-mediated communication in the Web can claim unequivocal democratic merits only for a special context: it can undermine the censorship of authoritarian regimes who try to control and repress public opinion. In the context of liberal regimes, however, the online debates of web users tend instead to lead to the fragmentation of large mass audiences into a huge number of isolated issue publics. The rise of millions of fragmented chat-rooms across the world endangers only political communication within established public spheres, when news groups crystallize around the focal points of print media, e.g., national new-papers and magazines, which are the pillars of national public spheres.14 (A nice indicator for the critical function of such a parasitical role of online communication is the bill for € 2088.00 which the anchor of Bildblog.de recently sent to the director of Bild.T-Online for “services”: the bloggers claimed they improved the work of the editorial staff of the Bildzeitung with useful criticisms and corrections.)

Questo testo è una nota (la 14) a questo discorso qui tenuto nel giugno 2006 (trovato qui). Avendo in mente la mole di Teoria dell'agire comunicativo, la rete non deve essere un tema che appassiona molto l'ultimo dei francofortesi. E, diciamo pure, che quel poco di pensieri che le dedica sono pure un po' cannati. Ma vabbe', mica gli si può chiedere di tutto.
Snurb.info

No comments: