Social Media Enhances the Public Sphere Essay

Introduction

A series of violent demonstration that shook the Arabic nations (notably Egypt and Tunisia) were mainly successful because the social media was an enabling platform for sharing ideas, grievances and engaging in political discourse. In the public sphere, communication is a major driver of political and this has been notable in a number of ethnic groups in the social media. According to Schrape (2016), the public sphere is one aspect of social life where people can openly discuss pertinent issues and seek common ground. One of the main fears of the current political elite is the power of the people when they cannot control them. The social media is one area that the political elites cannot influences decision or control the discussions. The theory of communicative action as posited by Habermas can only be possible if the human's innate capacity to rationalize action and communication would only be effective in the public sphere if they have a platform for discussion Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the three main social media that have tyranny of number in term of subscribers, viewers or users. The three social media platform enhance public sphere by allowing for uncensored discussion because the subjectivist and individualistic premises are lacking. Rationality is a major capacity that is naturally found within a language and can be enhanced through argumentation. In the social media groups, individuals and groups thematize their opinions and common interest and can use the groups to initiate, and drive actions. The communicative action arises as a result of social media users' desire to solve a societal problem. In the social media, there are structures for communicative action because there are no coercive forces and people mutually search for understanding. The social media is, therefore, a platform that allows for communicative action through a neutral deliberative process.

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Background of the Role of Social Media in Changing the Public Debate

The political elites have to the realization the political action can easily be organized over the social media as was in the case of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. This is the same social action witnessed when there was genocide in Rohingya when groups organized social actions and spread the word calling for an end to the Rohingya crisis (Oz, 2016). Social media can be used for special and political action but it has also been weapon zed by the societies. Smartphones sales and digital technology uptake have gone up and there has been a significant correlation between mobile phones sales and political actions (Wasburn & Hoynes, 1995). People who can identify with similar societal problems can easily discuss how to solve their problems or participating in pushing the government or special interest groups to help them solve the problems over the special media. Never the less, social media is not only made up of the structured data such as facts, figures and messages as there are also unstructured data that is transmitted over the social media (Parker & Bozeman, 2018). Over the first quarter of 2018, Facebook has been accused of selling data collected from users to corporate that used the data to influences political decision on pertinent political issues such as voting. The revelation provided further evidence that both structured and structured data can be mined and used by both political elites through corporations such as Cambridge Analytica to swing votes (Weissman, 2018). The objective of the study is to determine how social media enhances public sphere.

The Traditional Public Sphere Is Fast Declining

The traditional public sphere has declined with the advent of technology. According to Iosifidis & Wheeler (2016), the capitalists market created a rational politics in the 20th century and beyond because they believed that the media would spread the rational and independent information to the public which would late be used to control public opinion. Before the universalistic politic, the capitalist's markets also saw the media as a platform for advertisements and public relations to shape the opinion of the public about the governments and other political elites. Never the less, this also changed because the government monopolized the media allowing the state and the monopoly capitalism to damage the universalistic politic. There were many private institutions that were formed by the movement and political elites to make deals with the state at the expense to the public. The deals saw the public being eliminated from the equation and debate and instead power politics rose to replace the public discourse. Most of the projects and discussion focused more on the political elites whose aim was to further their private agenda. The government and political elites later monopolized the media and replaced the public discourse in favor of power politics. Never the less, when the social media and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter came up, the public gained the power discuss on pertinent issues that could not discuss on the state platform as a result of surveillance. The social media came to replace the power politics with uncensored public discourse.

Public Sphere in Developing And Developed Countries

In most developing countries, the news media is still being controlled by the movement. It is not usually out if ignorance that the public does not know about their rights but the government gags the media and the social media users with punitive laws meant to protect the image of the state. There are autocratic regimes and powerful elites that use the state media for personal gain while gagging the media from investigating the state or exposing the corruption and inefficiencies of the state. Like in Kenya, the social media users (read citizens) have recently demo started against the government's modified laws that governed social media usage as the government seeks to jail those who use social media carefully ( read exposing government officials) (ORUKO, 2018). While the movement stated that there is private space, it is clear that the autocratic regimes have gagged the media fraternity and now are seeking to gag the public from discussing government issues (Kabale, 2018). Currently, there are complaints about the legal restrictions that curb freedom of expression. Never the less, the social media remains as the only platform that the public sphere can engage in and influence political actions. The internet has helped in empowering citizens and enhance the public sphere and but can also be a tool for manipulation and control in the developed countries and this is slowly being replicated in the developing industry. The laws governing social media use in the developed industry are clearly enabling public discourse in the social media while the movement in the developing counties is modifying laws to gag the public from discussing pertinent societal issues in the social media.

The Changes That Lead To the Structural Transformation of The Public Sphere

The Fifth Estate is under development thanks to the internet and social media and they have played a central role in spreading new and initiating discourse. The first estate refers to the social-cultural references to groups of people with outliers viewpoints in the society. The fifth estate is currently associated with bloggers, social influencers, private journalists, and mainstream media outlets such as the social media. The fifth estate such as the social networks provides the society members with a new communication platform where they can initiate discourse and debate on pertinent issues freely. One of the main arguments in favour of the social media is that the social media has enabled interactive communication and political participation in both developing and developed countries. Instead of adopting the technologically deterministic perception (theory), citizens have and are continuing to adopt the public sphere theory (Breese, 2011). On the other hand, (Jacobson, 2017) argued that the fifth estate challenged the influence of more established bases of institutional authority. Never the less, the

The fifth estate has been weaponized but can also be developed to support the liberal democratic societies (Mitrovica, 2018). The blog never works alone in isolation but must be connected with the social media networks to capture the interest of the readers and direct them to the blogs. The fifth estate knows where the potential readers are hanging out and usually work hard towards reaching them. Never the less, weaponization of the media started a long time ago when the government in its ploy to target other countries initiated propaganda about the regimes in those countries in a bid to bomb them. The government used the media when they had space and have been creating space in the fifth estate. However, the fifth estate cannot be easily controlled as words spread faster and citizens are free to speak their minds in the social media to the extent of starting revolutions.

Social Media Is Globalized Public Sphere and Big Data

Public sphere has been described as the interaction between citizens, civil society, and the state, communicating through the public sphere, which ensures that the balance between stability and social change is maintained in the conduct of public affairs (Castells, 2008: 79). However, the current public sphere is continuously eliminating the impact of the government in the globalized public sphere. Even with the multiple social networking sites that can be used for communication, interaction and discourse, the government's role has continuously been relegated to that of the spy. The government does not actively participate in the public sphere created by the social media but has remained an active spy in targeting of divergent opinion whose contribution can be considered seditious and are contempt of the government. Many of the people who have been jailed have been targeted by the government for their statement in public spheres that the government considered a threat but term them irresponsible. There is special networking groups where issues discussed are common across countries and those groups where the topics under discussion are completely different from one country to another. Never the less, in the globalized public sphere, political issues and economic issues are usually a common theme. Issues such as, terrorism, racisms, political correctness and economic depression are usually discussed by c the global citizens across borders as these issues are common in those groups

There are groups in social networks that have to deal with austerity measures, violations of privacy or electronic surveillance. In countries such as America, uprisings initiated in the social media tend to represent a new force on the world platform. For example, Arab spring, exposure of Facebook's role in US politics, exposures of the surveillance activities NASA and police brutality were driven by the social media. In the US, black lives matters was one of the main groups that were mainly organized over the social media and became a force to reckon when they took to the streets and saw the police brutality and extrajudicial killings drop significantly in America. The social media is the only platform where the citizens have been able to effectively take a stand against the government for its externalities. Globally, it is clear that in Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other blogs that transmit user-generated content have been effective in are used to communicate and discuss societal problems. The big data are collected and analyzed to help in shaping government projects, action and policy formulation. Therefore, even though the government does not participate actively in the social media, they take cues from the messages or patterned...