In everyday lives, it is a common that every one of us shares conversation and involved open discussion of the general issue that we concern about. Based on a philosopher Jurgen Habermas (1989) has defined that public sphere is where individual come together to exchange ideas, opinions, and rationale debate in physical spaces.(McGuigan,2005)
As we all knew that, because of technology advance it bought us to a new level of public sphere. We have no longer just discussed or debate in a coffee shops, town hall, lecturer hall or others places. However, new technology provides a platform that allowing us and the peoples across the world interact together to debate and discuss about the certain issue freely. World Wide Web obviously plays an important role in public sphere which help to provide greater number of peoples interaction and access also helps the peoples by understanding what’s happening in the society, social, cultural and political issue as well. (Jodi, 2013)
As Dan Berkowitz has shared on “Journalism in the broader cultural mediascape” (2009), he stated that journalists can be both media producers and media audiences. It is because journalist are begin to report what’s happening base on what they see the world. Media are matter most on how the journalist and popular cultural mix together. This is why media today blurring all of us hardly to define what is news.
Well take a step back and looks what media provide us today. Sadly, we are being feed by the news and information that creating us an “imagination” which we can’t clearly define it is real or not real. As Keren Tenenboim-Weinblatt (2009) has argues from a television show “24” that the “ticking bomb” scenario is rarely happened in the real world. It is an unrealistic element that shows to the viewer.On the other hand, the issue that happens recently –missing flight MH370.
The news of this incident has never end. Peoples start shared ideas throughout the social media (facebook), blogs and more. Because of the technology advance, everyone has the right to speak freely and create a huge debate among the peoples.
In conclusion, we knew that it might be not the “truth” from what’s debating and showing in the media but somehow it kindly appeals us and given a greater power that influences our belief, opinion and shaping our mindset. Peoples start to judge what is right and wrong for them; some peoples might choose to believe but some others don’t. Therefore to overcome the consequences, journalist should understand on what is the way by providing the right information and news to shapes the audience’s view.
References
Berkowitz, D 2009, ‘Journalism in the broader cultural mediascape’, Journalism, vol.10, no.3, pp290-292, accessed 26/3/2014, http://jou.sagepub.com/content/10/3/290.citation
Jodi Dean, 2003, “Why the Net is not a Public Sphere” http://pages.uoregon.edu/koopman/courses_readings/phil123-net/publicness/dean_net_publicsphere.pdf
McGuigan, J 2005, ‘The cultural public sphere’, Cultural Studies, vol.8, no.4, pp427-443, accessed 26/3/2014, http://ecs.sagepub.com/content/8/4/427
- The Assignment - 
Which of the social media network you consider is THE most used / popular in garnering readers/audiences feedback and opinion?
Based on my own point of view, for sure Facebook and Twitter is the most used/popular social media that use to gather feedback and opinion from the public. Please try to click thru the hyperlink from my blogpost. From what you seen in the fb link, it shows that there’s more than 49K of peoples are concern about the incident happen. They leave comments, feedback and even share their thoughts on the page as well. =)