eJournalist - A Refereed Media Journal

Volume 6, Number 2, 2006

Abstracts

Internet and the Public Sphere: A glimpse of YouTube.

Kasun Ubayasiri

The internet, arguably the single most important communication break through of the latter half of the last century, has revolutionised the way people, communicate, access information including the mass media reportage, and even how they respond to and comment of social and political issues. In this context it has been argued the internet has facilitated a phenomenon philosopher Jurgen Habermas has defined as the ‘public sphere’- a forum where public opinion is shaped.

In this context this paper aims to define the role of the public sphere in the cyber age, direct some academic focus on latest web based communications and networking tools which include the video sharing forum – YouTube, which has shown significant scope in less than two years of existence


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