The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere

<p>This book explores how new media technologies such as e-mails, online forums, blogs and social networking sites have helped shape new forms of public spheres. Offering new readings of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, scholars from diverse disciplines interrogate the power and possibilities of new media in creating and disseminating public information; changing human communication at the interpersonal, institutional and societal levels; and affecting our self-fashioning as private and public individuals. Beginning with philosophical approaches to the subject, the book goes on to explore the innovative deployment of new media in areas as diverse as politics, social activism, piracy, sexuality, ethnic identity and education. The book will immensely interest those in media, culture and gender studies, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology.</p> <p><em>Acknowledgements</em>. Introduction: The Virtual Transformation of the Public Sphere <i>Gaurav Desai</i>. <b>1.</b> The Right to Look <i>Nicholas Mirzoeff</i> <b>2.</b> Democracy, the Public Sphere, and Problems of Self-reflexivity <i>R. Radhakrishnan</i> <b>3.</b> On the Market Colonization of the Virtual Public Sphere <i>Lewis R. Gordon</i> <b>4. </b>Cyberspace and Post-modern Democracy: A Critique of the Habermasian Notion of the Public Sphere <i>K. M. Johnson</i> <b>5.</b> Cybernecology: Liberation Aesthetics and the Public Sphere <i>Timothy Allen Jackson</i> <b>6.</b> The Ever-expanding Sphere of Cybercommunities <i>Sukhdeep Ghuman</i> <b>7.</b> The Public Sphere: Restitution for the Internet <i>James J. Winchester</i> <b>8.</b> Piracy as Tactics: Re-imagining Creativity as Forms of Access <i>Aruni Mahapatra</i> <b>9.</b> The Internet as a Public Sphere: The Emergence of New Forms of Politics in India <i>Esha Sen Madhavan </i><b>10.</b> Virtual Activism, Real Repercussions: How Facebook Impacts the Public Sphere <i>Hiba Aleem</i> <b>11.</b> Negotiating Virtual Terrain: New Social Media and the Public Intellectual <i>Sumedha Iyer</i> <b>12.</b> Virtualization of the Politics of Recognition: Lepcha Struggle for Recognition as PTG in Darjeeling Hills (West Bengal) and Sikkim, India <i>Padam Nepal </i><b>13.</b> Identity and Virtual Spaces among the Zo hnahthlak: Emergent Zo Cyberpolitics <i>Anup Shekhar Chakraborty</i> <b>14.</b> The Public Spheres of Vicarious Fulfilments: Live Sex on the Internet and the Performative Dynamics of Body and Sexuality <i>Bini B. S. </i><b>15. </b>Is the New Media Erasing Boundaries or Erecting Barriers? Gay/Transgender vs. Kothi/Aravani <i>Sunita Manian</i> <b>16. </b>Anonymity and Online Interaction: A Thematic (Dramaturgical) Perspective <i>Mallika Vijaya Kumar and P. E. Thomas</i> <b>17.</b> Constructing New Mediated Knowledge in the Process of Writing for Life <i>Rich Rice</i> <b>18.</b> Changed Dimensions of the Public Sphere: Media’s Role in the Growth of Learning <i>Pankaj Roy</i>. <i>Bibliography</i>.<i> About the Editor</i>. <i>Notes on Contributors</i>. <i>Index</i></p>