As I have indicated earlier (2.6. religious authority), research (Kutscher, 2009; Sisler, 2007) has positively described the Internet as a global "public sphere" where religious views can be discussed, negotiated and contested in chat rooms and websites across the board (Mandaville, 2001: 177; Sisler, ibid; Turner, 2007 and van Bruinessen, 2003). I assess this claim by engaging with the debate in Internet scholarship as to whether the Internet can represent/revive the public sphere (e.g. Papacharissi, 2002 and Wodak and Wright, 2006).
The term “public sphere” is postulated by Habermas (1992) who offered a historical account o f late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Europe. He suggested that a readership o f middle class men (sic!) was formed for a brief period during that period and represented “a sphere between civil society and the state, in which critical public discussion o f matters o f general interest” took place (Habermas 1989: xi). According to the author, one characteristic feature o f the public sphere was that it disregarded power hierarchy and social inequality in favor o f critical-rational debates. In the following quotation, Habermas (1989:36) comments on salons and coffee houses as a meeting point for the publics:
They (the institutional criteria in coffee houses) preserved a kind o f social intercourse that far from pre-supposing the equality o f status, disregard
befitting equals. The parity on whose basis alone the authority o f the better argument could assert itself against that o f social hierarchy and in the end can carry the day meant, in the thought o f the day, the parity o f "common humanity".
Indeed, the conception o f the public sphere as imagined by Habermas was subject to criticism (e.g. Calhoun, 1992 and Fraser, 1992). Calhoun (1992: 3) for instance, noted that men o f lower socio-economic classes were excluded from the public sphere, and Fraser (1992) added that women were likewise excluded. However, the revival o f the “public sphere” remained an answer to the question o f how to enhance democratic participation, since it is through “the formation o f public opinion (that) official decision making can be held democratically accountable” (Dahlberg, 2006:1).
A more recent engagement with the notion o f public sphere is study by Wodak and Koller (2008:3) who have identified, at least, two theoretical approaches towards it: one approach accepts the criteria put forth by Habermas such as equal accessibility to information, eradication o f social hierarchies and the importance o f critical rational debates; the other has a post-modernist turn and puts emphasis on “plurality” o f voices. To illustrate, in his account o f the emergence o f the public sphere in England, France and Germany, Habermas (1989) identified coffee houses as a space where "the bourgeois met with the socially prestigious but politically uninfluential nobles as 'common' human beings" (ibid. p. 35). Coffee houses served as a hub for information exchange among this emerging readerships (ibid. p. 34); Habermas exemplified by commenting on the engagement o f
eighteenth-century writers with the coffee houses: "There was scarcely a great writer in the eighteenth century who would not have first submitted his essential ideas for discussion in... lectures before the academies and especially in the salon. The salon held the monopoly o f first publication: a new work, even a musical one, had to legitimate itself first in this forum." (ibid. p. 34). As for the other approach to the public sphere, Wodak and Koller (2008) remark that it has a post-modernist turn and puts emphasis on “plurality” and creating “parallel discursive arenas where members o f sub-ordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses” (ibid.).
This study contributes to the conceptualization o f the public sphere by identifying two methodologies in its examination in recent studies (e.g. Dahlberg, 2001; Papacharissi, 2002; Triandafyllidou, Wodak and Krzyzanowski, 2009; Wamick, 2007; Wodak and Koller, 2008; Wodak and Wright, 2006). On the one hand, some studies (e.g. Dahlberg, 2001; Papacharissi, 2002) have revisited this notion from a theoretical perspective in the light o f relevant literature on accessibility o f information on the Internet and the extent o f rational-critical debate online. Another approach (e.g. Wodak and Wright, 2006) is qualitative and examines the realization o f critical debate through the analysis o f discourse, i.e. language in use, to investigate the platforms and processes through which online communication has led to the formation o f public opinion.
To elaborate the above, a study that has engaged with the question from a theoretical perspective is Papacharissi (2002). She examined whether the potential o f free expression online and anonymity can bring about “a more representative
and robust public sphere” (ibid., p. 13). She points out some limitations to the potential o f the Internet as a public sphere. For instance, access to online information is not available in equal measure to all (since some lack access to computer/Internet in the first place). She has added that while self-expression of opinion on the Internet may “empower” users, it remains uncertain the extent to which online views can lead to “genuine civic engagement” (ibid. p. 17). Moreover, the predominance o f commercialization which applies to Internet technologies (e.g. portals) undermines “the democratizing potential o f mass m edia” (ibid. p. 19); since new technologies will become in this instance commercially driven, rather than encouraging/supporting critical discussion, building on these limitations, Papacharissi (2002) refrains from describing the Internet as a “public sphere”; rather, she designates it as “a public space” which “facilitates but does not ensure the rejuvenation o f a culturally drained public sphere” .
If Papacharissi (2002) argues that the Internet cannot represent a “public sphere”, Dahlberg (2006), while initially pointing to the commodification o f cyberspace as one limitation to the autonomy o f public interaction online, proposes that “the Internet is facilitating discourse that replicates the basic structure o f rational-critical debate and that in various ways approximates the requirements o f the public sphere” . However, he flags up many problems that limit the formation o f a public opinion based on equal access to information and rational-critical discussion; for instance, difficulty identifying the correctness o f information put forward on the Internet, the domination o f online interaction by particular individuals or groups and exclusions from online interaction as a result o f social
inequalities. The critique o f these limitations have led him to propose that technology should be developed which enhances critical deliberation and modifies the rules o f discourse online (or netiquette) so that it would encourage deliberation and rational-critical discourse (ibid. pp. 16).
From a different perspective, Wodak and Wright (2006) have adopted a “hands on” approach to the question by analyzing online discourses, inter alia, in terms o f the extent users have engaged critically with the topic/s under discussion. Two aspects they explored are: a) who participates in the first place and b) if a rational discussion takes place at all or if the various postings are independent o f each other.
In their study, Wodak and Wright (2006) focused on the context o f Europe, particularly examining Futurum, the online forum that was created to allow for public debates about the future o f Europe for citizens o f the European Union. In contrast to Papacharissi's (2002) pessimistic view about the potential o f the Internet in reviving critical-rational discussions, the researchers argue that the Internet can represent a virtual public sphere. The authors examined discussion threads on the topic o f multilingualism and language policies in Europe and detected that the forum (Futurum) created a space where participants engaged in debates about language policies and the future o f Europe. For instance, whereas one user claimed that “German as European working language would be an additional victory from Hitler and therefore has to be refused” (ibid. p. 265), another user counter-argued his claim stating that “ it is an unlegitm (sic.) offence to the germans and the german-speaking population in Europe, to link our
language exclusively to hitler, denying that german is de facto the most spoken native tongue in Europe, the language o f some o f Europeans best literature, philosophic” (ibid. p. 266). Wodak and Wright (2006) noted that Futurum helped “bring (European) citizens closer to each other” . However, they asserted that only when the main themes/topics raised in the forum would be drawn upon by policy makers o f the European institutions that these discussions would be useful to the EU institutions and could tackle the “democratic deficit” between “the European Union and the people it serves” (ibid. p .251; also see Triandafyllidou, Wodak and Krzyzanowski, 2009:2).
In a different context, in Egypt, Root (2012) assessed the creation o f a virtual public sphere during the events o f the Egyptian uprising that took place in 2011; the researcher analyzed one Facebook post by the activist Wael Ghoneim in February 2011. In this post, Wael Ghoneim clarified his position that he did not ask protesters to leave Tahrir Square. Exploring users' comments on Facebook, the author argued that the Internet provided a virtual public sphere that allowed for an inclusive environment that encouraged responses and enabled users to converge between different media forms as some users used text, pictures and videos to support their arguments.
As I indicated earlier, one question that has recently received some attention in religious studies (e.g. El-Nawawy and Khamis, 2009) is whether the Internet could provide a scope for religious deliberation and formation o f public opinion. For instance, while building on the Habermasian conception o f the public sphere, El-Nawawy and Khamis (2009:1-22) examined discussion threads in two online
M uslim forums: Islamonline.net and Islamway.com. The topics o f the discussion threads included the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the infamous "Danish cartoons", ethnic cleansing in Chechnya and the corruption o f the Arab leaders. Among the important findings o f the study is that these forums provided a space for consensus based on collective endorsement o f issues o f shared interest, rather than a consensus reached after negotiations and/or debates around controversial issues (ibid. pp. 124-132). For instance, one topic that was raised in the discussion forum is how to have an “industrial development project for the umma” (i.e. the global M uslim community). One engineer suggested creating teams in the different areas o f engineering to launch engineering projects across the Islamic countries. The suggestion was positively received by the users; for instance, one user wrote: “Thank you very much brother Wael for your idea and I am very excited about participation”; another used commented: “May God bless you for your great idea. We are in dire need for such a project”.
Apart from study by El Nawawy and Khamis (2009), the majority o f scholarly research (e.g. Bunt, 2009; 2010; Campbell, 2010; 2013; Hirschkind, 2012; Hutchings, 2011 and Jacobs, 2007) has explored the manifestations o f religion in the virtual public sphere in terms o f the extent o f the plurality o f voices and online practices, thus pointing to the potential o f the formation o f a public sphere online. This takes me to the following section.