Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- The State of Civil Society in Japan
- PART I CONTEXT
- PART II THE ASSOCIATIONAL SPHERE
- PART III THE NONMARKET ACTIVITIES OF ECONOMIC ACTORS
- PART IV STATE-CIVIL SOCIETY LINKAGES
- 11 Mobilizing and Demobilizing the Japanese Public Sphere: Mass Media and the Internet in Japan
- 12 A Tale of Two Systems: Prosecuting Corruption in Japan and Italy
- PART V GLOBALIZATION AND VALUE CHANGE
- Bibliography
- Author Index
- Subject Index
11 - Mobilizing and Demobilizing the Japanese Public Sphere: Mass Media and the Internet in Japan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Tables and Figures
- Contributors
- Preface
- The State of Civil Society in Japan
- PART I CONTEXT
- PART II THE ASSOCIATIONAL SPHERE
- PART III THE NONMARKET ACTIVITIES OF ECONOMIC ACTORS
- PART IV STATE-CIVIL SOCIETY LINKAGES
- 11 Mobilizing and Demobilizing the Japanese Public Sphere: Mass Media and the Internet in Japan
- 12 A Tale of Two Systems: Prosecuting Corruption in Japan and Italy
- PART V GLOBALIZATION AND VALUE CHANGE
- Bibliography
- Author Index
- Subject Index
Summary
As long as in the public sphere the mass media prefer… to draw their material from powerful, well-organized Information producers, and as long as they prefer media strategies that lower rather than raise the discursive level of public communication, issues will tend to statt in, and be managed from, the center, rather than follow a spontaneous course originating in the periphery.
Jürgen Habermas (1998: 380)In a recent theoretical tome examining the relationship between law and democracy, Jürgen Habermas (1998) suggests that it is possible to evaluate the quality of a democracy on the basis of the extent to which formal institutions of deliberation and decision making (such as the parliament and ministries) are open to input from informal public spheres. For Habermas (1998: 359), the political public sphere is an important discursive component of civil society that acts as a “sounding board for problems that must be processed by the political System because they cannot be solved elsewhere.” While Nancy Fraser (1992: 110) has described the public sphere as “a theater… in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk,” Habermas (1998: 359) reminds us that, as a discursive realm, the public sphere should not just amplify the pressure of problems in society, but must also “convincingly and influentially thematize them, furnish them with possible Solutions and dramatize them in such a way that they are taken up and dealt with by parliamentary complexes” (italics in the original; underlining added). In Habermas's view (1998: 373), the concepts of the “political public sphere” and “civil society” are not mere normative postulates; they have empirical relevance.
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- The State of Civil Society in Japan , pp. 235 - 256Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003
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