Kommunikationsrepertoires und digitale Öffentlichkeiten

Abstract

The starting point for the following conceptual considerations are the sometimes massive shifts in the media shifts in media environments that have been observed in recent years in the course of digitization and the associated technical convergence of transmission paths and end devices as well as the differentiation of media and communication services (Couldry 2012, Deuze 2011, Napoli 2011). devices and the differentiation of media and communication services (Couldry 2012, Deuze 2011, Napoli 2011). These shifts are being intensively with regard to their consequences for the communicative foundations of society and a renewed and a renewed “structural change of the public sphere” (Münch/Schmidt 2005) (see also Gripsrud 2009). This article takes up these developments by focusing on “digital public sphere(s)” and providing a conceptual approach to the empirical empirical analysis of the transformation of public spheres.

Social change is often characterized on the basis of the formations of audiences, i.e. the basic structures of public spheres, that are considered typical for the time in question. The mass society was characterized by the audiences of mass media offerings that included the majority of the population, the target group or experience society by the audiences of target group offerings that were finely tuned to specific lifestyles, and the network society by the networked individuality of users of online services. and users of online services. This points to the fact that processes of public communication, through which – at different levels, e.g. local, regional, national, supranational or translocal – public spheres are constituted, involve not only institutionalized communicators, the communication offerings they produce and the the various actors in the intermediary system (Jarren/Steiner 2009), media users also play a significant media users are also significantly involved: Only in the communicative action of those who, primarily in an audience role and usually mediated via media offerings, are with the statements made by institutionalized communicators and who in one way or another exchange and communicate with others in one way or another, publics are constituted.