Strategic Communication and the Public Sphere from a European Perspective

Abstract

The article attempts to clarify, from a European and especially German perspective, how the public sphere is related to the political, to democracy and to society. Furthermore, we want to shed some light on what public means in contrast to private and secret. We try to achieve that in three steps: First, we discuss the concepts by tracing the historical development of the public in the course of European history; second, we present two models of the public sphere inspired by the so-called arena-model developed by Gerhards and Neidhardt; and third, we touch upon some consequences and implications our understanding has for strategic communication.

Notes

¹The fulcrum of the court case in Britain, astoundingly, was the question whether the “orgy” was a “Nazi orgy.” Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover recounts the judge's line of argumentation: “Though German had been spoken during the orgy, and though uniforms had been worn and there had been play-acting which seemed to evoke concentration camps, the judge did not accept that it had been a Nazi affair.” He concluded that if it had been he would have found in the newspaper's favour since Mr. Mosley was a public figure and “the people of all races and religions' with whom he had to deal might have been shocked.” But as, in his view, it was not a Nazi orgy, he believed that Mr. Mosley was entitled to his privacy.” Glover continues, quite reasonably: “Mr. Justice Eady's distinction between Nazi and non-Nazi orgies is obviously crackers.” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1238131/STEPHEN-GLOVER-Max-Mosley-abhorrent-behaviour-law-protects-rich-powerful.html.

²Weber's original expression is “stahlhartes Gehäuse,” literally “shell as hard as steel,” but translated by Talcott Parsons as “iron cage.” Weber himself refers to the concept in various texts, but the one quoted is perhaps the most famous and influential.