Global Media as of Public Sphere

The word "Democracy" origins from Greek "dempkratia', a comfound word of demos(people) and kratos(control). Democracy is, as its origin of meaning, the system which is ruled by the people. In this regards, the public sphere seems to be the core value that supports the democracy. As Castells argued, public sphere is the space where citizens share their opinions together and express to the society. Then, what is the public sphere in this industrialized society?

John Thompson (2000, recited from Castells) suggested, in industrial society, media has played the significant role as the major component of the public sphere. Through media, the interaction between civil society and states can be more activated by influencing each other. In terms of "grass-root" politics, public sphere, especially through the media, upholds the civil society as a democracy. As the globalization has been expanded to all over the world, the emergency of global media is getting to be more responsible as a public sphere. The global media brings more attention to the global civil society. In respect to this, NGOs the major player in global civil society as well as other forms of global civil society use the media for transmitting their campaigns to the world (especially to the states).

Then, what is the form of global media in this globalized world? Castells tells a diversified media system that "Internet and wireless communiation: a global, horizontal network of communiation". I agreed Castells view on the social media that it enables people to be citizen journalists and their stories will reach to all over the world. Actually, sometimes it is becoming more effective and influensive tool for global citizens to reach out comparing the other major media companies such as CNN, BBC and so on which has been criticized for its western view.

Rather than following the CNN, BBC broadcast, people tend to turn on the You Tube or Face Book in order to seek the prompt and exact news from people who are in the real situation. In my case, when there were some tensions between South Korea and North Korea, for instance, many of my friends who were in foreign country asked me whether the tensions is that serious like CNN was broadcasting through Face Book.

While it is obvious that the SNS becomes to provide the public sphere expanding the democratic environment to the world, it is still needed to examine whether this effect is pro-to support the public or not. Some people argues that these SNS also cannot avoid the biased view point and sometimes put the society in confusion with too much information. For the region where the internet access is not availale, is also cannot be covered as a public sphere of global citizen.