Professor Argues for Equal Voices in Public Affairs
(Posted February 28, 2017)
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K.M. Johnson is an associate professor of English at Sacred Heart College, in Cochin, Kerala, which is in India. Sacred Heart is one of Juniata’s newest exchange programs. Johnson is at Juniata for the month of February with three students from Sacred Heart College who are conducting independent research under the supervision of Juniata professors.
On Monday, Feb. 20, Johnson gave a talk to current students titled, “Do Contemporary Democracies Re-feudalize the Public Sphere?” He first defined a public sphere, and then looked at it in the current context of our society. A public sphere is a where individuals from all walks of life come together. The location of the meeting place, he argued, is not important. What is important is who is joining together. All minorities must have an equal voice in these conversations with the majority. If either the minority or the majority is left out of the conversation than the public sphere has failed to create a balance in the conversation. This balance is most important for talking about a democracy.
Today, he argued that our current public sphere is found on social media. However, this depiction of the public sphere does not provide a balance among the majority and the minority in the conversations that are deemed essential for our society to create public opinion. Through social media, individuals have self-selected who they are going to have conversations with, and have polarized themselves on different sides of the issues.
Johnson warned that a public sphere only works to create those necessary conversations for a democracy to work when individuals enter into the conversation without preconceived notions. The problem with our current public sphere using social media is that the conversations are not open, they do not show all sides to the stories and the listener is not really listening. They have already developed their preconceived truths on the issues and are not open to the other side of the argument which has created this polarization and stagnation we are seeing in our democracy.
He stated that social media has created a manufactured consent of the public. A fake opinion swayed by government, media and advertising. In Johnson’s opinion, the media has hijacked the public sphere and it is undermining the open-mindedness of individuals. For these reasons, Johnson argued that we have entered into an era where the public sphere is re-feudalization. And without a good public sphere, people will not be able to hear the voice of other people, the foundation on which a democracy rests.
He said that in order to restore balance to our democracy, we need to find a way to engage with individuals from both the majority and the minority and do so open-mindedly once again.
Marlene Matula ’17, Juniata Online Journalist
Contact April Feagley at feaglea@juniata.edu or (814) 641-3131 for more information.