Public spheres within movements:linking transnational social movements research and the (Re)search for a European Public Sphere

This paper addresses the gap between transnational social movement research and the research on the European public sphere which is due to (1) a conceptualisation of social movements as actors in the public sphere, neglecting the communicative spaces created within and by social movements and (2) a conceptualization of ‘the public sphere’ as a media public sphere, neglecting other levels of the public sphere, namely assembly publics and public encounters. This seems particularly unfortunate considering that Europeanised communication is currently mostly found in such ‘lower level’ arenas and not (yet?) in the mass media. A refined concept of public sphere seems capable of bridging this gap by providing a common reference point for both research traditions. The arena model of the public sphere has the heuristic advantage obliging us to be specific about which public arenas we are talking about instead of relying on an all-embracing, blurry notion of ‘the public sphere’. Building on this model, the paper suggests an analytic framework of parameters which can be helpful to characterise various public spheres and make them comparable as spaces of shared communication of a specific collectivity.

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