Democracy, public sphere and media
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Abstract
This work is based on a question: Can you sustain a theory of deliberative democracy like the one posited by Seyla Benhabib and Jürgen Habermas without a normative theory of the media? To answer this question, we have delved into the concept of the public sphere in late-capitalist societies, contrasting the works of both philosophers with the critical contributions of Nancy Fraser, author that we understand complements the most appropriate definition. The public sphere is the traditional space of deliberation and in it we include the media. That is why we argue that, in effect, deliberative democracy must have a normative theory of the media, because they are the role of intermediaries and propagators of deliberation, but their hybrid public-private status obliges us that this theory regulations guarantee their service to the general interest. In this framework we will expose some of the elements that can contribute to the formulation of this normative theory and we will emphasize two of the issues that we believe are fundamental, namely, the establishment of the agenda of topics discussed in the mass media and the frame in which the informative contents are shown.
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