Andrew Perrin’s American Democracy: From Tocqueville to Town Halls to Twitter and Ingrid Volkmer’s The Global Public Sphere: Public Communication in the Age of Reflective Interdependence, both published by Polity Press in 2014, offer interesting and varying perspectives on democracy, public spheres, civic identity and media identities. Perrin demystifies the internal practices and institutions of American democracy, offering an optimistic view of the system in the face of voter disenchantment in the twenty-first century. By comparison, Volkmer’s work is less interested in re-engaging citizens at a local level than the dynamics of transnational publics. Both books have a shared goal of furthering understandings around the writing of Habermas on public opinion as a sphere of political influence. Between them, this goal is reached in the contrast of their respective examinations into how publics form around changing technologies and practices that enable people to imagine themselves connected in some way.
Click here to access this essay published in Continuum.
Click here to access this essay published in Continuum.
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