Week 9 – March 20, 2020

User-generated video and the online pubic sphere: Will YouTube facilitate digital freedom of expression in Atlantic Canada?

This reading deals with the public sphere in the digital context by focusing specifically on YouTube and how user-generated online video (UGOV) is contributing to the online public sphere (Milliken, 2). The quote I wanted to focus on today deals with the idea of democracy, which is the whole premise on why online public sphere is so important:

“The original conceptualization of the public sphere was within the nation-state, but Fraser argues that those notions of “citizenry” and “politics” need to be redefined in accordance with a global world-wide view due to the globalization of economics, politics, culture, and communication (Fraser, 200).”

Milliken, Gibson, & O’Donnell, 3

Representation in the public sphere is essential in maintaining this democracy, but I don’t know if refining terms is necessarily the solution. While one one hand, there is definitely a need to acknowledge the globalization of our world, especially in the digital context, on the other hand, if we keep changing terms themselves, the whole premise of democracy is subject to change.

According to the Cambridge dictionary, a citizen is defined as “a person who is a member of a particular country and who has rights because of being born there or because of being given rights, or a person who lives in a particular town or city.”

A democracy is defined as “the belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.” I think it is important to note that Canada is a parliamentary democracy.

As a side note, the United States is not a democracy, as many Democratic candidates have claimed, but a democratic republic, in which some decisions are made with democratic processes, and other decisions are made by democratically elected representatives.

Therefore, my question for this week is: What would the democracy of the online public sphere gain if we were to redefine the terms “citizenry” and “politics”?