Popular Culture and the Public Sphere: Currents of Feeling and Social Control in Talk Shows and Reality TV

Abstract

The growing role of mediation in the creativity, richness, diversity and sheer ubiquity of popular culture challenge Habermas’ (1989) idea that radical democracy can be grounded in the differentiation between everyday life and the institutional spheres of politics and commerce. In a recent account of the contemporary relevance of the public sphere concept, McKee (2005) sets about reconstructing an account of the public sphere that reflects the multiple connections between social institutions, everyday life and popular culture. Writing against the grain of the many dissenting voices concerned at the increasing mediatization of everyday life and an increasingly populist agenda in public life, McKee develops the idea that the public sphere can be adapted to fit a contemporary mediated plurality of modes of engagement, if not emancipation.