Author(s)

N. Bresnihan & L. Doyle

Abstract

Commentary on the impact of technology in the area of community-building has tended to concentrate on the creation of virtual communities, particularly Internet-based communities. More specifically Jurgen Habermas’s concept of the ‘Public Sphere’, which he defined as \“uncoerced conversation oriented towards pragmatic accord”, has been enthusiastically claimed by the proponents of online communities. This paper will explore some of the problems with this idea focusing on the deeper philosophical issues which question whether the increasing unsteadiness of the construction of subjectivity online is compatible with the idea of a public sphere which relies on the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous rational subject as a universal found

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