Does Reddit Function as a Digital Public Sphere?
If you don’t know what Reddit is by now, then how will you know if it functions as a digital public sphere? To start us off, Michael Soha has introduced us to Jurgen Habermas and the original concept of the public sphere. They say there is no “public realm” or “public discourse” like we have today and continues to say “A private sphere of interaction among traders and merchants began to formulate a culture of public discussion which formed a counterweight to start authority” (Soha, p. 29). This means there was debate about public discussion but it did not involve the public directly. With the rise of the mass media into the modern capitalist system, the public sphere led political discourse to the professionals and citizens watch what happens. With the introduction of the web, it enabled the start of network distributions and interactions between individuals and organizations. This provided the start of the new digital public sphere where tech-savvy users control early websites, forums, and discussion groups. This led to greater potential for more democratic dialogue and discussion that was assessable to all and the introduction to Reddit.
Reddit is one of the largest and most vibrant social news websites today and they pride themselves in anonymity which was a safe public place for discussion. Users were able to connect with people they know or people halfway across the world to ask questions, answer any questions, and even send a gift. Reddit does function as a digital public sphere based off of Habermas idea. Habermas’s ideas specifically were about how statues does not matter, discussion is watched and guided and how users can create new space if they do not feel like it got enough attention (this introduces the topic of subreddit). Reddit is a place where it is all anonymous so no matter who you are, you are still sharing the same information to others. This allows you to comment on user’s discussions and guide them in the right direction but if the user wanted to go in a certain direction and others did not follow, they could create a subreddit which is similar to the original post. This seemed to work well with political views in the sense that it allows users to see smaller, more specific Reddit’s but also seeing the original origin.
Since the entire website is anonymous, this can also cause issues with freedom of speech, encouraging civil discourse and discussion, and maintaining valued and community-oriented online spaces. Before Reddit got too popular, they would not censorship anything online. This allowed for rude, racist, and/or sexist comments to appear on discussions and eventually explicit pictures and comments. The amount of jokes that were made against women were out of control for no reason, men just wanted to feel superior online. There are now admins who volunteer their time to look over certain topics and discussions to make sure everything is appropriate and clean with no explicit content and suspend any user who goes against the regulations.
Reddit is a perfect example of what it is like to function as a digital public sphere in the sense to communicate with others across the street or across the country but at some point is there going to be a strict rules about what you can and cannot post? As a society we are getting more sensitive to certain topics and could mean the quick ban of a user but the freedom of speech online is essential to the society. It allows us to share whatever we want and ask personal questions without being shamed, it has helped our society as a whole.
