Political Economy of Public Sphere, Social Movements, and Social Media

Abstract

The research aimed to study public sphere on Facebook within Herbermas's framework and public
participation in rational debate on issues of public interests in order to create mutual understanding and
social consensus, in the framework of Communicative Action Theory. Also, the study focuses on investigating
social movements and networking via Facebook.
This is a mixed methods research. Data were collected through in-depth interview with 4 case
studies of social movements' representatives and from a questionnaire of 103 Facebook users' opinions,
through application "Netvizz". The data were analyzed with Excel add on "NodeXL". Other data from documents
and internet were also collected and analyzed within the framework of political economy theories such as Habermas' Theory of Public Sphere and Theory of Communicative Actions, concept of social movements, and concept of social networks.
The study found that 1) Facebook can function as public sphere according to Herbermas's five dimensions; in the aspect of contemporary and dynamic public sphere 2) In some cases, social changes are not the results of social mutual understanding through rational debate then lead to public movements. However, they did happen as the results from "social trends" as many people support without rational concern. 3) The social movements' results, with helps from Facebook, show that the movements usually use social medias together with street movements in order to acknowledge people to increase number of supporters, networks, and strength, to achieve their goals.