Our national obsession with the NFL and sports in general demonstrates key components of public sphere theory and key criticisms as well. On one hand, public discussion surrounding the NFL can show the worst of the internet and public discourse – hateful and often racists comments abound in public discussion boards and fandom often limits the public’s ability to objectively discuss controversies regarding their favorite teams. And while there are fans of all genders, the discussion and tropes of the genre often track along hyper masculine lines.
Yet, football has also served as a place where the public can deliberate and understand important societal issues. Think of discussions regarding the name of the Washington football team, “spygate” and “deflategate,” violence against women, mental health and corporate responsibility. There are NFL apologists, social justice activists and a variety of discussants all competing for public attention. Along the lines of Fraser, heterogeneous publics have the ability to determine what is “political” through their discussions. The public sphere of NFL fandom is one of the spaces and is conjoined to other spheres.
As Sunstein says, there exists only a few days of national importance in America – and the Super Bowl draws more attention than the national holidays that have become “mere days off from work.” Football often provides a common language for different people to engage in and a ritual to participate in. “Watching the game together” perhaps remains one of the most significant social events in a highly individualistic society.
Our national obsession with football, like many things in our postmodern society, presents multiple contradictions for those concerned with the health of our democracy. It’s a common experience for us but also one utterly dominated by corporate interests. It creates lifelong memories and associations but also quickly destroys and discards the bodies (often black) it needs to power the enterprise.
Communicators and philosophers cannot dismiss the phenomenon when deliberations about power, race and violence are happening offline and online. In many ways, this phenomenon offers some lessons for the maintenance of democracy. There is no barrier to participation other than fandom. Contrast this to the “political” sphere where non-expert opinions are quickly mocked and dismissed and the “bracketing of social position” seems impossible. Yet there also must be a contextualizing of the space and connecting of the energy devoted to discussion towards productive political endeavors.
The modern public sphere as understood by Peter Dahlgren (2005) functions much closer to a ““a constellation of communicative spaces in society that permit the circulation of information, ideas, debates— ideally in an unfettered manner—and also the formation of political will (i.e., public opinion)” (148).” Dahlgren argues the public sphere concept is being destabilized along multiple vectors – the increasing (or rather legitimation) status of heterogeneous groups, non-political uses of the sphere (or rather the opening up of private spaces to political deliberation) and the blurring of national projects (what could be said of an international public sphere/s?).
Fraser (1990) preceded Dahlgren in her critique of the Habermasian public sphere. She additionally approximated what the public sphere (could) look like in actually existing democracy. She posits the ideal utopic public sphere concept makes four fundamental assumptions; 1. participants will exchange ideas and debate each other as though they are equals, 2. multiple publics are a move away from a functioning democracy, 3. A clear divide between public and private issues is present and 4. civil society (the public) is clearly divorced from the state. From these four assumptions, Fraser constructs a public sphere concept more viable in a heterogeneous society. Her contribution here is the idea of subaltern counterpublics, spaces in which non-dominant, oppressed groups can also come together and deliberate matters. She argues the overarching public sphere must be found at the nexus of the constellation of multiple spheres.
My own work challenges the forces of political assimilation U.S. Latinos undergo in order to participate in the American conception of the public sphere. Indeed, there are significant interactional barriers (see Dahlgren) to full participation including language, perceptions of foreignness (Chavez in the Latino Threat Narrative) and the limiting of debate to “citizens” (Amaya in Citizenship Excess). U.S Latinos form multiple counter publics in the United States - Spanish language journalism primary among them. However despite the existence of these counter publics, the hierarchal positioning of the “true” public sphere pressures U.S. Latinos to abandon their spaces (through discursive formations of internalized racism and the delegitimization of Spanish) for the mainstream.
Amaya, Hector. Citizenship Excess: Latino/as, Media, and the Nation. New York City: New York UP, 2013. Print.
Chavez, Leo. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 2013. Web.
Dahlgren, Peter. “The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation.” Political Communication 22.2 (2005): 147-62. Web.
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): Web.
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991. Print.
Kohn, M. Language, power, and persuasion: Towards a critique of deliberative democracy. Constellations, 7, (2000) 408–429.