10.26 Post

     I think that dailykos.com is in many ways a public sphere as Habermas describes it, but in one key it isn't quite one. It is very much a public sphere because it’s a place where anyone can discuss anything political in a manner that’s easy to access and post something (once you sign up) and comment on other users posts. As it states in chapter five of Practices of Looking “In theories of visual culture influenced by Marxist theory, the term reproduction is used to describe the ways that cultural practices and their forms of expression reproduce the ideologies and interests of the ruling class” (183). This quote can be applied to dailykos.com very closely. It give a medium and place for the average person, that’s not necessarily the dominant class to talk about politics and gives them a place where they can express their view that may not reflect those of the dominant class. This is also what Habermas believes; that if your not the dominant class the majority of people don’t have a way of getting their voices out, so dailykos.com or any other blog site for that matter would qualify for a means of doing this, therefore qualifying as a public sphere.  
      It’s not a public sphere in the fact that it’s on the Internet. Although most people have Internet access, not everyone has the Internet so it’s not quite as public as it could be. Another way in which it’s not quite as public as one would like, is that not everybody may know about the site. I certainly did not know about the site before this, so although Habermas did not specify how accessible something must be for it to be considered a public sphere, that is certainly something that I feel applies to how “public” the public sphere is. Even though there are some flaws in the publicity of dailykos.com, I still believe it is indeed a form of a public sphere as described by Habermas.