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PHC04 Networks, Publics, Communities
PP 244 A Forerunner of Understanding Society as Communicative Network: Albert E. F. Schäffle’s Work Bau und Leben des Socialen Körpers
[Structure and Life of the Social Body] (1875–78)
P. Schoenhagen1, M. Meissner1
1 University of Fribourg, Department of Communication and Media Research DCM, Fribourg, Switzerland
Following Hardt, the work Bau und Leben des socialen Körpers [Structure and life of the social body], published by the political economist Albert Schäffle
between 1875 and 1878, is the first sociological contribution that highlights„the fundamental importance of communication as a binding force in society“
(Hardt 2001: 46). Of course, Aristotle and other philosophers underlined much earlier the close link between language or face-to-face communication and
society (Beierwaltes 2000). But Schäffle is the first author who lays out this fundamental correlation with respect to (mass) media in modern, differentiated
societies. In fact, he mainly refers to the press as the central mass medium of his time, functioning as a “tissue of communication”that “brings people into
community” (quoted from the second edition 1896: 126). We later find remarkably similar thoughts in Luhmann’s work who states that„communication
interweaves society as a unit” (1975: 13). Schäffle describes communication as society’s nervous system or nerve tissue with communication taking place
between all individuals in society as nodal points (1896: 126; Pietilä 2005: 17). But Schäffle, interestingly, addresses the individuals not mainly as“persons”
but as being part of numerous “organs” or circles of society as “social personalities” (1896: 22, 106–107). Thus he seems also to be the first author differ‑
entiating between the person and its roles. The personalities act as addressees as well as sources of communication (ibid.: 126, 131) so that an exchange
of ideas between various“circles”in society results (ibid.: 193). This exchange between different groups is enabled by“mediating institutions”(ibid.: 125) or,
as Hardt (2001: 46) puts it,“societal institutions for the dissemination of ideas”, mainly the press. As a“conductor”, the press and journalists provide a forum
for the exchange between manifold“intellectual tendencies”like for example of political parties, associations or resolutions of the common people (Schäffle
1896: 199). So the press not only constitutes an“instrument that modifies and transmits messages”(Hardt 2001: 61), but also“a vast collecting and report‑
ing tissue”of communication (Schäffle 1896: 200). In this context, Schäffle points to the public as being indispensable for constituting and maintaining so‑
cial reality. So he is probably also a forerunner in understanding the public as a sphere of communication or deliberation in modern societies (Pöttker 2001:
25) or as a“platformwhere social relevant issues are negotiated”(Kleiner 2010: 97). A similar conception can later be found in the work ofTönnies (1922; see
Averbeck-Lietz 2015), and of course Habermas who underlines, like Schäffle (1896: 193; see also Kleiner 2010: 96), the importance of the public’s openness.
Summing up, Schäffle not only has anticipated today’s notion of a “network society” (Andert 2002: 393; Castells 1996) but also the idea of the public as
a sphere of social deliberation. Moreover, Schäffle’s work lays the foundations for an understanding of mass communication as journalistically mediated
social deliberation – an understanding that, amazingly, till today can hardly be found in mass communication theory and related models (Fürst et al. 2015).
PP 245 The Four Characteristics of a Public Agent
L. Ripatti-Torniainen1
1 University of Helsinki, Department of Social Research- Discipline of Media and Communication Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland
The presentation discusses the varying characteristics of a public agent from a scholarly historical perspective. Based on analyses of reformist contexts
emphasizing the concept of the public in the USA and Finland in the 1990s, I provide four fragmented types of a public agent: member of the public, citizen,
discursive public, and human dweller of the world. The assumption of a public agent is clearly visible in the analyzed contexts. Public journalism reform
was launched in the USA in the early 1990s. The motivation of the movement was the concept that the relevant public agent, the public, had dispersed.
The Finnish variant of the USA’s public journalism reform explicitly shows that the public was conceived as being collectively composed of citizens. A parallel
and conceptual work began during the 1990s in Finnish journalism research with the aim of conceptualizing the public in Finnish. The definitions that have
been given to the Finnish concept illustrate the difficulties of perceiving precisely how the proposed collective agent should be identified. The difficulties
reflect an essential ambiguity that prevails in conceptual history between the public as a body of political agents and as a discursive phenomenon that is
not reducible to individuals or groups. Definitions of a public agent elucidate the distinct meanings of public in Western thought, which I suggest form
four groups. The first refers to cultural practices that enable the communication of meanings; the second refers to social life characterized by openness and
inclusion; the third refers to the philosophical and political ideals of citizens’self-governance and political liberty in the public sphere; the fourth refers to
arrangements and macro structures, such as the state, that bind the entirety of the collective. The analyzed journalism reforms focus on the philosophical
and political ideal of citizens’self-governance and political liberty on the one hand, and on the macro structures, such as the political system, on the other.
However, the US public journalism reform, that emerged from the vision that the public could no longer be realized, nourished social life and the culture
of conversation as the initial prerequisites of togetherness. The politically capable public could form as a consequence of socially recognized meanings. In
contrast, the Finnish variant of the reform, as well as the Finnish conceptual construction of the public placed the emphasis more clearly on the political
activities and argumentative abilities of citizens. In the analyzed contexts, I find a member of the public joins the public as an individual person, voluntarily
and willingly adopting the collective perspective. A citizen is a role in the political realm. A discursive public forms spontaneously in reciprocal relations
of communication, yet is considered as subject to normative ideals. Compared to these characteristics, a human dweller of the world appears as a radical
figure, residing in the common, but richly diverse world of human beings, and intertwined with meanings through the extensiveness of communication,
human experience and culture. The presentation builds on results published in my PhD dissertation (2013).