In this episode, we look at three studies illustrating how to approach different aspects of the contemporary public arena empirically.

The public arena is a crucial element of democratic societies, linking communication to political competition and democratic representation. It comes as no surprise then to find that the concept has inspired massive research activity. The digital transformation of the public arena has featured very prominently in recent research. The diversity of interests, approaches, and methods in studies on the contemporary digitally extended public arena mirrors the richness of the concept and its related areas.

To get a better sense of different approaches by which to examine the contemporary public arena empirically, we now turn to three studies that address related questions.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
00:21 - The public arena examined
01:44 - Limits to attention
07:19 - Digital shaping of behavior
13:23 - Contesting narratives
19:36 - The contemporary public arena
24:16 - Conclusion

Script:

http://digitalmedia.andreasjungherr.de/public_arena.html#the-public-arena-examined