The Public Sphere is a space or realm of public life where public opinion emerges. When you think of the public sphere, you imagine two elements, the life world and the system world. The life world refers to the world of the individual social actor. For instance, the life world would take place at a coffee shop, salon, or the press. The system, on the other hand, tries to manage the public sphere. The system tries to act as a “gatekeeper” of sorts. For an ideal public sphere, it must have the following elements: close to universal access, the citizens must be free of coercion, all people must participate on equal footing, there must be subordination of the state, and we must make a commitment to logic.

The ideal public sphere does not exist in our world. The main ides of the public sphere is universal, whether it comes from the extent of access to the rejection of hierarchy. This is something America cannot achieve. For example, say you are invited to a meeting to discuss climate change. Across the table from you is the president and next to him is Mark Zuckerberg. According to the public sphere, you are on equal footing as the two people sitting across the table from you. You in this case, are expected to reject the hierarchy and eliminate their power to the same amount of power as you. For me, in this case, I could not speak up or voice my opinion knowing the power and fame the two people across from me hold. I could not live by the public sphere because of my “fan girl” ways, which i think most Americans have whether it be Mark Zuckerberg or Beyoncé.

This goes to show that the media impacts the effectiveness of the public sphere. For instance, without media, many might not know who Beyoncé is, and would certainly not know Mark Zuckerberg. Media creates fame and popularity for individuals, turning regualr people into superstars, For example, Charli Damelio, the famous tiktoker. Charli went form being a normal high school girl from Connecticut to a viral tiktoker and now has her own drink named after her at Dunkin Donuts. Thank to media, the public sphere cannot function appropriately because in our society, we “fan girl” and view famous people as heroes rather than equal footing as a regular person.