"The official public sphere has now changed: working-class and female audiences are now allowed to vote: and they have brought elements of their traditional culture with them." (Mckee, 144)
The public sphere continuously expands with every person who decides to contribute to it. Since the dawn of the internet an infinite amount of information has been unleashed to the public and it is important to categorize that information to suite each person's liking. One important sphere that I find helpful in many different areas is a website dedicated to mothers. It is an online community through Facebook called Circle of Moms that links with different mothers around the world who might share advice, recommendations, or just share different experiences with their children. I find this site extremely helpful. Also, as a postmodernist the simple motherly duties might serve a greater purpose within its society by educating families about eating healthier, helpful tips on how to discipline children, or what cool toys might be better than others. Modernists might find content like this trivial but not when you have children. Some men and those who don’t have kids might not want to be apart of this community but thanks to the fragmentation in the public sphere there are other available websites that might fit their interests. That is what is great about our new public sphere… four years ago I would not have even thought about any of the issues discussed on this website. However, as a person changes, the public sphere will undoubtedly have a sphere to fit that person’s new interest. Circle of Moms contain more than one community of mothers but also has its own fragmentation within its site. For example, for mothers who want to talk politics there is a community called “Obama Mamas,” there are also communities for working moms, single moms, moms who have kids with special needs, money saving tips, recipes, and mothers who just want to gossip about celebrities. This site might not spark the interest of a 20-year-old boy or those women who don’t have kids but when you do become a mother… you’ll find this site useful and sometimes cathartic. So for an issue that used to be seen as trivial and kept out of the public sphere… it has come a long way and because of my postmodern views, serves an important role in the lives and deserves a place in the public.
Circle of moms can be found at www.circleofmoms.com
What I found interesting in your blog was how even in the ‘Circle of Moms’ group on Facebook, a rather fragmented focus of the public sphere, there is a variety of reasons these women come together—they share advice, recommendations, and experiences, and moreover, recipes and saving money. These multiple reasons help establish a post-modernist view because they enforce what is important to moms, as we saw with your examples. I thought you did a great job in acknowledging that this group doesn’t appeal to everyone, and that there is a huge of sum of people in the public sphere that care and benefit from participating in the group. No two people share the same experiences, values, and culture, so it is an enormous benefit to have these focused groups in Facebook because one official public sphere is destined to seclude and denounce many points of view.
ReplyDelete