Habermas' public sphere: from the 18th century to our societiesThe public sphere is a necessary concept to understand our connected world. Today, even more so with new technologies, we are interconnected and share a lot via the Internet. Jürgen Habermas conceptualized the public sphere as a place where debates and shared ideas take place. This is useful for understanding our highly connected societies. The question is how to apply his theory to social media. The Internet has changed citizens' relationship with the media and created a new way of doing what the author considered a principle of democracy: rational-critical debate. What is the relevance of the concept of the public sphere in today's societies? We will present and critique Habermas' concept, then see how we talk about the public sphere in a hyper-connected world. In the feudal world, debate was a private affair for the nobility and the Church (Curran, 1997). There was no need for public space. Habermas saw its emergence in the second half of the 18th century, mainly in France, Great Britain and Germany. He said this was due to four main factors. First, the appearance of the “printed world” (McLuhan, 1995) leading to the reading of brochures or newspapers making it easy to form an opinion. Then, growing trade created more social interactions among citizens. Early forms of representative government were also instrumental, bringing people to discuss politics in the public sphere. But for Habermas, the main element is the emergence of an independent middle class, discussing (among themselves) "[areas] independent of government and also enjoying autonomy from partisan economic forces, which is dedicated to rational debate... of paper......2006. Wealth of networks. New Haven: Yale University Press Pierre Bourdieu. 1984. Questions of sociology. Paris: Editions de MinuitKarl R. Popper, 1971. The open society and its enemies, Vol. 1: Plato's spell. 5 revised edition. Princeton University PressLewis H. Lapham (New Introduction by) Marshall McLuhan (Author), 1995. Understanding Media: Extensions of Man. 3rd printing, 1995 edition. The MIT Press. Malcolm Gladwell. The Guardian. October 3, 2010. Jürgen Habermas. 1962. The structural transformation of the public sphere. An investigation into a category of bourgeois society. Karl Marx. 1867. Capital. Berlin. James Curran, 1997. Power without Accountability: Press, Broadcasting and the Internet in Britain. 5 edition. Routledge.James Curran, 2011. Media and society. 5th revised edition. Bloomsbury University