Öffentlichkeit – Veröffentlichen – Öffentlichkeit Herstellen: Einleitung

Abstract

Recent developments in digital network communication suggest that the distinction between public and private has become precarious. This situation warrants a closer look at the infrastructures and practices of making things public. What can we learn about the public sphere by studying how, exactly, it is being produced? What constitutes the threshold between public and private, and how does one pass it? Which medial, social, rhetorical, and political practices and semantics, which modes of cooperation are involved in acts of publishing? The introduction critically re-examines 20th-century theories of the public sphere in light of these questions.