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Hannu Nieminen

Title of the presentation:
The public sphere and social networks: transnational tensions

Short abstract of the presentation:
In the last years critical studies on the public sphere have increased vastly. At the same time, there has emerged a new emphasis on the research of social and cultural networks. In my presentation I will discuss the crossroads and tensions between the theories of the public sphere and social and cultural networks. Firstly, I will critically introduce debates concerning the (European) public sphere. Especially I want to question the concept of society embedded in it.

Short biography:
Hannu Nieminen (hannu.nieminen@helsinki.fi) is professor of media policy and director of the Communication Research Centre CRC at the Department of Communication, University of Helsinki, Finland. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 in the University of Westminster, London. His research interests include media and democracy, theories of the public sphere and media and communication policy. His latest publication is Russian Media 2008: the View from Outside (2009, co-edited with Elena Vartanova and Minna-Mari Salminen). His monographs include People Stood Apart: the Constitution of the National Public Sphere in Finland 1809–1917 (2006, in Finnish), Hegemony and the Public Sphere (2000), and Democracy and Communication: Habermas, Williams, and the British Case (1997). (For a fuller cv, see http://blogs.helsinki.fi/hanniemi/cv/ ; for more publications, see http://blogs.helsinki.fi/hanniemi/publications/ .)