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Police, Protester, Public: Unsettling Binaries in the Public Sphere

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Media, Margins and Civic Agency

Abstract

During public demonstrations, protesters seek to instigate social and political change by bringing people and ideas that they perceive to have been marginalised into mainstream public spaces (Ruiz, 2014). This move from the margins to the mainstream is frequently both materially and symbolically fraught. However, demonstrators who are happy to move within officially sanctioned parameters are generally recognised as being an important part of a fully functioning democracy (Cottle, 2006; Della Porta et al., 2006). Indeed, such gatherings could be interpreted as the embodiment of Habermas’ normative notion of the public sphere — a rational, deliberative and self-organising space in which private individuals congregate in order to reflect upon how best to achieve the greater good.

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Authors
  1. Pollyanna Ruiz
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Media School, Bournemouth University, UK

    Einar Thorsen , Daniel Jackson , Heather Savigny  & Jenny Alexander , ,  & 

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© 2015 Pollyanna Ruiz

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Ruiz, P. (2015). Police, Protester, Public: Unsettling Binaries in the Public Sphere. In: Thorsen, E., Jackson, D., Savigny, H., Alexander, J. (eds) Media, Margins and Civic Agency. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137512642_14

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