Occupy Wall Street and the Transformation of the Public Sphere

We examined the formation and manipulation of the public sphere and that concept’s relation to the current Occupy Wall Street movement. Theories of the development of the modern public sphere, particularly the work of German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, informed our work. We focused on his theory that representative publicity facilitated the creation of the public sphere and formed our own concept of inverse representative publicity, applying that to Occupy Wall Street. We compared the roles of representative publicity and the public sphere in the Occupy movement and the French Revolution. To illustrate how Occupy leaders formed an inverse representative publicity, we analyzed Occupy’s use of new, virtual media such as Twitter, as well as the symbolism incorporated in their propaganda posters. Viewing Occupy Wall Street through the lens of the history of the public sphere, we found a correlation between Occupy Wall Street’s goals: all could be construed as part of a movement to transform the public sphere.