It is here where the Internet most obviously makes a contribution to the public sphere. There are literally thousands of Web sites having to do with the political realm at the local, national, and global levels; some are partisan, most are not. We can find discussion groups, chat rooms, alternative journalism, civic organizations, NGOs, grass roots issue–advocacy sites (cf. Berman & Mulligan, 2003; Bennett, 2003b), and voter education sites (see Levine, 2003). One can see an expansion in terms of available communicative spaces for politics, as well as ideological breadth, compared to the mass media. Structurally, this pluralization not only extends but also disperses the relatively clustered public sphere of the mass media.
If the Internet facilitates an impressive communicative heterogeneity, the negative side of this development is of course fragmentation, with public spheres veering toward disparate islands of political communication, as Galston (2003) had argued. Here opens up yet another important research theme, one that must encompass an overarching systemic perspective. That various groups may feel they must first coalesce internally before they venture out into the larger public sphere is understandable; however, cyber ghettos threaten to undercut a shared public culture and the integrative societal function of the public sphere, and they may well even help foster intolerance where such communities have little contact with—or understanding of—one another. Fragmentation also derives simply from the mushrooming of advocacy groups and the array of issues available. While traditional online party politics and forms of e–government may serve as centripetal forces to such fragmentation, the trend is clearly in the direction of increasing dispersion. (…)
Two contending perspectives are emerging in regard to the role of the Internet in the public sphere. One view posits that while there have been some interesting changes in the way democracy works, on the whole, the import of the Internet is modest; the Net is not deemed yet to be a factor of transformation. Margolis and Resnick (2000, p. 14) concluded that “there is an extensive political life on the Net, but it is mostly an extension of political life off the Net.” So while the major political actors may engage in online campaigning, lobbying, policy advocacy, organizing, and so forth, this perspective underscores that there does not seem to be any major political change in sight. The argument is that the Internet has not made much of a difference in the ideological political landscape, it has not helped mobilize more citizens to participate, nor has it altered the ways that politics gets done. Even the consequences of modest experiments to formally incorporate the Internet into the political system with “e–democracy” have not been overwhelming (cf. Clift, 2003). E–government efforts to incorporate citizens into discussions and policy formulations usually have a decisive top–down character (see Malina, 2003, for a discussion of the UK circumstances), with discursive constraints deriving from the elite control of the contexts.
This evidence cannot be lightly dismissed, but what should be emphasized is that this perspective is anchored in sets of assumptions that largely do not see beyond the formal political system and the traditional role of the media in that system. Indeed, much of the evidence is based on electoral politics in the U.S. (cf. the collections by Jenkins & Thornburn, 2003, and Anderson & Cornfield, 2003). While the problems of democracy are acknowledged, the view is that the solutions lie in revitalizing the traditional models of political participation and patterns of political communication.

Academics frequently criticize corporate ethnography simply as “too short.” But this is just as shallow an insight as is the idea that culture=consumerism. Academics, of all people, should know that culture drives practice. The rapid pace of contemporary corporate life clearly and reasonably demands shorter time horizons for any research project. It is more than obvious that time differs in academia. Time is what Kluckhohn (1953) calls a fundamental “value orientation,” or a universal feature of all cultures. A culture can be past oriented, meaning it reveres the past through symbolic gestures and everyday behaviours. A culture can be present oriented, by focusing on what is immediately temporally present.

Academia is a past-oriented society, with its obsession with paying homage to past greats of the literature and constant “reviews” of what others have previously found. The private sector, by contrast, worships the present (though it may portray itself as future-oriented, this is often stymied by a relentless focus on the near future). Both “cultures” mark time differently, making it completely natural to do rapid research in the private sector, and perfectly ethnocentric for academics to criticize such research based on normative assumptions of “appropriate” time frames. Symbols of time in academia are typically longer, not “better.”

Audience as public
Common to each of the primary constructions of audience is the assumption that audiences have interests, and in some formulations, those interests can be understood as rising to the level of rights. The rights, interests, and reasonable expectations of publics are often used as the basis for evaluating the performance of mass media systems and organizations (McQuail 1992). Both public and commercial broadcasters may be assigned specific social responsibilities under a “public trustee” model (Polic and Oscar H. Gandy 1991). Where public media have a specific responsibility for the maintenance of an active public sphere, struggles over the definition of such an ideal have increasingly turned on an uncertainty regarding the need for a multiplicity of public spheres that would reflect and accommodate the substantial inequality that exists between groups in society (Fraser 1993).
The functions served by targeted media or audiences constructed as publics, differs substantially from those common to other constructions. For immigrant communities, these media often serve as a vital link to the country of origin. As a conduit between the homeland, and exiles, or those who maintain an active interest in politics, they are often used as a means of mobilizing support or opposition. They also serve as a focal point for the development of a local consensus, and a means of expression of the community’s demands upon the wider host community.

And there is almost no way to avoid the visibility. Privacy is thus arguably not defensible — even sometimes not desirable either — but this does not mean that we have to change the way institutions look down on people, or to change the way that institutions present themselves before the public. But until this change happens, there have to be ways to balance the powers of institutions and citizens.

El debate, que se enmarca dentro del ámbito de la ética de la investigación, es simple: qué es público y qué es privado en Internet, una dicotomía sobre la cual se articulan límites para las prácticas de investigación de los científicos sociales. Mientras que los espacios (plazas, calles…), informaciones y datos públicos (programas de tv, periódicos, discursos públicos), pueden ser utilizados libremente, cuando estos son privados (el hogar, cartas personales, correos electrónicos, etc.) los investigadores han de solicitar consentimiento a los involucrados para acceder a esa información y utilizarla.