Counter Publics In Online Communities

When reading about the conceptualism of counterpublics I was curious as to how these publics translated to virtual platforms, especially because we are looking at publics in relation to cinematic media. I found the Catherine Squires article on counter publics particularly interesting, in regards to how it relates to youtube videos as well as youtube comment sections as spaces that incite and  inspire discourse in specific communities. The youtube channel Jubilee hosts a segment entitled Spectrum, where in which specific groups are invited through a common element to share their opinion on a variety of different questions and perspectives. I thought this would be an interesting video series to relate to Squire’s article where she tries to define counter-publics against Habermas’s theory to state that there isn’t just one singular public, rather a myriad of counter-publics that form because of different factors. The article states that “Theorists describe multiple publics, mainly differentiated by group characteristics or group identities,” and I believe these factors exist with what the Jubilee Spectrum series, to show how counter publics exist in the virtual world.  

Squires initially goes against Habermas’s Public Sphere model by stating that “Instead of a single public sphere, she proposes that there are two basic kinds of public spheres: (a) the dominant public sphere, a province of white, middle and upper class males; and (b) “subaltern counterpublics” that are populated by historically oppressed— what I refer to as “marginal”—groups, such as women and African Americans, that have been excluded from the dominant public sphere by legal or extralegal means.For the purposes of this article, the term “public sphere” refers to a set of physical or mediated spaces where people can gather and share information, debate opinions, and tease out their political interests and social needs with other participants.” In this case the physical or mediated space is the youtube channel Jubilee.

     For example i’ll use the Jubilee spectrum video entitled ‘Do All Women Think The Same.’ Where the Jubilee team asked a group of women to agree or disagree with various statements about being a woman.Women is one of the social groups referred to in Squires article. In this article she also speaks about counter-publics, and how ‘these spaces and institutions may be occupied by very different subgroups with different interests and opinions’ This video represents this occupation of different subgroups because while all the participants shared a common unification element, they still all have disagreements when asked the same questions, creating a counter public space for discourse on a virtual platform. 

The interesting thing about a Counter-Public potentially being represented on a video sharing platform, is that it can inspire further discourse inspired by the discourse created by the original counter-public. In Squires article she also states that “A public can enclave itself, hiding counterhegemonic ideas and strategies in order to survive or avoid sanctions, while internally producing lively debate and planning. It is also possible to create a counterpublic which can engage in debate with wider publics to test ideas and perhaps utilize traditional social movement tactics…” This made me think of Youtube comment sections as ‘wider publics’ that create discourse inspired by the discourse created by the original counter public.

In conclusion counter publics can form in a multitude of different places, whether it be in the physical world, or an online mediated space. In this case the youtube channel Jubilee proves how Counter Publics have a home in online virtual communities and how perhaps comment sections represent wider publics brought about by these communities as well.