Public Screen

Definition: The public screen is a virtual place where people gather to share ideas, push an opinion, or educate themselves and others. The public screen acts as a modernized model for the public sphere, where anonymity and reliance on images are the key differences between the two. Largely replacing face-to-face encounters, the virtual aspect allows for portability as well as complete access to any and all information that is available.

Example: Examples of the public screen are everywhere. Anonymous chatrooms, journal articles and their response sections online, even the newspaper can be identified as a "screen." Take the journal article online as our example: we are aware that this is someone who we don't personally know, giving us their opinion about an event that has happened somewhere in the world that may or may not effect us. In addition, we can be reading this article on any number of devices, virtually anywhere. This ubiquity is what sets the public screen apart from the public sphere; it can be joined at any time and any place with just the tap of a screen.

The public screen can be accessed from any laptop. Here, a man is looking at an internet article; effectively, he is participating in the public screen domain.
Image Credit: Newman, Sandra. Man with a Computer Looking at an Internet Article. Digital image. Slate Plus. Slate, 4 Nov. 2015. Web. 4 Feb. 2016.

From the Text: DeLuca and Peeples see a problem with the term "public sphere" now that we are in a "televisual world characterized by image and spectacle" (186). In order to correct this misnomer, they "supplement" (186) the term with a slightly different, more modern idea that "takes seriously the work of media theorists suggesting that new technologies introduce new forms of social organization and new modes of perception" (188). While the public screen tends to have a negative connotation, DeLuca and Peeples point out the benefits to this new realm that humanity is exploring: "these technologies have intensified the speed of communication and obliterated space as a barrier to communication" (188). They also point out that the public screen has not completely taken the place of the public sphere, but that "the public screen and the public sphere exist in a dialectic of remediation" (188).




Works Cited:
DeLuca, Kevin and Peeples, Jennifer. "From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the "Violence" of Seattle." Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest. Browne, Stephen and Morris III, Charles, eds. State College, Pa: Strata Publishing, Inc., 2013