Everyone a pamphleteer? Reconsidering comparisons of mediated public participation in the print age and the digital era:

TLDR: The pamphleteering analogy is sometimes related to specific online forms, like blogs as discussed by the authors, but it is also a much-used analogy in descriptions of the transformation of the public sphere as brought on by the technological potential of the internet.

Abstract: Fifteen years after the breakthrough of the world wide web as a mass consumer technology, the task of conceptualizing ongoing changes to the public sphere remains a key challenge for media research. In the wake of early generic labels like ‘cyber’ or ‘virtual’ public spheres, some try to grasp the unfolding processes by reaching for historical comparisons or analogies. A case in point is pamphlets. Historically, pamphleteering may be said to have had features that became central for mediated public debate in general. But pamphleteering is also a much-used analogy in descriptions of the transformation of the public sphere as brought on by the technological potential of the internet. The pamphleteering analogy is sometimes related to specific online forms, like blogs. In a recent article titled ‘The Blogosphere and the New Pamphleteers’, Donald Kochan (2006: 99) states that: ‘much like – but more sophisticated than – the printing press, the internet allows every individual to be a pamphleteer in the marketplace of ideas by blogging’. Similarly, when discussing ‘printed precedents of blogs’ in a recent introductory book on blogging, Jill Walker Rettberg (2008: 40–1) starts with pamphlets as a prime example. Elsewhere, the comparison relates to internet technology more generally. Yochai Benkler (2006) refers to the US Supreme Court to illustrate the meaning and the prevalence of the pamphleteering analogy. According to a Supreme Court ruling from 1997: