✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ ✐ The Meanings of Public Sphere: is there any democratic role for Internet? João Carlos Correia Introduction The concept of public sphere is being challenged by new interesting questions: what’s the meaning of public sphere, today, in face of the changes introduced by Internet? Are those changes still compatible with the idea of publicity behind the conceptual classic models drawn by Habermas? Are still compatible with the strong notion and high normative demands that are implied in those models? The aim of this text is to reflect on the connections among democratic deliberation and the role performed by online news media in a context of growing pluralism. In order to perform that reflection, we intend to develop a theoretical discussion on the limits of the classic concept of public sphere in face of the social factum consisting in the increasing fragmentation induced by digital media. Today, most of political communication passes trough expert communicators. This communicative division of labor threatens to undermine the quality of commu- nication. Will the many-to-many communication possible with the Internet, helping to produce political situations in which communicative asymmetry can be mitigated, decreasing the gap between citizens and representatives? Communication and models of democracy The relationship between the citizen, the state and the public sphere is a basic theoretical consideration and this can be traced back to the earlier days of the press. Behind different conceptions of democracy we may find different conceptions of media’s political role. Authors such as Dahlberg (2001b) and Christians, Glas- ser, McQuail, Nordenstreng and White (2010) established a correspondence between normative thinking about the media’s democratic potential and distinct models of de- mocracy: the liberal individualist, the communitarian and the deliberative. At the central core of liberal theories (Berlin, 1990; Nozick, 1974) is a common belief based on the assumption that mostly individuals are motivated by self-interest rather that any conception of common good. According Habermas (1996: 21), “in the liberal or Lockean view, the democratic process accomplishes the task of program- ming the government in the interest of society, where the government is represented Public Sphere Reconsidered. Theories and Practices , 37-50