Media representations have a significant impact on the contemporary understanding of the process of forming public opinion. The public is formed by the persuasiveness of media content. Mayhewćs concept of the New public is founded on the representation of the public through media and also demands a formation of discursive public forums, where credibility of media prolocutors and the validity of their claims could be investigated. The author is interested in whether the existence of public communication forums enables therepresentation of the public in front of itself, that is the active participation of the public, or does the model already by itself hinders the egalitarian nature of the public sphere. The representation of the public is defined, as normative democratic theories understand it. The definition will be applied to our understanding of the model of the New public. Using the content analysis of various theories of modern and post-modern scholars, the author attempts to show, that the two concepts are not compatible with each other and that the model does not offer a possibility of emancipating the public from the media-created world of interlocking images.
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