As you are reading this you are finding yourself in the ubiquitous public sphere that is the
Web. Ubiquitous and yet not universally accessible. This volume addresses this dilemma of the
public sphere which is by definition open to everyone but in practice often excludes
particular groups of people in particular societies at particular points in time. The guiding
questions for this collection of articles are therefore: Who has access to the public sphere?
How is this access enabled or disabled? Under what conditions is it granted or withheld and by
whom? We regard the public sphere as the nodal point for the discourses of business politics
and media and this basic assumption is also s reflected in the structure of the volume. Each
of these three macro-topics comprises chapters by international scholars from a variety of
disciplines and research traditions who each combine up-to-date overviews of the relevant
literature with their own cutting-edge research into aspects of different public spheres such
as corporate promotional communication political rhetoric or genre features of electronic mass
media. The broad scope of the volume is perhaps best reflected in a comprehensive discussion of
communication technologies ranging from conventional spoken and written formats such as company
brochures political speeches and TV shows to emerging ones like customer chat forums
political blogs and text messaging. Due to the books' wide scope its interdisciplinary
approach and its clear structure we are sure that whether you work in communication and media
studies linguistics political science sociology or marketing you will find this handbook an
invaluable guide offering state-of-the -art literature reviews and exciting new research in
your field and adjacent areas.
