The global public sphere : public communication in the age of reflective interdependence

Book review: In this book Ingrid Volker unfolds a conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary global public sphere of communication" a task that she herself admits is a challenging one. Volker's book aims to address theoretical 'blind spots' in globalization and network conceptions of the public sphere within a new historical epoch of globalized communication. To this end, Volker engages with a wide range of scholarship across the disciplines of media and communications, sociology and political science, to develop a conceptual framework which is clearly grounded in a recontextualization of Jürgen Habermas's 'public sphere' and informed by Kant and Hegel's understanding of public life.