Response to Papacharissi

In The Internet, the Public Sphere, and beyond, Papacharissi examines the concept of a public sphere, and idea created by Habermas (1962), which describes where a community of citizens promote their ideas and opinions. Papacharissi examines the traditional model of the public sphere, and extends this examination to the more recent 'virtual sphere' brought about by communicative technology like the internet. Based off of her findings, Papacharissi then offers a concept for a new virtual sphere, version 2.0, which she writes has potential for coming to be in the future, based off of more contemporary social and political happenings throughout the digital world.
I think the concept of a public sphere is very reasonable, however, I worry that Habermas' "rational accord" requirement is too strong. First, we need a definition of what rationality means. Second, he seems to introduce this to separate public sphere from just mere public space, but it seems to me that you could still have a functioning public sphere without every single member acting rationally, necessarily. It seems to me, that a public sphere would work just fine with members contributing however they would like. I believe the rationality requirement would have to be applied to the structure, in some form of sustained coherence throughout the sphere, regulated by the system in such a way that it doesn't remove or delete comments, only reorganizes them.