本文將以目前台灣最大的網路新聞時事討論區──PTT Gossiping看板（以下簡稱「八卦板」）為研究對象，分析透過BBS媒介所形成的網路群眾文化，並探究其民主意涵。有別於一般網路公共領域的研究，本文將由「對抗性公共」與「狂歡節」這兩個概念切入，並借鏡俄國文學批評家Bakhtin所提出的「眾聲喧嘩」與「公共廣場」等說法，嘗試論證透過網路媒介所形成、並帶有集體性狂歡節色彩的社會互動空間，如何落實異於Habermas菁英式公共領域的公共生活想像。 就內容而言，本文可粗略區分為兩部分：首先我們將以Gossiping看板為例，從集體性的角度描繪網路群眾文化的樣貌（第二、三章），接著再進一步說明其民主意涵（第四章）。在第二章當中，我們將藉由回顧八卦板的看板歷程，說明本文所討論的八卦板「網路公眾」，在評論新聞、針砭時事的表面下，其實潛藏著某種不同於理性個人交往的社會關係形態；對於這樣的現象，我們可以暫且稱之為「網路起鬨」。在第三章，我們將透過集體亢奮與狂歡節的概念，進一步擴充網路起鬨現象的抽象意義，並嘗試說明：即便到了今天，人們透過網路媒介進行的互動，仍然表現出「非凡、例外」的強烈集體情緒；這樣的集體性，既不同於公共領域理性論辯的互動方式，亦無法簡單斥之為「非理性」的劣質文化。以此種互動關係樣態為背景，在第四章我們將著重討論帶有狂歡節特質的網路群眾文化，如何透過語言的運用，體現Bakhtin強調多元觀點的「眾聲喧嘩」概念；此種狂歡節語言，能夠跳脫代表語言中心化力量的Habermas公共領域設想，從而落實「公共廣場」概念所描繪的、強調對話而不強加共識的公共生活。最後在第五章結論當中，本文除了對全文進行簡要總結之外，並討論了「社會關係／mob-ility」、「遊戲」以及「日常生活」等等概念，嘗試為網路文化的進一步研究，提供可能的參考方向。 / Taking Taiwan’s largest internet news forum “PTT Gossiping” as research object, this thesis analyses the culture of internet crowds formed through the medium of BBS (Bulletin Board System), and explores its democratic implications. Different from existing researches of “internet public sphere”, this thesis set out its arguments by resorting to concepts of “counterpublics” and “carnival”, and concludes with the notions of “heteroglossia” and “public square”, both proposed by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin, to demonstrate how a collectively carnivalistic social space of interaction, formed by internet, can provide us with an alternative imagination of public life that is different from Habermasian (elite) public sphere. This thesis consists of two parts: firstly, it analyses the culture of internet crowds from the sociological perspective of collectivity, taking PTT Gossiping as example (Ch. 2 & Ch. 3); secondly, it elaborates the democratic implications of this culture (Ch. 4). In Ch. 2, we review the historical development of PTT Gossiping, in order to demonstrate that the “internet public” constituting this news forum shows a non-personal as well as non-rational mode of social interaction, which we can provisionally describe as “internet mobbing”. In Ch. 3, we elaborate the sociological meaning of internet mobbing, by resorting to concepts such as “collective effervescence” and “carnival”, arguing that the “extraordinary, exceptional” feature of strong collective emotions can still be observed nowadays in internet interactions. This collectivity is neither similar to rational, reasoning mode of interaction proposed by the idea of “public sphere”, nor can it be denounced simply as “irrational” or bad culture. Based on this kind of social interaction, in Ch. 4 we explore how the using of carnivalistic language by internet crowds can embody Bakhtinian heteroglossia. By emphasizing the value of multiple perspectives, the carnivalistic language use of internet crowds breaks away from Habermasian public sphere, and helps to bring about a public life depicted by Bakhtinian “public square”, encouraging dialogue rather than forcing consensus. Finally, in Ch. 5 we sum up the thesis, and discuss ideas such as “social relationship / mob-ility”, “game”, and “everyday life”, which can serve as possible directions for further studies on internet culture.

<p><i>Offentligt rum och vardagens politik</i> handlar om hur 1990- talets sociala förändring, med en rörelse från ett samhälle integrerat av arbetsetiken mot ett samhälle organiserat utifrån konsumtionsestetiken, förändrar demokratins villkor i och för det offentliga rummet. Det mer preciserade syftet är att undersöka vilka konsekvenser den sociala förändringen får för utövandet av vardagens politik i det offentliga rummet. Den övergripande frågeställningen är vad ett fritt ord innebär, vad är det fritt från och för vem är det fritt? </p><p>Centrala begrepp i studien är: <i>Medborgaren</i>, dvs. individens kollektiva identitet som politisk varelse. <i>Decentraliserat politiskt begrepp</i>, där utförandet av politik inte är förbehållet den parlamentariska sfären, utan något som sker i vår vardag, vardagens politik. <i>Konsumtionsestetik</i>, där identitetsbildande och rörlighet i det sociala rummet sker efter en individuell och upplevelsebaserad logik.</p><p>Det empiriska materialet består av tidningsartiklar från det offentliga samtalet om medborgarlön och är analyserade utifrån ett diskursanalytiskt perspektiv.</p>

<p>This thesis analyses how 'public opinion' was conceptualised by Members of the Swedish Parliament (MPs) between 1848 and 1919. The source material consists of the printed minutes from parliamentary debates where issues such as religious freedom, constitutional reform and reform of the Press were discussed. What happened to the ideal of an enlightened public opinion when the development of a large-scale industrial economy changed the nature of the Press? </p><p>Two main aspects of public opinion are analysed. Firstly, the question of what MPs considered the most reliable source of public opinion is examined. The legitimacy of manifestations claiming to represent public opinion, such as written petitions, the Press, Parliament itself, quantitative estimations and also the silent opinion was discussed. In the 1910s the voices of women were also included by some MPs when assessing public opinion.</p><p>The second main aspect is how MPs envisioned the relationship between the reliability of public opinion and the conditions for public discourse. Here an important distinction was made between public opinion formed in a free and unhindered debate and that brought about by persuasion.</p><p>The study shows that public opinion was a contested concept in the Swedish Parliament. In the 1850s, Conservatives gave the religiously conservative nature of public opinion as a reason to postpone the reform of religious laws. In debating constitutional reform, on the other hand, it was the Liberals who argued that decisions should follow public opinion. In the 1910s, the Left was divided over the relationship between public opinion and the State, with some arguing that the State should intervene in the public debate to offset the negative influence of market mechanisms. Others felt that public opinion rather than legislation should set the limits of the public discourse, especially in the case of religion, but also concerning the Press.</p>

<p>This thesis explores aspects of what happened to the state Church of Sweden during the rise of the importance of public opinion and the evolution of the democratic nation state. Denmark provides the most well known Nordic example of how an old state Church became a democratic Folk (i.e. National) Church during this general transition. By comparing the Swedish with the Danish case, this study elucidates the less well known Folk Church ideology in Sweden. In Denmark a strong agrarian movement influenced by revivalism managed to take hold of public opinion making the state Church a part of the Danish national identity. Such a movement never appeared in the more industrialised Sweden. Instead a secular working class movement took hold of public and national opinion. The investigation is focused upon Harald Hallén (1884-1967), a pastor and a Social Democratic Member of Parliament. Lacking the revival elements of the Danish nationalism Hallén found that in order to get a Folk Church accepted within the secular Working class movement, it had to rest upon the heritage of the Enlightenment. Hallén regarded the Church as an expression of common ethical values within the Swedish nation. The Folk Church was supposed to strengthen existing ideals for a righteous socialist society by delivering the message of the Kingdom of God. Hallén strove to make the Church more democratic in order to express this ethical folk religion. Social Democratic nationalism became the dominant factor in Swedish political life between 1905 and 1933. The period was characterised by conflicts. First Hallén and those whom he represented fought against the Youth Church movement, which strove to establish another Folk Church ideology, by supporting the Swedish King against the rise of political Democracy. Later on, within his own Social Democratic party, Hallén fought his battle against the Marxist view of the state Church as a simple reflection of the dominant class. Hallén was in line with the political development, which resulted in a period of solid Social Democratic nation building from the 1930s onwards. From that decade on the Folk Church ideology of Hallén was established.</p>

This thesis explores aspects of what happened to the state Church of Sweden during the rise of the importance of public opinion and the evolution of the democratic nation state. Denmark provides the most well known Nordic example of how an old state Church became a democratic Folk (i.e. National) Church during this general transition. By comparing the Swedish with the Danish case, this study elucidates the less well known Folk Church ideology in Sweden. In Denmark a strong agrarian movement influenced by revivalism managed to take hold of public opinion making the state Church a part of the Danish national identity. Such a movement never appeared in the more industrialised Sweden. Instead a secular working class movement took hold of public and national opinion. The investigation is focused upon Harald Hallén (1884-1967), a pastor and a Social Democratic Member of Parliament. Lacking the revival elements of the Danish nationalism Hallén found that in order to get a Folk Church accepted within the secular Working class movement, it had to rest upon the heritage of the Enlightenment. Hallén regarded the Church as an expression of common ethical values within the Swedish nation. The Folk Church was supposed to strengthen existing ideals for a righteous socialist society by delivering the message of the Kingdom of God. Hallén strove to make the Church more democratic in order to express this ethical folk religion. Social Democratic nationalism became the dominant factor in Swedish political life between 1905 and 1933. The period was characterised by conflicts. First Hallén and those whom he represented fought against the Youth Church movement, which strove to establish another Folk Church ideology, by supporting the Swedish King against the rise of political Democracy. Later on, within his own Social Democratic party, Hallén fought his battle against the Marxist view of the state Church as a simple reflection of the dominant class. Hallén was in line with the political development, which resulted in a period of solid Social Democratic nation building from the 1930s onwards. From that decade on the Folk Church ideology of Hallén was established.

This thesis analyses how 'public opinion' was conceptualised by Members of the Swedish Parliament (MPs) between 1848 and 1919. The source material consists of the printed minutes from parliamentary debates where issues such as religious freedom, constitutional reform and reform of the Press were discussed. What happened to the ideal of an enlightened public opinion when the development of a large-scale industrial economy changed the nature of the Press? Two main aspects of public opinion are analysed. Firstly, the question of what MPs considered the most reliable source of public opinion is examined. The legitimacy of manifestations claiming to represent public opinion, such as written petitions, the Press, Parliament itself, quantitative estimations and also the silent opinion was discussed. In the 1910s the voices of women were also included by some MPs when assessing public opinion. The second main aspect is how MPs envisioned the relationship between the reliability of public opinion and the conditions for public discourse. Here an important distinction was made between public opinion formed in a free and unhindered debate and that brought about by persuasion. The study shows that public opinion was a contested concept in the Swedish Parliament. In the 1850s, Conservatives gave the religiously conservative nature of public opinion as a reason to postpone the reform of religious laws. In debating constitutional reform, on the other hand, it was the Liberals who argued that decisions should follow public opinion. In the 1910s, the Left was divided over the relationship between public opinion and the State, with some arguing that the State should intervene in the public debate to offset the negative influence of market mechanisms. Others felt that public opinion rather than legislation should set the limits of the public discourse, especially in the case of religion, but also concerning the Press.

This dissertation studies the development of a regulation of prostitution in Stockholm during the period 1812-1880. The development of the regulation system is seen in the light of an analytical framework, developed from Carole Pateman's ideas on the sexual contract, and a feministic critique and elaboration of Jürgen Habermas's ideas on the public sphere. The regulation of prostitution was a common characteristic for many metropolises in Europe during the nineteenth century, where supposedly loose and lecherous women were medically and spatially controlled to impede the spread of venereal diseases. Stockholm, and Sweden as a whole, went from a non-gendered to a gendered control of venereal disease, which eventually developed into a spatial control of public women. This study argues that the practices of a regulation system was at first part of an attempt to import what was seen as part of modernisation. Rather than to prohibit extra-marital sexual relations, these were to be controlled and supervised. Eventually the system was adapted to local circumstances in Stockholm, and a control of women's sexuality in public became part of a metropolitan modernity. In the process of the professionalisation of groups such as the police and the physicians, public women were over time perceived as a group of professional prostitutes. The possibility to live off prostitution as a transitory stage in women's lives disappeared, and prostitution became a medically and spatially controlled trade.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Recent historians who have written about the development of Methodist religious identity in Upper Canada have based their narratives primarily on readings of documents concerned with ecclesiastical polity and colonial politics. This study attempts to complicate these narratives by examining the way religious identity in the province was affected by the cultural production and distribution of books as denominational status objects in a wider North American market before the middle of the nineteenth century. The first chapter examines the rhetorical strategies the Methodist Book Concern developed to protect its domestic market in the United States from the products of competitors by equating patronage with denominational identity. The remaining chapters unfold the influence a protracted consumption of such cultural commodities had on the religious identity of Methodists living in Upper Canada. For more than a decade after the War of 1812, the Methodist Book Concern relied on a corps of Methodist preachers to distribute its commodities north of the border. This denominational infrastructure conferred the accidental but strategic advantage of concealing the extent of the Concern’s market and its rhetoric from the colony’s increasingly anti-American elite. The Concern’s access to its Upper Canadian market became compromised, however, when Egerton Ryerson initiated a debate over religious equality in the province’s emergent public sphere in the mid-1820s. This inadvertently drew attention to Methodist textual practices in the province that led to later efforts on the part of Upper Canadians to sever the Concern’s access to its market north of the border. When these attempts failed, Canadian Methodists found ways to decouple the material and cultural dimensions of the Concern’s products in order to continue patronizing the Concern without compromising recent gains achieved by strategically refashioning themselves as loyal Wesleyans within the colony’s conservative political environment. The result was the emergence of a stable and enduring transnational market for Methodist printed commodities that both blunted the cultural influence of British Wesleyans and prepared the ground for a later secularization of Methodist publishing into and beyond the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

This study explores the Swedish portrayals of Russians as compared to Danes and Polesand how they changed over time during the Great Northern War and Russo-SwedishWar (1741–1743). Through the Swedish state-run Posttidningar, the information deliveredby the state indicates that the circumstances of war and the power of the enemy leaderswere more significant than specific attributes of the enemy other in forming collectiveSwedish identity. Creating these collective sentiments was an essential tool for the stateto affirm the cooperation of its population during times of war. The information aboutthe enemy affects the transformation of a semi-public sphere in Sweden by providing acommon knowledge base to discuss and understand a changing view of its place inEurope. By depicting the enemy in flexible terms, the Swedish state desires its populationto cooperate based on the threat of war, common knowledge, and Sweden’s place inEurope, rather than solidarity against a static religious or political other.