Cenários da liberdade de imprensa e opinião pública em hegel

Abstract

Nowadays, new settings for communication are being built, having, at one side, great corporations of television, radio, press and on line media, and, at the other side, the role of the independent/alternative press, understood as not bound to a private, public or state enterprise, or any economic group. It sets up, gradually the constitution of the opposition between the traditional media and the independent/alternative press, having as material support the new technologies of information. How can the new technology of information associated with new settings of press freedom and the phenomenon of public opinion contradiction in the internet era accomplish the mediation of the opinion in a globalized society? Or still, starting from the assumption of press freedom, how to ensure that society will solve the contradiction of the public opinion? The phenomenon of public opinion is confl icting because it has in itself, at the same time, the universality of constitutional principles of Law and Ethics, and the peculiarity of the citizens' rights and concerns. This contradiction fi nds its solution through mediation of press freedom within a frame of democratic legality. This is the power of the contradiction: to make effective the mediation of the dialectic tension between the opposite poles of the universal and the singular in the press freedom, ensuring the right of every citizen to express publicly his opinion. This is Hegel's theory of public opinion: the press freedom and the congress, while political space, are privileged spheres of mediation of the contradictory phenomenon the public opinion.