In today's age of corporate media, the ever diminishing public sphere is a very important thing not only to preserve, but to create. Although many argue that there is no place for public discussion in the mass media, sites like The Daily Kos areexceptions to this rule. The practice of looking defines Mass media as "media designed to reach large audiences precieved to have shared interests. The Mass media refers to forms and texts that work in unison to generate specific, dominant, or popular representations of events, people, and places". While the Daily Kos certainly reaches a mass audience, with a certain type of left leaning shared beliefs, it is not your typical mass media outlet.
What seperates The Daily Kos from media outlets such as MSNBC or CBS, is that it is not nearly as backed by corporations, and it provides space for readers to provide input that can be seen by all in the comments section on each article. The Daily Kos posts articles that are not only not covered by mainstream corporate media, but also articles that often challenge the dominant ideaology of the mainstream media. Many of the articles on Daily Kos critique and question mainstream medi outlets.
When defining the public sphere Habermas States ""The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere" While the poweres that be may not be swayed by peoples comments in the blog section of The Daily Kos, these comments are seen by thousands everyday and certainly have the power to sway the opinions of the masses which will indeed lead to the "authorities" being engaged in debate.
While most "comments" sections on websites such as Youtube contain not much more than insults and irrelevant comments, the comments section on The Daily Kos appear to contain many worth while debates. In an article about a poll on healthcare reform, not only were there comments concerning readers feelings on the pole, but comments and debates on the validity and usefulness of political poles themselves. One reader states "Polls are like crack, political activists know they're bad for them but they read them anyways".
The Daily Kos is unique in the fact that there is often (not always) relevant and interesting debate in the comments section of the articles. This allows the reader to not only discuss and debate but keep The Daily Kos in check too. The Daily Kos' comments are not censored (except in extreme cases" so users are allowed to critique the Daily Kos itself. This is something that surely constitutes the public sphere and is certainly a progressive force in the world new internet journalism.