Internet as the Public Sphere

As Communication students, I know all of us have studied the public sphere a million times, but I couldn't resist talking about Poor's essay, "Mechanisms of an Online Public Sphere".
He raises a lot of good points on a discussion I think is incredibly relevant to what we're studying in this class and in Comm studies in general.

I don't know about you, but I've found almost every single one of my classes has incorporated the Internet into the discussion. Obviously this is important because the Internet is such a huge part of our society today, it's just difficult when it's so new and we can't possibly know the full effects of it, and I'm not sure we ever will.
I took a course entitled Networked Publics last semester, which basically surrounded this entire topic. I definitely don't consider myself an expert now, but I do seem to have developed some pretty strong opinions on it! I know this is such a new discussion though so I'm open to different interpretations!

In my opinion, the Internet has become a new social space - I've found that a lot of people are finding participation in the online space more important than participation in the physical space. And to me, that's just wrong. I totally support the Internet and believe there are a lot of great things that come out of it, but I do not think it is a space that can create change.
Something I found interesting is that Poor left out a key aspect of Habermas' public sphere, and that is it's ability to enforce change. Habermas said that these spaces of political discourse, in order to be effective had to bring about or influence change in the public realm.
This is a huge part that I think the Internet lacks on it's own. In order for any real social change to occur, there has to be action in the physical space, the streets. This is the only way people will actually pay attention. (Now, I'm not including things like denial of service attacks by hacktivist groups, because they are only a small portion of the population). A lot of people give credit to the Internet for the creation of Occupy Wall Street, however, the only way it was effective was the fact that there was physical action in the streets. Movements like this can only demonstrate their efforts if they are literally in people's faces - if it only remains online, it's so easy for people to close their computer and ignore it. (Now, the issue of whether or not OWS was actually effective is another discussion entirely).
Given all of this, however, I do believe it is possible for the Internet to become an effective public sphere, but right now, it is too large and too global to be able to enforce any real change on its own.
While I want to keep this short, I do want to say that there definitely are exceptions, which makes me think that there is potential. I wrote a paper about the use of the Internet and Social Media in the Egyptian Uprising and found that it was a defining factor in the success of the protests. But once again, it mainly acted as a space for people to coordinate; they still had to protest in the physical space in order for their voices to be heard.

Overall, I think the website Slashdot is a good example of the potential for an online public sphere. Their process of moderation and their qualifications for users and scoring process is very unique and makes it an effective space. However, it can also be argued that this creates a space that is not easily accessible to all.