With a large amount of social and digital platforms in today’s society people become a part of a public sphere. My public sphere includes Facebook this allows me to become a part of a group and build an online community. How Facebook works? Well;

Once you’ve created an account and answered a few questions about where you work, where you went to school and where you live, Facebook will generate a profile for you. Facebook provides several ways to find friends: … You can use Facebook’s search engine to look for a specific person than friend them. You can also  browse and join networks, which are organized into four categories: regions (networks that are linked to specific cities or countries), colleges, workplaces and high schools. Once you join a network, you can browse through the list of members and search for people you know. You can sort people by age, sex, relationship status, political views and other criteria.

You can let Facebook pull contacts from a Web-based e-mail account. To do this, you have to give Facebook your e-mail address and password. Facebook uses a program that searches through your e-mail contacts and compares the list against its membership database. Whenever Facebook discovers a match, it gives you the option to add that person as a friend. These are just a few things that you can do on Facebook.

Public spheres are created on Facebook through the news and stories that pop up on your feed, topics can include; sexual identity, cultural beliefs, gender related stores and more. Through these stories people can have their own opinion and say online created responses through the public sphere.

Media plays a significant role In creating these public spheres as they influence as to join these social platforms and communicate with others, however some people can be excluded from these public spheres as 65 percent of users on Facebook are 35 or older. The average age is just over 40 with the largest group aged 45 to 54. 

So what do you think? Where is your public sphere?

References:

• Poland, A. (n.d.). [online] Yourbusiness.azcentral.com. Available at: https://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/target-market-facebook-16289.html [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].
• STRICKLAND, J. (n.d.). How Facebook Works. [online] HowStuffWorks. Available at: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/networks/facebook.htm [Accessed 5 Apr. 2019].