Graham Knight is Professor and Chair, Communication Studies and Multimedia, McMaster University in Canada. He has published multiple book chapters and articles in such diverse publications as the Australian Journal of Communication, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Management Communication Quarterly, and Journalism Studies.

Habermas' theory of the "re-feudalization" of the public sphere offers critical insight into the structural transformation of publicity that resulted in the dominance of spectacles of branded commercialism, consumerism, spin doctoring, and other forms of promotional communication. It does not, however, offer an adequate basis for understanding the substantive transformation of publicity that has occurred as the public sphere has been opened up by and to politically contentious voices seeking to frame, dramatize and communicate diffuse problems of the lifeworld as a way to pressure power centres such as the state and corporate economy. The expansion, pluralization, and growing competitiveness of the public sphere have eroded not only the unity of reason that Habermas took as the condition of possibility for argumentatively based consensus formation but also the separation of strategic and communicative action. Moreover they have also displaced the grounds of ethical rationality from first to second order or reflexive values such as compromise and accommodation. There is no longer any better argument for resolving disputes, only more or less practicable means for resolving problems on a contingent and imperfect basis. As a result, social movements and other collective actors advocating social change are now confronted with the dilemma of acceding or not to a promotional logic - organizational and issue branding, celebrity endorsements, professionalized PR practices, permanent campaigning, constant issue turnover, maximization of media hits, &c. - as the means to attract and sustain (mercurial) public attention, and exert pressure on the political and economic systems.