AR; On motivations of file sharers

A recently published short article enquires into the motivations of file sharers – a topic always in the limelight – and especially now, with all the commotion happening around The Pirate Bay. I originally decided to read the article in order to learn about its methodology – structured, in-depth interviews with 40 file sharers qualitatively analysed -, and although in this respect the article disappoints (of course it’s understandable that the authors didn’t want to waste valuable space on the methodology), I figured I might as well write a short summary here.

In the defense of Habermas

I’m at the moment enrolled in a web course – run by the University of Tampere -, called “Current issues in Communication Studies: Perspectives on Democracy and Citizenship.” One of the tasks during this course has been to comment on Juha Koivisto’s and Esa Valiverronen’s article from 1996, entitled “The Resurgence of the Critical Theories of Public Sphere” (Journal of Communication Inquiry 20:2 (1996): 18-36). I copy and paste my comments on the article here.