Jurgen Habermas's “public sphere,” as defined in his essay The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, consists of a zone outside the immediate control of any governing body characterized by rational political discourse between subjects of a public which emerged as a reaction to the late 18^th century's polarized political culture, in which one portion of society attempted to subjugate the other by overpowering it. The “public sphere” emerged as a reaction to the polarized “representational culture” by providing the public with a forum in which criticism could be formed and directed towards the ruling classes and in doing so provided a countermand to said classes.

In essence, the public sphere's purpose can be seen as something which "mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of public opinion, accords with the principle of the public sphere- that principal of public information which once had to be fought for against the arcane policies of monarchies and which since that time has made possible the democratic control of state activities.”

“Though mere opinions (cultural assumptions, normative attitudes, collective prejudices and values) seem to persist unchanged in their natural form as a kind of sediment of history, public opinion can by definition only come into existence when a reasoning public is presupposed.”

Habermas argues that the while individuals have and will always harbor critical notions towards those in charge, it was not until the emergence of a public sphere that these notions would enter into the collective opinion of any body large enough to carry influence. By this logic, the development of a public sphere was essential to and possibly a major factor in the development of democratic society in the western world.

Habermas also believes that the commercialization of mass media, which he believes transformed democratic culture into consumerist culture, and the development of socialist governments and socialist government institutions, which blurred the line between state and society, led to the transformation of the public sphere into something more akin to a zone in which members of the public argue over the distribution of government sanctioned wealth as opposed to a realm of genuine political debate.

Habermas would probably look at Ghosts of Rwanda and similar documentaries as the development of a new public sphere. Habermas speaks of the public sphere in terms of its effect on Great Britain and the French Revolution, but in an increasingly globalized world the advent of new technologies which advance the spread of information and communication across groups of people who would normally never be in contact films such as Ghosts of Rwanda exist as testimony to a sort of emerging global public sphere in which political criticism can be made the subject of universal debate.

“Only when the exercise of political control is effectively subordinated to the democratic demand that information be accessible to the public does the political public sphere win an institutionalized influence over the government through the instrument of law-making bodies.”

The documentary about the genocide in Rwanda exists not as a commercialized piece of mass media but as a piece of information designed to increase awareness of an event which would have otherwise gone undocumented and therefore to inspire rational political debate. The political situation in place in Rwanda as documented by the film bears much common ground with the oppressive pre-public sphere society described in Habermas's essay. The film Ghosts of Rwanda, in making the world at large aware of the situation, could aid the development of the vital critical element necessary to change the situation and the global public sphere could aid the development of a local public sphere.