In its original formulation, the term public sphere referred to a social realm where dialogues, debates and discussions on the matter of public concern took place. It mediated private sphere and the sphere of public authority i.e. the state. Primarily critical of the state, public sphere was the realm of discourses, governed by the idea of participatory democracy and public opinion. According to Jurgen Habermas (1991), the propounder of the concept, public sphere was:
[t]he sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. (p. 27)