JOHN MICHAEL ROBERTS is Senior Lecturer in Sociology and Communication at Brunel University, UK. He has researched and written about the public sphere, free speech, voluntary activity and social theory. His previous publications include
The Aesthetics of Free Speech: Rethinking the Public Sphere;
Realism, Discourse and Deconstruction (co-edited) and
After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere (co-edited).