This article，based upon Habermas’s normative ideals of the public sphere，discusses the three main analytical strategies that cultural sociologists use to study the public sphere and public communication. The first strategy is to examine how public communication actually operates in the public sphere. The second strategy is to recognize that issues of public concern are frequently interpreted and debated in multiple，overlapping publics. The third and final strategy is to consider the ways in which public communication is organized in and through specific media organizations and formats. The argument is that researchers who study contemporary public communication，especially in the context of today’s China and other non-Western countries，need a cultural sociology of the public sphere that moves beyond Habermas and beyond political theory. This cultural sociology is，at its core，an empirical research enterprise that is devoted to comparing the narratives and performances that are put forth in concrete publics，and is committed to exploring how different media organizations and different media formats incline to specific kinds of narratives.