Jürgen Habermas & the Digital Transformation of the Political Public Sphere
Theory, Culture & Society recently published a special issue: ‘A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?’ (Vol. 39, Issue 4, 2022). Edited by Martin Seeliger and Sebastian Sevignani, the issue brings together 10 new articles exploring the concept and changing shape of the political public sphere. Inevitably it takes its framing from the highly influential work of Jürgen Habermas, notably his important study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1989). Overall, the issue offers new thoughts and insights on the rise and fall of the bourgeois public sphere, with key reference the contemporary issues of digitalization, commodification, and globalization.
In the following exchange Rainer Winter provides background on the development of the issue, which involved a collaboration with the German-language journal, Leviathan, and offers a specific reflection on the lengthy contribution of Jürgen Habermas to the issue (free access*). Of real significance to the widespread debates that have come out of Habermas’ work, it is only now that we hear his own thoughts on the digital transformation of the public sphere.
Sunil Manghani: The development of this issue of the journal has been unusual as it represents a bi-lingual collaboration with another journal. You have been closely involved in the process, which has involved not simply a translation from one journal to the other, but further development and curation. Can you explain more about the collaboration and how the framing of the articles relate to the interests of the two journals, and indeed to contemporary politics?
Rainer Winter: I have long been intrigued by the question of how digitalisation changes the very possibility and the conditions of a political public sphere and whether there is the potential for a transnational public sphere to emerge. The special issue of Leviathan: Berliner Zeitschrift für Sozialwissenschaft, in which Jürgen Habermas’ concept of a ‘public sphere’ is discussed from various present-day perspectives and in which he responds to these contributions with fresh reflections, struck me as a good starting point for a special issue of Theory, Culture & Society that explores the question of the public sphere in the 21st century. A functioning political public sphere is the bedrock of a vibrant, active and participatory democracy.
SM: Jürgen Habermas’ famous study of the structural transformation of the public sphere, as he notes himself, has never been out of print and while representative of his early work remains his most cited work. We are really fortunate to have a comprehensive new text as part of this issue by Habermas (who is now 93 years old). He has provided a really substantial reading of the contributions in the issue, but also of the contemporary situation vis-a-vis the public sphere. How do you feel his new reading will be received, both by those engaged in the wider scholarship of the public sphere, but also to a wider readership too?
RW: Habermas' study on the structural transformation of the public sphere, not translated into English until almost thirty years after its publication (1962, English translation 1989), has had a great impact to this very day, most notably in discussions on deliberative politics and democracy. It took a long time for Habermas himself to comment on the digital transformation of the public sphere. This is surprising because, since the protests at the World Social Forum in Seattle in 1999, progressive social movements have been using the internet and social media to disseminate their views, which barely feature in the central media. Similarly, the social uprisings in Arab countries – facilitated by direct media – also demonstrated that digitally supported public spheres can hold a potential for emancipation. However, once the hope for digital democratisation faded, we witnessed a commercialisation of the internet and digital media on the one hand, and on the other hand, an emergence of digital surveillance and control. In his new essay, Habermas analyses the consequences of the digitalisation of the political public sphere, which he regards as a renewed structural change. To this end, he presents his thoughts and formulates hypotheses. Habermas argues that democracy cannot survive in a digital media system without an inclusive public sphere and a deliberative process for the formation of public opinion and consensus. It traces the many and varied threats and perils – from fake news to the commodification of the private sphere – that have arisen as a result of digitalisation. Habermas makes a powerful case that our democracies are in danger and details what we need to do in order to keep them alive and restore them to strength in the age of digitalisation.
SM: Can you give some sense of the other contributions to the journal and how perhaps some different directions and thematics are opened up?
RW: The special issue features eight contributions and an interview with Judith Butler, all of which address the new structural transformation of the public sphere in a nuanced and critical manner. Among other things, the role and function of social media, of digital platforms, of post-truth, of progressive social movements, of secrecy and hegemony are examined. The essays reveal how the concept proposed by Habermas can continue to exert a critically explorative force even today.
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Special Issue: ‘A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere?’
Edited by Martin Seeliger and Sebastian Sevignani.
Martin Seeliger and Sebastian Sevignani, A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere? An Introduction (Open Access)
Social Media Filters and Resonances: Democracy and the Contemporary Public Sphere
Hartmut Rosa
Post-Truth, the Future of Democracy and the Public Sphere
Silke van Dyk
Progressive Social Movements and the Creation of European Public Spheres
Donatella della Porta
Reflections on the Contemporary Public Sphere: An Interview with Judith Butler (Open Access)
Martin Seeliger and Paula-Irene Villa Braslavsky
Corporate Public Spheres between Refeudalization and Revitalization
Ulrich Brinkmann, Heiner Heiland and Martin Seeliger
Digital Transformations and the Ideological Formation of the Public Sphere: Hegemonic, Populist, or Popular Communication? (Open Access)
Sebastian Sevignani
Staying with the Secret: The Public Sphere in Platform Society (Open Access)
Timon Beyes
Social Media and the Digital Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Open Access)
Thorsten Thiel and Philipp Staab
Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere (*Free Access until December 2023)
Jürgen Habermas
Rainer Winter and Sunil Manghani are Managing Editors of Theory, Culture & Society
Email: tcs@sagepub.co.uk