Internet-based media,Europe and the political public sphere

Structural changes

It is hardly surprising that new media research in the 1990s turned to Habermas’ study of the transformation of the early European bourgeois public sphere, and to later theories of political deliberation, to understand the significance of the internet in relation to social change and politics. Theories of public meaning-constitution addressed precisely what the internet offered: a limitless discursive space, with dramatically expanded possibilities for productive and enlightening meaning-formation. Research has demonstrated that digital forums of various sorts have the capacity to mediate engagement and critical discussion about issues of common public interest. It has examined the ability of the internet to support public deliberation, examining how blogs and forums contribute to the critical public sphere locally, nationally and internationally by reproducing normative conditions for public opinion formation (Becker and Wehner, 2001; Benkler, 2006; Dahlberg, 2001; Räsänen and Kuovo, 2007).

With the advent of the internet, the collective, mainstream nature of the hitherto mass-mediated public sphere becomes more in tune with the thesis on ‘individualisation’ in modern society (Bauman, 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). With interaction and participation enhanced by comparison with reception, subjective preferences and viewpoints are more easily articulated and linked to others, re/producing webs of intersubjectivity. The autonomy and self-realisation typically associated with the modern individual ‘fits’ better with a public sphere partly reproduced through internet-based ‘personal’ media as opposed to mass media. The personalisation of media on the internet enables the individual desire to voice opinion directly in social networks, to participate in campaigns and social movements, and to exchange opinions in social media in his or her own ways and language, drawing upon personal experiences, knowledge, engagements, values and judgements (Becker and Wehner, 2001; Benkler, 2006). Because the threshold for speaking up in the public sphere is reduced in online environments, more people take part, a trend that minimises the threshold further. Whereas general mass media, including their online versions, tend to produce homogeneity so as to target mainstream markets, the majority of internet forums, blogs and Facebook walls produce a heterogeneity that seems to have difficulties in controlling itself reflexively.

An essential question, therefore, is how this complex public sphere can ensure legitimacy and stability for the political system. In this article, I argue that the current, differentiated political public sphere will provide a less stable platform for political decision-making. However, this does not imply that the idea of a singular public sphere should be abandoned. For every representative and formal political institution, such as municipal and regional authorities or parliaments, there is a public sphere working as a normative resonance board for its decisions. In relation to national parliaments or the EU parliament, for example, there is a circulation of topical communication oriented towards processes related to these institutions. In analysing how this works, I speak of the public sphere in the singular for one theoretical and one empirical reason. Theoretically, it makes it easier to see the essential role of the public sphere in a deliberative democracy, particularly when, as here, the public sphere is addressed as an instrument for formal politics; consequently, I consider the public sphere as a societal domain connecting the private sphere and the state. Empirically, completely isolated ‘public spheres’ in time and space are highly unlikely phenomena due to the constantly circulating, flowing and leaking nature of communication. Thus the serious structural challenge I address here is not the complete splitting of public political discourse but the increasing differentiation of groups, topics and styles within the public sphere, which may make it less suitable as a guide to public opinion, as seen from formal politics.

Differentiation as democratic problem

The current astonishing differentiation of topics, styles and participants transforms the public sphere and how we view it in relation to democracy and culture. The internet plays an active role in the current dramatic differentiation of the public sphere, in terms of topics debated, styles applied and persons involved. The diversity of communication on the internet is in part caused by (a) anonymity and quasi-oral styles of communication opening the way for extreme viewpoints, uncivil characteristics, unconventional ways of argumentation, (b) diversity of communicative forms and genres (in social media like Facebook, chat forums, Twitter, blogs and homepages with comment functions), and (c) diversity of inter-textual connections among online forums (hyperlinks, RSS feeds, social media, search engines). In its reciprocity, heterogeneity and resistance to censorship, the internet complements the mass media. On the one hand, the national and international mass media enable broad attention around some prioritised public topics ‘of national interest’. On the other, the internet underpins the individualisation and segmentation of modern societies, with attention and engagement spread among a wider range of topics, making a political focus difficult to trace by those in formal politics. As a modern response to a dynamic democracy, the plethora of digital arenas for debate offers less guidance for politics but more possibilities for personal expression. Compared to conventional mass-mediated journalism, online journalism tends to be more compartmentalised and based upon self-selection and personalisation. Selection criteria are produced by those who communicate. Rather than simply offering carefully edited information, the majority of internet-based media provide a differentiated space for interaction and user-composed information that tends to be rather specialised – often closer to personal opinion, unconfirmed information and rumour. In general, whereas the mass media tend to work toward the mainstream and conformity, the internet encourages diversity.

One cannot ignore the negative side-effects of this diversity – polarisation of debates, isolation of issue-based groups, unequal participation, lack of responsiveness and respect in debates, and uncivil and hateful speech have all been addressed by scholarship on internet-mediated deliberation (see Brandenburg, 2006; Dahlberg, 2001). Online, too many extreme viewpoints never meet ‘the better argument’. The compartmentalised and segregated character of certain discussion lists and blogs makes it difficult to see how their normative communication may be integrated into larger sentiments of public opinion. What seems to be lacking in many forums on the internet is a culture for civil, public communication (Coleman and Blumler, 2001). Due to the lack of personal presence and editing functions, semi-public communication on the internet is often uncivil in style, in spite of its open and accessible nature. In spite of being public, it often draws on genres and styles for private communication – such as dialogue, the confession, the non-serious accusation, condemnation, the curse, etc. The effects are twofold: (a) the discussion faces problems encompassing the complexity of the issues discussed and (b) the discussion faces problems attaining a sufficiently self-referential, self-critical level where the normative aims of the discussion are themselves subject for discussion.

Still, most online forums fulfil some basic requirements of a public sphere: as for the mass media and local meetings, they are ethically committed to free speech and dialogue. There is generally a commitment to making oneself understood and to understanding others in an open space with an assumed indefinite audience, if for no other reason than to enable rhetorical shortcuts or reach compromises. Some sort of communicative or cooperative action seems to appear.

Self-regulating techniques

At first glance, on the internet there are few functional equivalents to the long-established editing and regulatory agencies in mass media, such as editors and journalists. However, there are plenty of intermediaries on the internet, in addition to human editors: search engines, moderators, tags, filters, leaders and followers, blog-lists, RSS feeds, meta-sites. Such mechanisms support paths that delimit the immense spectrum of communication (Benkler, 2006). In spite of its diversity, communication on the internet is embedded in larger, techno-supported normative frameworks that tend to mainstream interaction. The term ‘community’, though often used to characterise value-based collectives of consensus-building and loyalty, is inadequate in accounting for online interaction, assuming too much fellowship and coercion while clarifying little about the empirical nature of public interaction and communication. Instead, an extended interpretation of the public sphere is needed (a) that recognises the role of the media without discriminating crudely between online and offline interaction, (b), that accounts for the construction and transformation of multiple and overlapping networks without losing sight of the reciprocity and stability of everyday interaction, and (c) that accounts for purposive/instrumental, affective and expressive practices. If the ritualistic and cultural aspects of the term ‘community’ are toned down, it may capture the individual orientation towards stable social and political networks, while the term ‘networked community’ more aptly covers the decision-oriented (rather than tradition-oriented) nature of current political expression.

My point is that one need not normatively assume strong cohesiveness as an a priori value of contemporary communities, whether local, national or super-national. Rather I think it is more constructive to bring in insights from network analysis and simply think of social and political networks (or associations). Whereas social communities consist of a group of people interacting over time within a normative frame of reference, social networks are more variable in terms of interaction intensity, and the interaction itself tends to generate self-regulating norms. Also, a focus on the network emphasises the nature of communicative relations (ties) over the particular individuals involved and their common features.

Two dimensions of public communication

With this in mind, the ‘fragmentation’ of the internet can be more maturely and sociologically understood. For analytical reasons I distinguish between two dimensions of the public sphere – related to the topics, styles and the participants involved – which serve different democratic functions: The representational dimension refers to the broad representation of heterogeneous topics, styles and groups which has never been present in conventional mass media, only in rather peripheral social settings (clubs, parties, unions, therapy groups, etc.). Aided by the internet, these ‘fringes’ of cultural and political life have entered the public sphere, enabling a dramatic expansion and differentiation of public communication. The diversification of identities, issues and styles has made the public sphere increasingly democratic and inclusive. As Habermas (2008: 53) argues: ‘The price for the welcome increase in egalitarianism due to the internet is a decentring of the modes of access to unedited inputs. In this medium, the contributions of intellectuals can no longer constitute a focal point.’ By contrast to this distribution of popular opinion, the presentational dimension refers to the deliberation over some common issues by central figures in leading media, acting as, and replacing, the voices of the people. This vocal elite of intellectuals draws on representational interaction, transforming and narrowing it into statements which set the public agenda and act as a simulation of a public opinion vis-a-vis formal political decision-making. This two-layered expansion and differentiation can be seen as the prime structural transformation of the public sphere today.

The case of Europe

To illustrate the argument, I would like to examine the European context. With the Euro-crisis in particular, the European political project seems to stand at a crossroads, and it is interesting to examine the phenomenon of a European public sphere in this context (as also discussed by Habermas, 2008). Research by Bernhard Peters (2004) shows that national newspapers increasingly cover EU politics, European institutions and the EU in general, but the increase is slow. In relation to a common European identity, ‘we’ references are modest. All in all, national public spheres resist Europeanisation. Peters concludes that, in fact what occurs is more Americanisation than Europeanisation, suggesting that the presentational dimension of a European public sphere is underdeveloped. Although a broad representational dimension has emerged through a multitude of local media and digital forums in this wealthy corner of the world, I would argue that the EU as a singular political project will have major problems as long as a European public opinion cannot be identified through a presentational dimension to balance and synthesise the representational diversity.

The need for a unified sphere of legitimacy for European political power was only a distant vision until supra-national power based on democratic principles was introduced in Europe. With the establishment of the European Union, supra-national power addresses, so far without success, supra-national legitimacy. Politically and culturally, Europe remains a space of nation-states, nations and regions, each with its national public sphere and, as Habermas argues, a European public sphere can only emerge if these become responsive to one another (Habermas, 2008: 87, 183). Indeed, economic and scientific integration (as well as integration of arts, sports and religion) have, since Second World War, hardly been accompanied by the constitution of a common European public opinion. Rather we have seen a number of new regional political territories and their corresponding environments of political communication. Add to this a mixture of media types, media organisations, languages, themes and conflicts, and we have a picture of an extremely complex network of public communication. Although there are overlapping agendas, international circulation of some quality newspapers, coverage of international events and international NGOs, a contemporary European public sphere can only be imagined in a soft, weak-tie sense. European public opinion can, at best, be detected as a complex network of topics and viewpoints circulating as multiple voices on local, national and international scales. But a presentational dimension is still needed for a public opinion to articulate itself vis-a-vis EU politics.

Diversity itself does not prevent an international public sphere from realising itself because the term ‘public’ refers not to media technologies nor to language – but focused, political communication. In spite of the necessity of a converging and unifying presentational dimension of a public sphere, the absence of common European media and a lingua franca may not be an absolute obstacle – it only means that a limited number of national media may serve the presentational function for the EU political elite. It also requires more cultural and linguistic effort for issues and viewpoints to circulate and converge through the multitude of mass media and digital media. Nor is a community with unifying values an absolute requirement. As Habermas (2008) has argued, a post-national discourse is possible which takes difference into account. Contrary to communitarian perspectives associated with a strong notion of community (as mentioned earlier), a deliberative, network-oriented public sphere consists of a multitude of interconnected webs of communicative flows, reproduced by different groups, issues, genres and media, indirectly laying a foundation for solving mutual problems (Bohman and Rehg, 1997). In a Habermasian view of a deliberative public sphere, issues, solutions and problems are confronted with each other and tested through a self-improving process of open opinion formation. The distinction between public and not-public communication is reproduced by deliberation itself. Potentially, a minimal but sufficient sense of collective identity, a sense of ‘us’, emerges from such communication, supporting and reproducing further deliberation. Legitimacy is produced not so much by the quantity of participation as by the diversity and integration of meaning. That is why an essentially male-dominated and bourgeois public sphere could serve progressive reform (Habermas, 1989, 2005).

Meaning across the media

This short article has argued that the ‘political public sphere’ should be understood as referring not to ‘who’ but to ‘how’ – in other words, to a distributed space that is the medium for, and produced by, public communication, where the public more or less overtly dedicates its statements and arguments to specific political institutions. A public sphere can partly be understood as interconnected public debates with some deliberative value and consequence. To examine the European public sphere, research needs to focus less on participation and more on the translations and interconnections between media and agendas in Europe. The question is whether what I have called the presentational dimension can be fulfilled satisfactorily through such inter-media responsiveness. It is not likely that genuine ‘European media’, will emerge on any significant scale, and a European public sphere cannot rely on the development of such overarching arenas. There will be no BBC for the EU. Only traces of a European public sphere can be identified in an indirect, network-oriented sense – not as a supra-national sphere, but as a multitude of mediated and unmediated discursive processes aimed at opinion formation at various levels, interconnected directly and indirectly.

What could be a European public sphere in the future is currently a complex network of observations of discourses, media and audiences. It is the very complexity of all these connections that potentially informs various discourses with new insights and possible solutions. In such an indirect and contingent way European publics receive and contribute to international opinion formation. But how formal politics can steer this public ‘will’ without a common and focused media remains a central challenge for democratic politics. For the present, the primary references for communication will probably remain close to immediate concerns about life-world issues like employment, personal economy, children or the local environment. What can be identified through media analysis is a secondary self-reference concerning the conditions and future of Europe, just as we can see even stronger secondary references to global concerns of climate change threats. Citizens of the EU have only national, segmented and topical zones of what may be elements of a more robust European public sphere in the future. And thus far, despite growing and widespread concern about the current crisis (and hence increasing debate about common concerns), these zones form fragile and unstable European publics, only indirectly and unintentionally oriented towards an integrated will formation in Europe. One realistic way ahead for a multi-mediated European public sphere is to encourage internet-based interconnections between organisations, movements and associations of all sorts in order to make circulation of meaning in Europe more dense and robust. Such a public sphere must also recognise the existence of conflict and disagreement as being productive for a common political frame.