Balancing the digital universe: Power and patterns in the new public sphere

Abstract

From the viewpoint of Political Theory, digital technology presents both risks and opportunities for the democratic public sphere. Public discourse is now more complex and fragmented than ever before. Against this background, this paper uses the metaphor of a “communicative universe” to analyze the latest structural change of the public sphere. It emphasizes the significance of achieving a balance between different actors and powers in contemporary political discourse. Patterns in media communication can not only be identified but also influenced and constructed in ways that support the democratic functionality of political discourses.

Keywords

public sphere Habermas digitalization democratic theory fragmentation

“Discourses don’t rule,”¹ states Jürgen Habermas in his preface to the German re-edition of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.² Nevertheless, discourses can possess communicative power. According to Habermas’s deliberative democratic theory, they ideally shape and direct administrative power towards preserving democratic principles like rationality and equality. However, communicative power can also manifest in other ways, such as manipulation, mobilization, or demobilization of the electorate. Various examples of this can be found in the so-called new media. Notably, social media has been repeatedly and effectively employed by both established and emerging political actors to target specific audiences and influence their political opinions and behaviors.

For the democratic public sphere, the impact of the third “media revolution”³—following the advent of scripture and the printing press—is once again significant. In comparison to what Habermas described in the 1960s as a mass media public sphere, digitalization has substantially increased the number and diversity of participants in the public sphere. Even in the past, Habermas expressed skepticism about the perceived achievements in media reproduction and distribution techniques. According to Habermas, the structural transformation of the public sphere in the late 19th and early 20th century was characterized by a “great mass of consumers whose receptiveness is public but uncritical.”⁴ Mass media had the capacity to integrate, but the price to be paid was the “absorption of the plebiscitary ‘political’ public sphere by one depoliticized through a preoccupation with consumption of culture.”⁵

Habermas’s assessment of the third structural transformation of the public sphere, brought about by the emergence of digital media, is both cautious and skeptical.⁶ For him, the new public sphere is increasingly characterized by fragmentation and lack of structure. This is primarily due to the fact that individuals are no longer just passive readers but also potential authors in this digital landscape. While recognizing the emancipatory potential of this development, Habermas also acknowledges the inherent risk it carries for the formation of discursive opinions. The ability of individuals to contribute their perspectives and opinions on various platforms can lead to disruptions and challenges in shaping a cohesive and coherent public discourse.⁷

Habermas is not the only one holding this viewpoint; there is a growing body of literature that suggests digitalization has brought about a new and worrisome structural transformation of the political public sphere. For instance, Dirk Baecker anticipates identity fragmentations and foresees a state whose power is diminished, relying solely on the persuasiveness of maintaining the status quo, thus becoming structurally conservative.⁸ Steffen Mau diagnoses the emergence of an “inequality regime” which undermines the democratic idea of “a collective of equals.”⁹ Felix Stalder raises concerns about a “post-democratic life” characterized by a “lasting separation between social participation and the institutional exertion of power.”¹⁰ In this scenario, the political public sphere might expand and flourish—but simultaneously, it loses power over political institutions.

Overall, there is substantial evidence supporting the diagnosis of a digital transformation of the public sphere. However, existing accounts fail to open a debate about how to tackle dysfunctional developments in the contemporary political public sphere.¹¹ Therefore, this essay proposes a perspective that links the analysis of disruptions caused by the digital transformation of the political public sphere with the exploration of positive effects through new media and the search for potential new points of equilibrium (“libration points”). Central to this essay is the belief that modern societies are not bound by the current structures of the public sphere. Instead, they can be influenced and altered to better align with democratic principles and requirements.

The perspective here proposed introduces the metaphor of the “universe.” The metaphor of the political public as a “sphere” is well-established in scientific literature.¹² It has also been employed by Habermas, and it suggests an open and unlimited space in which people start communicative interactions, but it does not exclude the possibility of external influences on their behaviors. Indeed, it is one of the main achievements of Habermas’s habilitation thesis, that it does not analyze political discourses on the levels of content and participants, but that it directs our attention to their structuration.

In what follows, this understanding of the public sphere as a “sphere of communicative action with particular, sophisticated characteristics and functions”¹³ will be integrated into the metaphor of the universe. The core argument is that a timely concept of the public sphere needs to render it as a communicative whole within a constantly changing, potentially indefinite spatiotemporal frame, which is characterized by varying relations of power and moldable by singular actors and structural interventions alike. Such an inclusive public sphere concept has several advantages: first, it can transport democracy-endangering but also emancipatory capacities of digitalization, as well as specificities of the contemporary public sphere like the dissolution of space and time. Second, it allows a joint analysis of even new “matters,” such as commercial intermediaries and communication robots (so-called “social bots”) that form communication networks with humans. These actors exert force onto each other; and yet, without doubt, they constitute qualitatively different entities. Finally, similarly to the center-periphery-model in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms, which this essay will revisit at a later point, the “universe”-metaphor, like that of the “sphere,” talks to democratic ideals and models.

Spatial metaphors are far from new, particularly in media and communication science: Marshall McLuhan relied on one in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy¹⁴ to grasp the expansion of education through the printing press and the emergence of a “global village”¹⁵ following the distribution of electronic media. Drawing on this, Manuel Castells¹⁶ names the epoch of television the “McLuhan Galaxy.” Around this time and in a similar fashion, a new cultural “constellation” is identified by Norbert Bolz.¹⁷ Likewise, the networked power of computers has been named “Turing Galaxy,”¹⁸ “Internet Galaxy,”¹⁹ or “Google Galaxy.”²⁰

Drawing on these perspectives, the essay at first defends the view that digitalization has prompted a new structural transformation of the public sphere (section 1). This is followed by unfolding the theoretical dimensions of the “universe”-metaphor (section 2). To determine the extent to which this metaphor is useful, the essay will then focus on what is not within the scope of the center-periphery-model: the effects of digitalization on the structuration of political communication within today’s cosmos. Section 3 will establish the crucial task of “libration” as the main challenge of 21^st century’s democracies. In astronomy, libration points (lat. librare “balancing”) are points of equilibrium for celestial bodies of different masses that balance out the gravitational force of massive objects with the centrifugal force of small-mass objects. The essay argues that contemporary democratic theory requires libration points capable of balancing between different political actors and powers. While opportunities may arise through state and supra-state activity and regulation, cultural changes are also necessary to foster more favorable conditions for political action. The essay concludes with a reflection on the goals, conditions, and tasks of research on the political public sphere in the 21st century (section 4).

1. Digitalization and the structural transformation of the public sphere

The public sphere is often referenced in democratic theory, but besides affirming the necessity for liberal freedoms, its characteristics and functions remain frequently vague. Particularly in the early 20^th century, with the advent of radio, film, and television technology, the actuality and viability of a self-proclaimed collective yet “dispersive public”²¹ generated by journalistic and political actors was taken for granted. Initially, the manipulability of citizens enabled by mass media was accepted as a democratic instrument of governance.²² However, throughout the 20^th century, and in light of the appalling consequences of national-socialist media politics, the importance of press freedom and diversity grew, leading to their institutional safeguarding and even economic support.

At the beginning of the 1960s, as part of his analysis of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Jürgen Habermas highlights the shortcomings of liberalized media markets, even when characterized by plurality. The dependence of mass media on advertising revenue led to a reduction in journalistic influence over media content: “Especially since the 1870s the tendency has become manifest: the rank and reputation of a newspaper are no longer primarily a function of its excellent publicists but of its talented publishers.”²³ Radio experienced a similar situation, with the exceptions of national broadcasting and public radio. According to Habermas, the interweaving of private and economic logic that is already implied in its economic organizational form is the primary driver of change in the public sphere.²⁴

Moreover, and equally noteworthy, Habermas sheds light on the bearings of communicative actors. His appreciation of 18^th and 19^th century’s salons where private people constituted the public²⁵ is not elitist,²⁶ but highlights—somewhat idealistically—a culture of communication²⁷ for the common good: “Indeed, mass culture has earned its rather dubious name precisely by achieving increased sales by adapting to the need for relaxation and entertainment on the part of the consumer strata with relatively little education, rather than through guidance of an enlarged public toward the appreciation of a culture undamaged in its substance.”²⁸ While significantly expanding, the public sphere in “its [political; CR] function has become progressively insignificant.”²⁹

Giving up on the political integration of the citizenry, in a way that makes use of society’s emancipatory potential, is denounced by Habermas as “refeudalization.”³⁰ Associations of the political public sphere were seeking political compromises with the state and among themselves, “as much as possible to the exclusion of the public,” but they would have to “procure plebiscitary agreements from a mediatized public by means of a display of staged or manipulated publicity.”³¹

For a long time, Habermas maintained a structural differentiation between authors and readers within the public sphere. In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, this is primarily visible through his significant skepticism toward consumers' political reflective abilities. Habermas portrays the public as apolitical and culture-consuming, its needs for leisure and diversion defining mass communication.³² The significance of differentiating between authors and readers is also evident in Between Facts and Norms’³³ center-periphery model. The largely mass-mediated political public sphere serves as “the most important sluices for the discursive rationalization of the decisions of an administration bound by law and statute,”³⁴ even though it is mainly journalists who are professional gatekeepers.

This division of labor between the audience and actors is disrupted by digitalization: “The Gutenberg press transformed all who would learn how to read in the next centuries, into potential readers. […] But it took the digital revolution to turn everyone into potential authors in a sense.”³⁵ This aspect is one of several transformations of the political public sphere prompted by digital technologies, leading to a third structural change.

In step with this development is a diversification of both content and the scope of the political public sphere, as well as a disintegration of the public sphere into separate and somewhat depoliticized publics. Additionally, there is an invigorated struggle for attention, a declining significance of the division of labor between professional authors and interested readers, and lastly, new possibilities to manipulate the public sphere. The potentials, particularly of social media, to reach a potentially infinite audience, also resonate with a general change of Western political culture: digitalization’s impact taken aside, more and more people demand to have an unmediated say in political issues.³⁶

The structural change in the political public sphere, instigated by new media, is so significant and manifold, that it is quite common in the literature to speak of a third structural transformation of the public sphere.³⁷

Like in the 19^th century, there are social and political dimensions to the digital transformation of the public sphere. Again, we can witness changes on the part of actors: the audience, formerly mere consumers, is able to change roles. Moreover, the permeation of economic and public sphere is of a new quality. This is not just due to quasi-monopolists like Google and Facebook. Felix Stalder might not use the term “refeudalization,” but his concept of post-democracy comes close to Jürgen Habermas’s diagnosis—not least because of his reliance on Marxist thought³⁸: “Rather, a new social system has emerged in which allegedly relaxed control over social activity is compensated for by a heightened level of control over the data and structural conditions pertaining to the activity itself. In this system, both the virtual and the physical world are altered to achieve specific goals – goals determined by just a few powerful actors – without the inclusion of those affected by these changes and often without them being able to notice the changes at all.”³⁹ Spoken with Habermas, the result is a democracy only in appearance, not in substance.⁴⁰

Habermas’s main concern is about the negative consequences of the public sphere’s fragmentation, hence about an erosion of structure: “A democratic system is damaged as a whole when the public sphere’s infrastructure no longer equally directs citizens’ attention to topics that are relevant and in need of decision-making as well as when the formation of competing public, and this means: qualitatively filtered, opinions can no longer be assured to occur on an adequate level.”⁴¹ The digital transformation would risk the “crumbling”⁴² of the public sphere’s infrastructure because the new media would no longer be “sucked in by the centripetal force of the traditional public sphere.”⁴³ In latest writings, Habermas utters a certain hope that learning experience will strengthen the awareness for the meaning of competence in public communication and the valuation of professional journalism.⁴⁴ Still he does not outline a path that might guide such a development.

And regardless of the now numerous research articles that find “filter bubbles” or “echo chambers” to be exceptions rather than the norm in contemporary political communication,⁴⁵ digital means of communication are undoubtedly causing a differentiation of arenas and a rollback of political spaces of communication, which have been sought out by most citizens at least occasionally. Television remains the political medium of choice, but younger people’s consumption patterns indicate that they turn increasingly to entertainment-focused streaming services such as Netflix. These platforms offer an almost infinite and border-crossing audio-visual program mainly consisting of entertainment, which allows, and even compels, personalized consumption. This, in turn, makes the “depoliticization” of political usage more likely, potentially leading not only to less interaction in the political public sphere but also to citizens no longer being able to identify their own interests. This poses a problem even for liberal approaches, in which deliberation plays a minor role, as medium-term impacts can be expected on political participation in democratic institutions like elections. The solution to the problem of collective and discursively filtered opinion and will-formation thus depends on “the direction the structural transformation of the public sphere – particularly the political public sphere – will take.”⁴⁶

In the following section, it will be argued that requirements and potentials for balancing conflicting powers within the new public sphere can be identified much better with the image of the “universe” than with the well-established center-periphery model.

2. Evolution and expansion: The public sphere as a universe

Astronomy is regarded as the oldest science. It seeks answers about the evolution of the universe and, ultimately, about the most elementary laws of science that govern space with all its galaxies, matter, and forces. Consequently, its research subject is not only of substantial complexity, but it also undergoes fundamental changes. The “dance of matter”⁴⁷ includes a constantly expanding space and appears, in many regards, chaotic. However, despite all the movement, it exhibits evident structures, processes, and stabilities, as exemplified by our solar system. Besides continuous expansion, the impossibility of reversibility is another feature of the universe. Changes cannot be undone, as much as we might wish for it.

The parallels between the universe and the sphere of political communication we describe as “public sphere” do not end with expansion and irreversibility. The public sphere may not have planets and comets, but it does have different “matters,” both in terms of properties (types of content) and movements (types of actor behavior). Moreover, the modern public sphere is characterized by numerous and, in part, conflicting forces: gravitational forces (e.g., regarding prominence, wealth, and attention) as well as centrifugal forces (e.g., regarding the drifting apart of dissimilar publics). Connected to this is a perpetual evolution which, at times, includes the disappearance of intermediaries, positions, and actors, but which, in principle, shows a growing diversity of matters.

Authors like Marshall McLuhan took these parallels to speak of a “galaxy.” This metaphor was able to capture the transformation of the public sphere caused by the distribution of new technologies—in the case of McLuhan, mainly of television. The growth of publicly accessible contents, the expansion of the audience capable of receiving it, and the relations among the public itself received particular attention at the time.⁴⁸ Additionally, today’s digitally induced transformations imply spatial metaphors because they instigate developments that are not restricted to topics, actors, and media types/titles, but that also include spatiotemporal expansion: in the digitalized public sphere, language borders prove to be surmountable, among others with visuals; the same goes for the temporal bind of many offers. For instance, contents which had been broadcasted linearly, and which were also mainly received as such in “the age of television,”⁴⁹ are nowadays accessed individually and asynchronously. McLuhan describes children in western countries as being “surrounded by an abstract explicit visual technology of uniform time and uniform continuous space in which ‘cause’ is efficient and sequential, and things move and happen on single planes and in successive order.”⁵⁰ While the technology’s portrayal could be of a similar nature today, the uniformity of space and time has ended with the digital age.

Print media never had to be consumed immediately, but in comparison to digital contents, they are equally volatile: for example, it is still difficult for individual “users” to muddy or fully remove their digital footprints—a problem that is not only due to the restrictions of law or decentralized storage systems.⁵¹ It is only in the “darknet” that traces of communication can be minimized. However, the opportunities of, in principle, unrestricted access come with the closedness of a peer-to-peer network. The “universe” metaphor also proves useful for the description of these spaces of communication and their interaction with the public sphere.

While overall numbers and speaker roles were limited until the end of the 20^th century, in today’s digital world, even outside of the “darknet,” it is difficult to establish a reliable link between authorship and personality. “Social bots” are increasingly deployed to create a false appearance of interpersonality in communication settings.⁵² There is no longer a passive public and a group of active speakers; conversely, the everyday life of modern communication is marked by a disparity or overlap of roles. For instance, micro blogging accounts of journalists might be formally declared as “private accounts,” but in terms of content, they are hybrids of personal opinions as well as professional skills and insights.

Complex, often difficult to trace relations of power also give structure to interactions and relationships in the public sphere. Established structures like the status of key media or the relevancy of news, continue to exist under conditions of digitality.⁵³ However, there are also centrifugal forces which can, for instance, facilitate the development of closed-off publics (so-called “echo chambers”).⁵⁴ The risk of fragmentation into countless, more or less visible, publics (“Teilöffentlichkeiten”) is one of the main challenges for democratic theory as it would be problematic to do without integrative communication. This has several reasons: while liberalism links citizen competency with the options to inform oneself, republican and deliberative models of the public sphere rely on a public exchange of opinions.⁵⁵ Instead, radical democratic theories call for the citizenry to engage in dissensus.⁵⁶

Using “universe” instead of “galaxy” as a metaphor for the contemporary political public sphere makes sense not only because of the significance of fragmentation. The term sensitizes us for the infiniteness of contemporary public space, the plurality of matters, forces, and energies, as well as different temporal structures. It also protects us from adopting one-sided perspectives that mistake digitalization—as highlighted by Armin Nassehi—for a disruptive force: “digital practices and routines, detector functions and areas of applications might be discussed as disruptive, even liquifying appearances; but they indicate the exact opposite, the weird stability of the societal thing, its patterns and its structure.”⁵⁷ Instead, the metaphor of the “universe” follows Jeanette Hoffmann’s understanding of the relationship between democracy and digitalization as a complex “constellation”⁵⁸ that allows us to examine manifold interdependencies as an alternative to the view of digitalization unilaterally causing changes to the public sphere. Just like matter can change itself, its position, it is a constitutive condition of digitalization that the analog is not simply disappearing.⁵⁹ Rather, it finds a new context, it is valorized, and, in parts, also revalued.

Undoubtedly, the influence of intentional behavior separates the “cosmos” from the public sphere. Public interactions are subject to far more complex factors than “just” the laws of physics. However, this dissimilarity does not pose a problem for the chosen metaphor. Human behavior can be considered just another factor that—like other forces in the universe—is difficult to predict but affects various constellations. Therefore, the capacity to exert influence by way of intentional behavior, which itself is shaped by social, emotional, and other constraints, not only aligns with the proposed metaphor but also enhances its political scientific relevance. This is because the striving for an equilibrium in the “public universe” does not appear to be guided by the laws of nature, but rather sheds light on the potential for intervention and design through human and social forces. The metaphor helps not only with the diagnosis and determination of changes within the political public sphere but also with identifying the aim of the “public universe”: the gravitation towards an equilibrium.

It is one of the most central objects and achievements of space research in the sciences that the universe is understood not just as chaos but as a cosmos. For this is not only necessary to understand the relations of power and to search for equilibria, so-called librations. Assuming also the existence of intentional creative powers, contemporary political science should look in a similar vein at the challenges that make up this seemingly chaotic public sphere resisting to be tamed. Modern, liberal democracies rely not only fundamentally on the mere existence of a political public sphere, but also on this complex sphere’s capacity to develop forces of gravitation and points of libration. Therefore, it is also necessary to identify potential points of libration and to initiate or facilitate processes that are supportive of public sphere equilibria which are conducive for the functioning of democracies.

3. Cosmos, not chaos: Creating gravitational forces and points of libration

Gravitation is responsible for the emergence and maintenance of structures in the universe—yet, at the same time, gravity is a relatively weak force.⁶⁰ The structuring force of gravity is not developed in the context of singular star explosions, but when different fields of gravity merge where a much larger number of elements is gathering. Consequently, equilibria are the result of various forces coming together, most of whom having only a small influence on the whole.

There is similar in the political public sphere: each political contribution, every tweet, and every article, are a part of this sphere, but their respective meanings are far from being able to form “patterns”⁶¹ which can determine their collective image and creative effectual structures from it. The digital public sphere in particular is characterized by referentiality and communality⁶²—two aspects which, in principle, can help to give the contemporary public sphere a democratic functionality. This should not be taken for granted. Arguably, the political integration of a plurality of contribution forms and programmatic offers is a challenge for the democratic public sphere.

Alongside the generation and integration of attention, among the main functions of the political public sphere is also opinion formation, that is, the reflection of different opinions and their respective implications. According to Jürgen Habermas, already the interweaving of the public and private realm heavily restricted the unfolding of the “bourgeoise public sphere” within the age of mass media. Now, in the digital age, the equilibrium of rationality (“Räsonnement”) and integration is, for Habermas, even further in imbalance. The structure of communication, which enabled democracy, is presently in decline—with clear “realpolitikal” implications. Habermas gives the election of Donald Trump as US President in 2016 as an example. For him, it resulted from the circumstance that “the infrastructure of a politically functional public sphere has fragmented so much that the streams of information necessary for a democratic election”⁶³ were interrupted in the United States.

Thus, digitalization has indeed the potential for destruction—but this does not necessarily have to be the case. Besides a growing number of examples which show manipulation and vested power structures—mainly in favor of the few tech giants like Google and Facebook—there are also positive developments that are closely related to new technological opportunities: the “Arab spring,” for example, is not just a consequence of communication on social media, but of how social media actively facilitated democratic forces in the given political constellation.⁶⁴ Also discourses on equality like #MeeToo or #BlackLivesMatter profit from media like X/Twitter and their affordances of openness and attention as.

The diagnosis of a fundamental decline of structures of democratic public spheres is as wrong as the hopes that idealize the egalitarian potential of digital media. Present research on political public spheres should thus not focus on judging today’s constellation, but it should apply itself to the search, identification, and creation of “points of libration” in the “public universe.” Research focusing on instruments of repression and bans—first and foremost in the political public sphere—is not likely to be successful: too plural, versatile, and disguisable are appearances and sources of digital communication.⁶⁵ Instead, we should use the new technologies’ democratic potentials and, at the same time, we should counterbalance problematic developments of today’s political public sphere.

The essence of “electric fields,” for instance, between equal access and abstraction of individual needs, is not new or unique, as Habermas’s critique of the structural transformation caused by mass media shows. The balancing act between freedom and equality is a topos within the history of ideas, and this is also true for other themes of democratic thought. While “traditional” mass media were able to contribute to the integration of political (language) fields, new media provoke the effectiveness of centrifugal forces. Even if media consumption is not going to retreat mainly into closed echo chambers, recipients are now using a less pluralist offer regarding political contents and information. It is characterized by fewer intersections since it is targeted towards specific interests, opinions, and world views.

This phenomenon is not only threatening to contribute to an increasing polarization of opinions,⁶⁶ but it also intensifies the struggle for attention. The struggle for attention is supported by tools and techniques which are more counterproductive for rather than supportive of political information as well as opinion- and will-formation: tabloidization and infotainment were key terms in political communication research of mainly the 1990s;⁶⁷ today the focus is on visualization trends,⁶⁸ singularization,⁶⁹ and dissonance/avoidance.⁷⁰

On the one hand, to inform citizens about their political interests, the 21^st century needs an offer oriented towards personal interests and other individual dispositions—for example, the finite time available for gathering political information, affluence, willingness to spend money, and prior knowledge—that exists in the context of an increasingly individualized society. Arguably, it is in the interest of user-number-driven providers to develop algorithms that reflect this development. On the other hand, it is necessary, both for individual information and societal integration, that “cross-cutting information”⁷¹ reach the citizenry. A new balance where socio-integrative forces get systematically strengthened needs to be established. It should aim to nurture a political culture that can create a balance between liberal-economic and democratic-egalitarian forces.

The model of “sluices” alone is not a good enough foundation for this, for it implies a societal importance of educational elites and professional communicators that can no longer be automatically assumed under conditions of digitality. Moreover, it underestimates the democratic value of open media which allows, also without civil society acting as a “sluice”, processes of political subjectivation, thematic innovation, participation, and solidarization to unfold—including beyond the purview of the state.

Therefore, there is no need for functional equivalents of positions and roles of the 20^th century’s public sphere structure, but rather for the balancing out of different structures and forces so that today’s political public sphere can harness the opportunities of digital technologies for democratic life—without being distorted by new relations of power, logics, and structures. It can then fulfill its democratic functions more effectively. (Increased) consensus within the citizenry can be—as pushed for by deliberative theory—the result of processes of opinion-formation in a successfully balanced out political public sphere. However, it is not a characteristic of the act of balancing itself. For example, the existence of “social bots” is far less problematic for the quality of democratic election campaigns, when a) it is well-known that these options to manipulate exist, and hence competing actors monitor each other in this regard, and b) citizens are adept to at least suspect manipulations if their social media accounts promote exclusively and aggressively a certain opinion. A balance of power between competing forces can thus be achieved, in the first case, through improved media competency and, in the second case, through interaction in a plural constellation of actors. Nevertheless, this will not lead to a consensus between competing opinions on its own.

Furthermore, it is necessary to focus on the importance of cultural factors for the democratic public sphere and to take them up to guide political practice: the cultural “parallel world for the formal structures of division of powers and representation”⁷² did not just emerge in the 21^st century as a condition for a healthy democratic public sphere. Joshua Cohen described “commitment to the resolution of problems of collective choice”⁷³ as a condition of democracy already in the 1980s. Yet, compared to regulation measures, current discourse often underestimates the importance as well as moldability of political culture. This is despite empirical evidence of the influence of cultural factors on contemporary structures and deficits in the political public sphere; for instance, Settle⁷⁴ shows that political attitudes and identities are of major importance for polarization, Iyengar et al.⁷⁵ suggest there is an affective element to them.

Regulations, for example, about how to deal with personal user profiles, are undoubtedly important for enshrining significant (e.g., liberal) qualities of the public sphere. Lawful procedures that protect a close to fulfillment realization of the ambitious “ideal speech situation,” which allows for reasonable cooperation and unforced argumentation, also need institutionalization in the digital universe.⁷⁶ Conversely, the exclusion of the “invisible institutions”⁷⁷ from the reflection on the political public sphere can easily lead to a misperception of incapacity to act and lack of alternatives.

It is not only on the state to nurture a democratic political culture in the political public sphere. Equally important are civil society, and transnational actors, because points of libration are just as unhindered by national borders as the flow of information in social media. Ernst Fraenkel’s “parallelogram of forces,”⁷⁸ part of his neo-corporatist theory, assumes a new meaning against this backdrop: indeed, states (today also federations of states) are tasked with balancing out power inequalities between different societal groups. Fraenkel’s concept of groups, though, must be extended today: important are not only vested interests (for Fraenkel: mainly corporations and churches) but also social movements and other provisional groups that are characterized by a diversity of opinions and interests. What Fraenkel had feared, the dissolution of pluralist groups, mainly (and in a particular way, political) organizations, into “a mass of isolated individuals,” might have become a reality in the society of “singularities.”⁷⁹ But unlike in Fraenkel’s prediction, mass media have not acquired the power to effect uniform opinion-formation.⁸⁰ And while mass and corporate society are far from being a reality, the state also needs to look after weakly organized interests. Thus, not only should corporations and associations get state funding and become integrated into the “parallelogram of forces,” but other forms of interest organization also have to be—as they were in the “Agenda 21” which was agreed at the UN in 1992.

Moreover, it is crucial that state actors begin to recognize that, in the digital constellation, the structures of the political public sphere are not just out there but must be created and shaped. The influence of neoliberal thinking in contemporary society might explain the lack of such activities, but it cannot be blamed for lack of opportunities for action.

Experiences with such processes of structuration exist: the foundation of public broadcasters can be seen as an example of attempts to structure the political public sphere.⁸¹ The state-controlled availability of high-quality, reliable, and non-partisan news channels is today as important as ever. Nevertheless, it is time to adapt the structure of public broadcasters to the new relations of power: the number of transmission frequencies is no longer a limit to the creation and funding of an extensive and balanced offer of political information. The risk that vested interests come to rule (“Vermachtung”) is still valid. But the risk applies to print media as well as broadcasters. Regarding the level of local and regional information, Germany has here now a serious deficit—not least also because much less people want to pay for accessing it. Despite this, state funding is awarded mainly to public county broadcasters. Similarly, policymakers have mostly outsourced the—quite important—planning for new, potentially also European platforms to the ARD, Germany’s first public broadcaster. It is vital to show greater political commitment and to separate public service functions from print, radio, and television, as though there are no alternatives.

Besides the support of digital platforms that create a counterbalance to one-sided offers of political information and opinions, political education plays a key role for the digital public universe. However, when aiming to systematically unfold socio-integrative forces, public financing of separate projects is not enough. A corresponding education program must be considered as well—not least within the frame of mandatory school education. The “social conscience,” partially responsible for why US-American whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked secret information, develops, among others, in educational offers. And in an age where information has become the central “form of reflexion,”⁸² individual awareness for information ethics becomes increasingly important.⁸³

Next to the two perspectives just named as potential contributions to a “democratic equilibrium” in the structure of the digitalized public sphere, we could think of many other examples—yet it must be noted that no single solution can be expected to garner significant gravitational force. In a fundamentally unstable universe, even a more comprehensive list of potential balancing-measures could never claim conclusiveness or durability—and it is for this reason that I choose not to present further examples here. Instead, the essay will now return to its main argument: the appeal for understanding the political public sphere as a communicative universe that needs to create points of libration to ensure democratic quality and structuration.

4. Conclusion: This might be (political) rocket science

The libration of discourses in the modern public universe is a herculean task for contemporary democracy. Making this clearly visible was the main objective of this essay. Undoubtedly, trolls, fake news, echo chambers, and social bots, interfere with the delivery of democratic functions by the political public sphere. And yet, they—as well as other new phenomena—will continue to be a part of the public universe.

The problem of fragmentation, as described by Habermas and others, is not solvable as such under conditions of digitalization. Therefore, responding to the new characteristics of the political public sphere is among the main challenges of the present constellation. Apart from supporting a lawful framework, a political culture needs to be nurtured that is conducive to balancing out or integrating the diverse forces of structuration within the political public sphere, as well as to the targeted, state-funded revitalization of socially integrating elements.

The structures of the public sphere, as highlighted by Jürgen Habermas in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, are of democratic importance, and they are also moldable. Unlike Harold Lasswell’s or Edward Bernay’s propaganda studies, published in the early 20^th century, Habermas’s habilitation thesis sheds a light on the importance of discursive elements that are not vested in interests, or which have been freed of them.

Against this backdrop, technological progress should not only be examined superficially based on its capacity to support the expansion or inclusion of a greater number of interlocutors. It is also necessary to develop an understanding of media logics as well as the possibilities and processes of harnessing them for vested interests. Academia must assume a leadership role in this regard.

Just as previous technological innovations, digitalization has within the last 30 years instigated transformative processes in the structure of the political public sphere that have the potential to undermine democracy, but which also bear opportunities for successful political discourses. Against the grain of contemporary public sphere research, this essay has not considered these transformative processes as being left without an alternative. Without a doubt, they are irreversible in the sense that Habermas’s ideal, the bourgeois public sphere with its salons, is not going to return as the dominant medium of cooperative political reflection. However, it would be equally wrong to suspect that societal development is happening in “absence of alternatives.”⁸⁴

The resolution of “the gradient between enlightened self-interest and public good, between the roles of clients and citizens”⁸⁵ has always been among the most difficult tasks of democratic theory. It leads towards a balancing act that characterizes not only the present literature on deliberative, but also liberal and republican democratic theory. All have in common that they rely on an active political public sphere as this is where diverging interests can appear and where their translation into political decision can be prepared. With digital media, these processes have become (even) more complex than they were under conditions of “traditional” mass media.

This is a challenge for 21^st century Political Science. Under these conditions it is more than ever comparable to “rocket science,” the most complex of sciences. Identification as well as balancing of today’s gravitational and centrifugal forces becomes a core task for our discipline. To research it, we need empirical observation, description—even of phenomena that are not immediately visible and measurable—as well as closely connecting the findings with sophisticated theoretical concepts and objectives. The impacts of algorithms must be examined by political scientists just as the knowledge of the citizenry. There must be research on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter) just as on The New York Time or the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. It is vital to reconceptualize terms like privacy and to develop normative standards for balanced political public spheres. Many further examples could be named, and each of them is complex and ambitious—their integration is a particular challenge. However, considering the fundamental importance of the political public sphere for democracy, there is no other way than to proceed with this task.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Claudia Ritzi

Notes

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