Bringing together contributions from the fields of sociology, media and cultural studies, arts, politics, science and technology studies, political communication theory and popular culture studies, this volume engages both with theoretical debates and detailed empirical studies, showcasing how the public sphere is transformed by digital media, and in turn how this digital public sphere shapes and is shaped by debates surrounding crisis, conflict, migration and culture. Case studies from Bulgaria, Nigeria, China, Greece, Italy, Cyprus, UK, Mexico and India are discussed in detail.

Jürgen Habermas’s book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, first published in 1962, has long been recognized as one of the most important works of twentieth-century social thought. Blending philosophy and social history, it offered an account of the public sphere as a domain that mediates between civil society and the state in which citizens could discuss matters of common concern and participate in democratic decision-making through the formation of public opinion. Now, in view of the digital revolution and the resulting crisis of democracy, he returns to this important topic. In this new book Habermas focuses on digital media, in particular social media, which are increasingly relegating traditional mass media to the background. While the new media initially promised to empower users, this promise is being undermined by their algorithm-steered platform structure that promotes self-enclosed informational ‘bubbles’ and discursive ‘echo chambers’ in which users split into a plurality of pseudo-publics that are largely closed off from one other. Habermas argues that, without appropriate regulation of digital media, this new structural transformation is in danger of hollowing out the institutions through which democracies can shape social and economic processes and address urgent collective problems, ranging from growing social inequality to the climate crisis.

The disruptive transformation of the "public" through digitization has led to monopolizing structures on the Internet that make Europe dependent – both at an infrastructural level and politically – on non-European private and state players. At the same time, these structures undermine our democratic order. This book shows how the current crisis could boost our chances of breaking new ground by establishing an independent European Digital Public Space. The contributors are academics, actors from public and non-commercial media, and long-time activists in the field of the Commons.

In light of the increased utilization of information technologies, such as social media and the ‘Internet of Things,’ this book investigates how this digital transformation process creates new challenges and opportunities for political participation, political election campaigns and political regulation of the Internet. Within the context of Western democracies and China, the contributors analyze these challenges and opportunities from three perspectives: the regulatory state, the political use of social media, and through the lens of the public sphere. The first part of the book discusses key challenges for Internet regulation, such as data protection and censorship, while the second addresses the use of social media in political communication and political elections. In turn, the third and last part highlights various opportunities offered by digital media for online civic engagement and protest in the public sphere. Drawing on different academic fields, including political science, communication science, and journalism studies, the contributors raise a number of innovative research questions and provide fascinating theoretical and empirical insights into the topic of digital transformation.

This book explores how new media technologies such as e-mails, online forums, blogs and social networking sites have helped shape new forms of public spheres. Offering new readings of Jürgen Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, scholars from diverse disciplines interrogate the power and possibilities of new media in creating and disseminating public information; changing human communication at the interpersonal, institutional and societal levels; and affecting our self-fashioning as private and public individuals. Beginning with philosophical approaches to the subject, the book goes on to explore the innovative deployment of new media in areas as diverse as politics, social activism, piracy, sexuality, ethnic identity and education. The book will immensely interest those in media, culture and gender studies, philosophy, political science, sociology and anthropology.

This sixth volume in Christian Fuchs' Media, Communication and Society series draws on radical Humanist theory to address questions around the digital public sphere and the challenges and opportunities for digital democracy today. The book discusses topics such as digital democracy, the digital public sphere, digital alienation, sustainability in digital democracy, journalism and democracy, public service media, the public service Internet, and democratic communications. Fuchs argues for the creation of a public service Internet run by public serviceMedia that consists of platforms such as a public service YouTube and Club 2.0, a renewed digital democracy and digital public sphere version of the legendary debate programme formats Club 2 and After Dark. Overall, the book presents foundations and analyses of digital democracy that are interesting for both students and researchers in media studies, cultural studies, communication studies, political science, sociology, Internet research, information science, as well as related disciplines.

From fake news to infringement of privacy in digital spheres, the changing landscapes of media and public communication have completely transformed contemporary democracies in recent decades. Disruptions of media functioning can be seen as evidence for a transition from democracy to post-democracy, but how plausible is this scenario? Using empirical evidence, the author asks how imminent the threat of the end of democracy is, and how it can be restored. Exploring the creative and destructive ways individuals and groups make use of new digital and social media in democratic societies across the world, the book presents a much-needed critical theory of the public sphere as we enter the new digital age.

The main focus of the book is institutional change in the Scandinavian model, with special emphasis on Norway. There are many reasons to pay closer attention to the Norwegian case when it comes to analyses of changes in the public sphere. In the country’s political history, the arts and the media played a particular role in the processes towards sovereignty at the beginning of the 20th century. On a par with the other Scandinavian countries, Norway is in the forefront in the world in the distribution and uses of Internet technology. As an extreme case, the most corporatist society within the family of the “Nordic Model”, it offers an opportunity both for intriguing case studies and for challenging and refining existing theory on processes of institutional change in media policy and cultural policy. It supplements two recent, important books on political economy in Scandinavia: Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (Kathleen Thelen, 2014), and The Political Construction of Business Interests (Cathie Jo Martin and Duane Swank, 2013). There are further reasons to pay particular attention to the Scandinavian, and more specifically the Norwegian cases: (i) They are to varying degrees neo-corporatist societies, characterized by ongoing bargaining over social and political reform processes. From a theoretical perspective this invites reflections which, to some extent, are at odds with the dominant conceptions of institutional change. Neither models of path dependency nor models of aggregate, incremental change focus on the continuous social bargaining over institutional change. (ii) Despite recent processes of liberalization, common to the Western world as a whole, corporatism implies a close connection between state, public sphere, cultural life, and religion. This also means that institutions are closely bundled, in an even stronger way than assumed for example in the Varieties of Capitalism literature. Furthermore, we only have scarce insight in the way the different spheres of corporatism are connected and interact. In the proposed edited volume we have collected historical-institutional case studies from a broad set of social fields (a detailed outline of contents and contributors is attached): • Critical assessments of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere • Can the public sphere be considered an institution? • The central position of the public sphere in social and political change in Norway • Digital transformations and effects of the growing PR industry on the public sphere • Institutionalization of social media in local politics and voluntary organizations • Legitimation work in the public sphere • freedom of expression and warning in the workplace • “Return of religion” to the public sphere, and its effects