DIGITAL PUBLIC SPHERE Mike S. Schäfer Published in Mazzoleni, Gianpietro et al. (2015, Eds.): The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication. London: Wiley Blackwell. Pp. 322-328. ABSTRACT The emergence and existence of a digital public sphere has been an issue of intense theoretical debate and numerous empirical studies. Scholars have tried to establish whether and to what extent an online equivalent, or substitute, for the seemingly deficient ‘old’ public sphere has developed. They have analyzed whether participation in online and social media is open and visible to all, how communication is structured in terms of content, reciprocity and style, and what effects such debates have on participants as well as decision-makers. Overall, they have shown that the digital public sphere tends to successfully make diverse actors and their positions visible, and at least sometimes influences other fora and collectively binding decision-making. Studies have also shown that although digital public spheres exhibit a range of communicative styles, they only rarely conform to ideas of rationality and civility as advocated by participatory, deliberative theory. Several labels have been proposed for the “digital”, “virtual”, or “online” public sphere, each of them tied to a somewhat different understanding of the phenomenon in question. But there are a number of common denominators: Researchers envision the digital public sphere as a communicative sphere provided or supported by online or social media – from websites to social network sites, weblogs and micro-blogs – where participation is open and freely available to everybody who is interested, where matters of common concern can be discussed, and where proceedings are visible to all. Beyond these commonalities, the existing schools of public sphere theory differ in what kinds of communication they consider desirable (see Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Wessler, 2008): Proponents of a participatory public sphere advocate rational, civil and consensus-oriented deliberation. Liberal theorists call for a communication whose structures represent the relative power of societal stakeholders as measured, for example, by elections. Constructionist or agonistic traditions of public sphere theory also call for, or at least allow for, narrative, emotional, confrontational or even disruptive kinds of communication which may be more suitable, and therefore more empowering, to certain social groups. 1 The ‘Old’ Public Sphere and its (Perceived) Limitations The potential emergence of a digital public sphere has received a lot of scholarly attention in recent years because it has been conceptualized as a complement, or even substitute, to the pre-existing, ‘old’ public sphere which is widely seen as a crucial element of modern democracies. Although public sphere theory has advanced different concepts, as shown above, most studies have envisioned the digital public sphere along the lines of deliberative theory, that is as the heir to the Greek ideal of the Agora, to New England-style colonial-era town hall meetings, Parisian café culture or Viennese salon discussions of previous centuries. In this view, the public sphere is seen as a communicative space in which matters of common relevance are discussed by those affected and interested, in a way that fulfils a number of ambitious normative criteria (cf. Dahlberg, 2004): Statements should consist of arguments, supported by an appropriate reasoning whose validity can then be checked by others. The best arguments should prevail. Participants should try to understand the other’s arguments, and aim to see the situation from their point of view. Everybody should be honest and open, making a sincere effort to come to a joint conclusion. All interested parties should be allowed and enabled to participate, and it should be possible to discuss all kinds of issues. Jürgen Habermas, and others, argued that these ambitious demands are not fulfilled in contemporary societies, mainly due to a “structural transformation of the public sphere” (Habermas, 1989) during which the mass media emerged as a major but deficient forum of public debate. He criticized that mass media, and commercial mass media in particular, do not further deliberation. They have to drastically reduce complexity in their coverage so that only a fraction of all issues, actors, and arguments can be published. This is problematic, according to Habermas, because the mass media’s ways of selecting and presenting issues are biased by economic pressures and political preferences. As a result, mass media are seen as a strongly power-influenced (“vermachtet”) forum of communication which privileges powerful and institutionalized actors while excluding smaller institutions and civil society – effectively undermining the public sphere. This critique has resonated widely amongst scholars, and even gained in importance and urgency in light of individualization and de-politicization processes taking place in many countries. 2 The Ambivalent Promises of the Digital Public Sphere Against this backdrop, many scholars have interpreted the advent of online media as a second structural transformation of the public sphere. With the rise of individual websites and search engines in the early 1990s, the increasing availability of information online, and with growing online audiences, scholars argued that these new media have the potential to fundamentally change societal communication, and revive the public sphere. Accordingly, a large number of scholarly works has dealt with the digital public sphere. Particularly in the early years, i.e. in the 1990s and early 2000s, these were mostly theoretical or essayist accounts which put forward strong hopes and fears regarding to the development of an online public sphere and its effects on society. On the one hand, “cyber-optimist” (Oates, 2008), “utopian” (Papacharissi, 2002, p. 9) or “net-enthusiast” (Dahlberg, 1998, p. 70) positions emphasized the potential advantages of a digital public sphere. Three interconnected facets have been mentioned most often in this respect:  Firstly, scholars have pointed towards the relatively open, easy and fast access to information that online media provide. Therefore, the aims, positions and activities of various stakeholders, from political institutions over corporations, universities and churches to NGOs might easily be studied online, with an unprecedented wealth of information and an enormous diversity of positions being available to everybody. This wealth of information, which participants might otherwise not encounter in their lives and which is presented to them in novel, interactive and potentially more accessible ways, has been argued to lead to more reflection about own and others’ standpoints, to more care in discussing issues, and to better public debates.  Secondly, scholars emphasized that online media enable more people to make their voices heard in society. After all, content can be posted rather easily online, without the interference of gate-keeping journalists, and “connective action” (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012) enables user-to-user communication which is less dependent on large-scale infrastructure and also more difficult for authorities to contain. All this might “empower” those who have always wanted to engage in public debate but were previously marginalized by traditional media, e.g. individuals vis-à-vis institutions, smaller vis-à-vis larger, more powerful organizations, dissidents vis-à-vis authoritarian governments, or stakeholders from pe3 ripheral regions or developmental countries vis-à-vis ‘Western’, first-world stakeholders.  Thirdly, optimist scholars have argued that online media may help to produce new kinds of communication altogether. Collaborative social media such as Wikis in particular have been seen as facilitators of a novel, decentralized, networked production of communication and content (Benkler, 2006). Given that this production aims at non-market goods by employing non-market means, it has been portrayed as an effective way of circumventing the commercial logic that influences traditional media communication. These optimistic views were contrasted by cyber-pessimist perspectives, who from early on have pointed out a number of potential problems concerning digital public spheres:  Firstly, they were skeptical about the degree of peoples’ participation in digital public spheres. They pointed out multiple digital divides, i.e. differences between people, social strata or world regions in accessing the internet as well as in the ability of utilizing it. As a result, they argued, not everybody could participate equally online, and that certain strata, groups or regions would likely be excluded.  Secondly, they also questioned the diversity of online debates (e.g., Gerhards & Schäfer, 2010). Cyber-pessimists argued that even among those who do participate, there is a danger of a fragmentation into small communities of like-minded people. This has a technological side: Search engine algorithms, and other websites as well, provide users with information that is deemed suitable based on additional information about, for example, past search behaviour. In turn, they “hide” other information, producing so-called “filter bubbles” (Pariser, 2011) that users may not be aware of. The rise of social media has given this phenomenon an inherently social component, too: In such media, users can decide for themselves whom to follow or what content to receive, and, accordingly, may filter out perspectives that seem foreign to them. This has been hypothesized to lead to an “echo chamber” effect in which certain views are not challenged but rather echoed and, consequently, fortified in online communities (Sunstein, 2001, 2009). Individuals would then not be exposed to different positions, and might be less motivated to reflect their own perspectives. In addition, they might reach fewer people in digital public spheres than they themselves expect, leading to a “false sense of empowerment” (Papacharissi, 2002: 16f.). While individuals 4 might feel to be a part of an online public sphere, they might not actually encounter opposing views, while still devoting time and energy to this endeavour that they then cannot devote to other forms of civic engagement.  Thirdly, pessimists have also been concerned with the question of what topics would be discussed in online media. They have been wary about political and particularly economic influences in this respect – a leitmotif already strongly present in Habermas’ work – and argued that economic interests would commodify online communication and drive them towards de-politicization and consumerism.  Fourthly, regarding how people communicate online, cyber-pessimists have been concerned that the conditions for public debate online may lead to particular kinds of communication: Some argued that the clear sense of the other and his or her identity, and the accompanying social obligations stemming from face-toface meetings are absent online, and that therefore engaging in rational debate is unlikely. While more emotional, confrontational debates and phenomena like “trolling” would not necessarily be problematic when viewed from an agnostic, constructionist perspective on the public sphere, they are not desirable from participatory, deliberative standpoints. These cyber-optimist and pessimist viewpoints mark two sides of a continuum with many more nuanced views inbetween, and a lively debate still ongoing. Optimist scholars have directly refuted pessimist claims and vice versa. And because many assumptions are essentially empirical ones, ongoing research has resolved or mitigated a number of conflicts between the two sides, led to a smaller number of grand assumptions about the potential – or lack thereof – of digital public spheres, and shown that “it is the balance between utopian and dystopian visions that unveils the true nature of the internet as a public sphere.” (Papacharissi, 2002, p. 21) Research Findings on the Digital Public Sphere First of all, studies have documented that even though online content is not solely and maybe not even primarily concerned with issues of common concern, there is a wealth of information and diverse voices to be found online on such issues as well. “It is here where the Internet most obviously makes a contribution to the public sphere. There are literally thousands of Web sites having to do with the political realm at the local, national, and global levels; some are partisan, most are not. We can find discussion groups, 5 chat rooms, alternative journalism, civic organizations, NGOs, grass roots issueadvocacy sites[,] and voter education sites”, so that overall, “[o]ne can see an expansion in terms of available communicative spaces for politics, as well as ideological breadth, compared to the mass media” (Dahlgren, 2005, p. 152). This has both advantages and disadvantages: On the positive side, studies have shown that blogs, for example, indeed contain more alternative viewpoints on current affairs than mainstream mass media. On the other side, the diversity that can be found online also includes racist, extremist or otherwise deviant viewpoints. Such a wealth of information and viewpoints, however, can still give rise to very different kinds of communication. A second research finding, which has repeatedly been shown, is that digital public spheres conform more closely to the demands of agnostic, constructionist theory than to those of deliberative, participatory theory: Even though political discussions online are more toned down and civil than discussions on other issues, they tend to differ strongly from rational, civil deliberation. Participants often meander off topic, use unpleasant or abusive wording and ad hominem attacks, make claims not backed up by arguments or abstain from rational argumentation altogether, and use their social position in the given platform to delegitimize opposing views, or drive away opponents. A third, related research finding is that the digital public sphere has been shown to be fragmented in various ways. Some scholars distinguish different kinds of publics that exist alongside each other. One example are ‘issue publics’, emerging around topics such as abortion, biotechnology, vaccination or global warming, and another one are ‘counter-publics’, i.e. online fora that have emerged in opposition to a (perceived) mainstream public sphere, particularly in authoritarian states such as China or certain Arab countries. Other scholars distinguish different online ‘channels’ such as the blogosphere, micro-blogging, discussion boards etc., or various “domains” including an egovernment domain, an advocacy or activist domain or a journalism domain, all of which are considered to be elements of the digital public sphere (Dahlberg, 2007). Such diversity may indeed be seen as being part of a single digital public sphere – when this sphere is defined in a basic way as an online communicative sphere where participation is open and freely available to everybody who is interested to discuss matters of common concern. Proponents of more ambitious theories of the public sphere, emphasizing dialogue and mutual appreciation between participants, may not consider such a variety to be part of the same public sphere. 6 Fourthly, when surveying the literature on the digital public sphere, it has to be noted that the effects of digital public spheres are still largely unknown and may be rather small. On the one hand, this is true for potential effects on the participants themselves: Surveys among politically interested internet users have shown that they come across more diverse political viewpoints online than others, and that they sometimes specifically seek out such opposing views. But the long-term effects of this exposure are unclear, and it is unclear to how many and what groups these findings apply. On the other hand, the effects of the digital public sphere on politics are also far from established: Some studies show strong effects of online communication in specific instances, e.g. of active and critical debates in a US online discussion forum on the country’s agricultural policy (Zavestoski, Shulman, & Schlosberg, 2006), while others document how politicians (have learned to) ignore the growing numbers of online initiatives with which they are confronted (e.g. Wright, 2007). This may be particularly true in cases such as supranational (e.g. EU) politics, where the distance between decision-makers and citizens is vast. There may be these and other, more long-term effects of online debates on political institutions and democratic will formation, of course, but these still have to be convincingly shown. Future Perspectives In spite of the large number of scholarly works on the issue, it is not easy to determine the extent to which a digital public sphere exists, or its impacts on society. This is partly due, first of all, to conceptual disagreements and a number of different normative viewpoints among public sphere theorists, which often make it difficult to decide when talking of a digital public sphere is justified and what (normative) criteria should be applied to it. Even when approaching digital public spheres from a coherent theoretical perspective, finding such an answer can be difficult: From the participatory, deliberative perspective which many researchers have adopted, it may be desirable to see that online and social media make more and also marginalized actors and positions available – but at the same time, the lack of rational and civil debate online has to be evaluated negatively. With these caveats in mind, it is safe to state that communicative fora exist online that give rise to public debates which, at least at times, influence other fora and feed into finding collectively binding decisions. This conclusion needs to be further substantiated, however, and the conditions under which such digital public spheres blossom should be 7 further scrutinized. It is also necessary to establish more conclusive answers on the use and effectiveness of digital public spheres, both on the participants themselves and beyond. In addition, it has to be clarified in the future whether several recent conceptualizations and developments should be considered parts of such a digital public sphere. The most important such debate revolves around ‘personal’ or ‘private’ publics (e.g. Papacharissi, 2010; Schmidt, 2013), with scholars arguing that while communicative fora online have indeed multiplied and are used extensively, they differ from established understandings of a traditional public spheres in their aims, in the selection of topics which often goes far beyond politics or other issues of common concern, as well as in other facets. SEE ALSO: Public Sphere; Jürgen Habermas, Internet, Social Media, Participation, Public Opinion FURTHER READING: Dahlberg, L. (2004). Net-public Sphere Research: Beyond the “First Phase”. Javnost-the Public, 11(1). Dahlgren, P. (2005). The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation. Political Communication, 22(2), 147-162. Papacharissi, Z. (2002). The virtual sphere: the internet as a public sphere. New Media and Society, 4(1), 9-27. Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A Private Sphere. Democracy in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity. References: Benkler, Y. (2006). The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press. Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The Logic of Connective Action. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5), 739–768. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2012.670661 Dahlberg, L. (1998). Cyberspace and the Public Sphere: Exploring the Democratic Potential of the Net. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 4(1), 70–84. doi:10.1177/135485659800400108 Dahlberg, L. (2007). Rethinking the fragmentation of the cyberpublic: from consensus to contestation. New Media & Society, 9(5), 827–847. doi:10.1177/1461444807081228 Ferree, M. M., Gamson, W. A., Gerhards, J., & Rucht, D. (2002). Four models of the public sphere in modern democracies. Theory and Society, 31, 289–324. Gerhards, J., & Schäfer, M. (2010). Is the Internet a Better Public Sphere? Comparing old and new media in Germany and the US. New Media and Society, 4(1), 143-160 Habermas, J. (1989). The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: Polity. Oates, S. (2008). An Introduction to Media and Politics. London: Sage. Pariser, E. (2011). The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York: Penguin. Schmidt, J. (2013). Twitter and the Rise of Personal Publics. In K. Weller, A. Bruns, J. Burgess, M. Mahrt, & C. Puschmann (Eds.), Twitter and Society (pp. 3–14). New York: Peter Lang. Sunstein, C. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton & London: Princeton University Press. Sunstein, C. (2009). Republic 2.0. Princeton & London: Princeton University Press. Wessler, H. (2008). Investigating Deliberativeness Comparatively. Political Communication, 25(1), 1–22. doi:10.1080/10584600701807752 8