Markus Patberg reviews Jürgen Habermas’s new book Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik [A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics].
Markus Patberg is a Research Associate in Political Theory at the University of Hamburg. He has held visiting positions at University College London and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Patberg’s research interests include democratic theory, constituent power, the work of Jürgen Habermas, political theory of the EU, digitalization, and disintegration. He is the author of Constituent Power in the European Union (Oxford University Press, 2020).
What implications does the increasing digitalization of the public sphere have for democracy –especially for the processes of deliberative politics that are meant to enable self-government in mass societies? This is the guiding question of Jürgen Habermas’s new book Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit und die deliberative Politik [A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics].1 Habermas’s answer not only provides us with a distinct diagnosis of the pitfalls of the platformization of political communication, but also advances democratic theory’s reflection on digitalization methodologically. At the same time, it raises the question to what extent there is a need for revision and innovation in Habermas’s own theory of deliberative democracy.
The main thesis of Habermas’ analysis of digitalization is that a public sphere significantly shaped by social media undermines this relation of correspondence – and is thus, at least in its present form, detrimental to democracy.
Tweet
A Welcome Intervention
Habermas’s book comes as a welcome intervention. Despite the boom in research on digital democracy in recent years, classical strands of democratic theory – including deliberative democracy – still neglect the question of whether changing realities of public deliberation require us to systematically rethink the interplay between the public sphere and political institutions. Habermas’s analysis stands out from many ad hoc assessments of digitalization (a threat here, an opportunity there…) in that it builds on an elaborate theory of (deliberative) democracy. As Habermas reminds us (pp. 12-29), this theory is not a purely normative one but one that rests on a rational reconstruction of the real-world practice of constitutional democracy and proposes a sociologically informed model of deliberative politics.
According to this theory, constitutional states need to rely on certain idealizing assumptions on the part of citizens, which reflect the (discursively justifiable) normative core of democracy. Democracy can only function, and be maintained, Habermas argues, as long as there is not too large a discrepancy between citizens’ presuppositions and political reality:
“[T]here must be a recognizable connection between the results of government action and the input of the voters’ decisions such that the citizens can recognize it as the confirmation of the rationalizing power of their own democratic opinion and will formation. The citizens must be able to perceive their conflict of opinions as both consequential and as a dispute over the better reasons” (p. 29).
The main thesis of Habermas’ analysis of digitalization is that a public sphere significantly shaped by social media undermines this relation of correspondence – and is thus, at least in its present form, detrimental to democracy.
The Emergence of Semi-Publics
How does this happen? As Habermas points out, the media structure of previous decades, which was centered around printed newspapers, radio, and television, is undergoing a revolution. Today, citizens increasingly use social media as their main source of information. Due to their platform character, the new media have two transformative effects: first, they “dispense with the productive role of journalistic mediation and program design performed by the old media”; second, in principle they empower all users as authors, who may use the platforms “like blank slates for their own communicative content” (p. 44).
While the empowering function may be interpreted as a form of democratization, the fact that the platforms reject the role of gatekeepers and moderators results in a lack of quality control. Social media have opened up a space for the easy and effective distribution of low-quality content and even fake news. Meanwhile, changing expectations regarding the nature and presentation of content put pressure on classical newspapers to adapt to new logics of marketing and commodification. Data and attention management threaten to replace genuine journalistic work.
While all of this may be troubling, as it indicates a decreasing quality of public deliberation, the real problem for Habermas lies elsewhere. In his view, the “more or less exclusive use of social media” blurs “the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’, and thus the inclusive meaning of the public sphere” (p. 61). This is a result of how citizens make use of the author role that they attain on the platforms. According to Habermas, what happens in the new online spaces is that citizens engage in forms of communication that “had previously been reserved for private correspondence”, but which are now, due to the features of the built environment of social media, “inflated into a new and intimate kind of public sphere” (p. 62).
Citizens increasingly refuse – or fail to recognize the need – to comply with the standards of public autonomy even when issues of the common good are at stake.
Tweet
In Habermas’s theory of democracy, individuals do not owe other members of society justifications for their actions and choices as long as they operate in the (legally circumscribed) realm of private autonomy. However, when as citizens they make use of their public autonomy, for example, when they call for collective decisions, they are expected to adopt a discursive attitude oriented towards a “generalization of interests that includes all citizens” (p. 61). Social media, due to their nature as “semi-private, semi-public communication spaces” (p. 29), obscure which standards of communication should prevail and thus encourage the “rejection of dissonant and the inclusion of consonant voices into [one’s] own limited, identity-preserving horizon of supposed, yet professionally unfiltered, ‘knowledge’” (pp. 62-63).
In short, citizens increasingly refuse – or fail to recognize the need – to comply with the standards of public autonomy even when issues of the common good are at stake. The result is the emergence of semi-publics, whose members no longer regard the general public sphere as the place for the discursive clarification of validity claims, but see it as a realm of hypocrisy whose protagonists ignore ‘the truth’, i.e. what appears as such from within the self-referential spaces. What was once an inclusive space, integrating all citizens, is thus degraded, in the perception of some members of society, to just another sectarian semi-public.
A Case of Democratic Regression
This diagnosis leads Habermas to an original take on the effects of echo chambers on democracy.2 Viewed from within the new semi-publics, the democratic process increasingly fails to live up to citizens’ idealizing assumptions, as the groups populating these spaces do not see their political views reflected in collective decisions. In turn, those who have not (yet) isolated themselves can see that deliberative politics delivers less and less on its promise of a process of discursive rationalization that reaches all citizens. The digital transformation undermines the constitutive conditions of democracy, both in the eyes of (some) citizens and in the actual structures of public debate.
Those who have not (yet) isolated themselves can see that deliberative politics delivers less and less on its promise of a process of discursive rationalization that reaches all citizens.
Tweet
With this analysis, Habermas advances the debate about the digital transformation of democracy also in methodological terms. As has recently been pointed out, rational reconstruction can be used to identify democratic regression when it comes in the form of an erosion of the (categories of) rights that Habermas considers enabling conditions of constitutional democracy. In the new book, Habermas employs this method to demonstrate a form of democratic regression taking place at the level of the “rationalizing power of public debates” (p. 27, emphasis removed). Where citizens’ normative expectations towards deliberative politics are increasingly not being met, democracy is in danger of becoming dysfunctional.
However, while Habermas’s analysis is in many ways illuminating, it leaves one at a loss as to where we should go from here. Habermas ends by postulating that “maintaining a media structure that ensures the inclusive character of the public sphere and the deliberative character of the formation of public opinion and political will is not a matter of political preference but a constitutional imperative” (p. 67, emphasis added). But what exactly would be necessary for citizens to once again develop an adequate perception of the public sphere? Let me outline two areas in which there seems to be both the need and the potential for developing answers by way of a reformulation of Habermas’s own theory of deliberative democracy.
The Proper Place of Social Media
In the recent literature, radical models for a restructuring of social media abound – whether it is platform socialism or a public online environment dubbed Citizenbook. These models put the cart before the horse. To be able to say what kind of social media would be desirable, one first needs to determine their democratic function. From a Habermasian perspective, one needs to ask what their proper place is in a deliberative system. What, if anything, is their expected contribution to the feedback loops between public sphere and political institutions that are supposed to produce considered public opinions?
As Simone Chambers points out, while social media came into the world “as a fun way for people to socialize (and, it turns out, a good way to make money)”, they now “function as transmitters of important facts about what is going on the world”. But that is only part of the picture. Among other things, social media provide spaces of political mobilization, self-organization, and debate. Given that they have such a variety of (actualized) affordances, their contribution to democracy can be interpreted in very different ways – and not all of them are necessarily compatible. For example, a non-deliberative way to interpret social media’s democratic function is as a space for the formation of plebiscitary online crowds.
Here, rational reconstruction could once again prove useful for making theoretical progress. A ‘digital update’ of Habermas’s two-track model of deliberative democracy could be achieved by examining the performative meaning of political communication and action on social media, i.e. by explicating the self-understanding of citizens operating as users of these platforms. Starting from there, one could work towards normative principles that provide guidance when it comes to the regulation of social media.
A ‘digital update’ of Habermas’s two-track model of deliberative democracy could be achieved by examining the performative meaning of political communication and action on social media, i.e. by explicating the self-understanding of citizens operating as users of these platforms.
Tweet
Towards Digital Constitutionalism
One of the more promising notions when it comes to the regulation of social media, indeed of digital societies in general, is digital constitutionalism. The term describes new bills of rights and other legal norms, which usually emerge from transnational politics as non-binding declarations. In some cases, especially in the European Union, digital constitutionalism also takes the form of binding law. The envisaged contents of digital constitutionalism range from rights to digital literacy, i.e. particular forms of education, to data protection, e.g. the right to be forgotten, to rules against the use of artificial intelligence in decisions about life and death, physical integrity, and the deprivation of liberty.
Habermas’s postulation of a constitutional imperative invites us to focus the colorful wish lists of digital constitutionalism on what is democratically essential: What new rights and regulations are required to realize public autonomy in the digital constellation? While Habermas has always been careful to leave the concrete content of legislation to democratic processes, at least a tentative answer to this question would be needed to explain how the two-track model of deliberative democracy can remain functional today.
A more general lesson in this context seems to be that the notion of digital sovereignty, which some scholars have started discarding as a purely political narrative without theoretical value, may have to be systematically developed by democratic theory after all – as digital popular sovereignty. If new constitutional norms are needed to redesign digital infrastructures and to maintain the public sphere, who else but (democratic) states – acting unilaterally as well as multilaterally – is in a position to do so, and can effectively empower citizens?
Finally, Habermas’s analysis of the digital constellation so far appears strangely disconnected from his writings on supranational democracy. An effective digital constitutionalism cannot be limited to the national level, but will have to be a European and global constitutionalism, too. At present, the debate about the making of a (transnational) digital constitution is dominated by democratically unambitious ideas of stakeholderism. Here, Habermas’s theory provides the resources to reorient the discussion towards the question of who the constituent power of digital constitutionalism should be.
- The book is a collection of three texts, which are (slightly) revised versions of previously published texts. I focus on the main essay, which is accompanied by an interview and clarifying remarks on deliberative democracy. For the English (predecessor) version, see: Habermas, Jürgen (2022): Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere. Theory, Culture & Society 39 (4): 145-171. My translations of direct quotations largely follow this article, i.e. the translation by Ciaran Cronin.
- It is worth noting that recent studies suggest that echo chambers are less common than is often assumed. However, in contrast to filter bubbles, there is evidence that the phenomenon indeed exists.
