By Pierre Mounier
Public debate is deteriorating due to polarization and disinformation, despite unprecedented information access. The weakening, fragmentation, and discrediting of the “public knowledge infrastructure” (education, research, press) are to blame for this situation. The article proposes rebuilding this infrastructure by uniting professionals, involving citizens, and securing resources to protect democracy’s foundation.
We are living in a period marked by a rapid deterioration of public debate. Across the world, opinions are increasingly polarized, counter-factual claims multiply, disinformation and conspiracy theories gain traction, verbal aggression is rampant, and careful mutual listening, along with the search for some form of consensus, convergence, or truth, has all but vanished.
Yet, there is a profound paradox. Our increasing inability to manage a civil, well-informed public debate contrasts with our unprecedented individual and collective ability to access high-quality information and established knowledge. Near-universal internet access has enabled the press to disseminate high-quality information and more largely knowledge producers to disseminate it openly. In addition, scientific research has recently embraced an ethos called open science. Millions of rigorously selected and peer-reviewed publications across all disciplines are now freely accessible to all with a simple click via platforms like OAPEN, OpenEdition, and thousands more.
Extending beyond publications, the open science movement that encompasses all disciplines including humanities and social sciences—championed by UNESCO and governments shaping science policy—now also applies to research data. Aiming to involve society more deeply in knowledge production, open science now also includes citizen science, closely involving amateur scientists and scholars, patients, professionals, and concerned individuals in relevant scientific research.
We have never had more access to vast amounts of trustworthy open knowledge. Nevertheless, we seem to be unable to put it to good use in the public debate. That is the information paradox of our time.
The Infrastructure of the Public Debate
How can we understand this paradox? Most explanations for the perceived decline in the quality of the public debate blame social media, the media in general, sometimes both, or the emergence of a new generation of conservative demagogues like Farage, Trump, Orban, or Milei. While this may be part of the explanation, these arguments do not address the root of the problem. A qualitative public debate, that is a discussion where arguments and opinions are based on verified facts rather than on fake news and delusions, requires solid foundations.
These foundations are what I propose to call the infrastructure of the public debate in a democracy.
Why use the term “infrastructure”? The term is typically used for systems that enable societal and economic activities: road and rail networks for transporting people and goods, energy infrastructure for heating and lighting, public parks and amenities. All of these systems enable work, leisure, and countless other activities. In these areas, infrastructure is often invisible yet essential. We pay little attention to these infrastructures because they seem a natural part of the background of our daily lives, so easily taken for granted, a prerequisite for the smooth conduct of daily life. We only notice these infrastructures when they fail: closed roads, cancelled trains, power outages that paralyze us. The ongoing war in Ukraine, targeting power plants, undersea cables, pipelines, bridges, and ports, dramatically remind us of the importance of these infrastructures for a nation’s life.
The importance of physical infrastructure as a pillar of our material existence is understood well enough. However, the importance of the infrastructure for ideas, and the public debate is more rarely acknowledged. This is what I call the “public knowledge infrastructure”.
I argue that the primary reason for the weakening of the public debate lies in the partial collapse of this public knowledge infrastructure necessary for any truly democratic debate.
What are the pillars of the public debate? They are the institutions, organizations, platforms, and services that enable citizens to adopt shared representations, verified facts, and established knowledge essential for a qualitative, well-informed, democratic debate. Today, however, these pillars are weakened, siloed, and, crucially, rejected, and scorned. Even as each of these pillars valiantly tries to fulfill its individual mission, they no longer manage to collectively function as an effective public knowledge infrastructure. Today, these pillars stand weakened, fragmented, and under attack. Even as they strive individually, they cannot collectively sustain an effective public knowledge infrastructure. Consider the US, where the failure to embed the scientific consensus on climate change firmly within public opinion left key institutions exposed. NOAA, for example, became vulnerable to political attacks partly because widespread public skepticism (with only 60% of Americans think global warming is mostly human-caused and about the same proportion understanding that there is a scientific consensus about it, per studies) undermined broad support for its mission.
A Degraded, Fragmented, Discredited Public Knowledge Infrastructure
What factors explain the dire state of the public knowledge infrastructure?
First, our public knowledge infrastructure is primarily weakened by a lack of resources to fulfill its core missions. Policies implemented since the early 2000s have exacted a heavy toll on education, research, and public media. This isn’t just about dramatic nominal budget cuts. Most indicators show stable or increased funding for research and education, globally. More crucially, however, resources have been diverted towards objectives increasingly distant from their primary purpose.
The dire financial situation facing universities in countries like the UK and France is a deeply worrying sign.
Policymakers implementing these funding cuts seem to ignore a fundamental truth: informed public debate cannot thrive without robust education, scientific research, and media committed to reasonably objective information.
When this public knowledge infrastructure is degraded, the negative effects are swiftly felt.
This vulnerability becomes even more acute when other actors—whom Giuliano Da Empoli portrays as “engineers of chaos“—exploit the situation. They invest heavily in shaping public opinion through social media, deploying sophisticated influence and disinformation strategies via the powerful emotional engines of platforms like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok. These opportunistic players, driven by their own financial or ideological motives, move into the spaces vacated by the weakened infrastructure, actively working to expand their influence. We are experiencing the painful consequences of this dynamic today.
The migration issue serves as a near-perfect example of a debate structured around representations that completely ignore abundant and freely accessible academic literature.
The fact that the famous “welfare magnet” supposedly caused by generous social systems is a myth that is regularly debunked by research does not prevent the public debate, and consequently lawmaking, from being structurally influenced by it.
The consequences are concrete and disastrous, leading to a succession of ineffective and counterproductive measures at an ever-increasing human cost.
Furthermore, crucial actors in the public knowledge infrastructure are now significantly isolated. While occasional collaborations exist, driven by individual goodwill—a citizen science project here, a journalism festival there, a workshop in schools—the professions involved (researchers, teachers, journalists, and a galaxy of essential knowledge-dissemination professionals like publishers, booksellers, librarians, digital communicators) have developed such distinct, sometimes conflicting, identities that coalitions powerful enough to have an infrastructural effect on the public debate are stifled. This overvaluation of specific identities and siloed cultures prevents the recognition of shared values, similar practices, and common interests. What unites them is a specific dedication to universality, manifested through critical reason as a method for constructing our understanding of reality.
The scientific method, peer review, journalistic investigation, and teaching share common historical roots, numerous similarities, and pursue relatively similar goals despite their specificities.
By failing to sufficiently acknowledge this, they remain isolated, unable to collectively frame the public debate. Each is then buffeted by the whims of a debate framed by others with radically different interests—financial, ideological, or both. Any verified fact or established knowledge can easily be swept away, distorted, misused, or simply ignored.
This relative powerlessness of all those who work on knowledge production and dissemination contrasts sharply with the deliberate strategies of financially endowed actors with coherent ideological agendas who consolidate press titles, publishing houses, TV and radio stations, think tanks, and foundations to achieve an infrastructural effect on public debate.
Vincent Bolloré in France, Rupert Murdoch in the UK, and Silvio Berlusconi in Italy are prominent recent examples in Europe.
Moreover, the actors of the public knowledge infrastructure—researchers, teachers, journalists—are largely disqualified today and dismissed as representatives of an elite group disconnected from ordinary people’s daily reality.
Anti-intellectualism is not new, but it’s experiencing a resurgence fueled by rising populism and a new information environment demanding a complete rethinking of these professions’ relationship with society.
Reactionary laments or nostalgic calls to restore an old order will not help. This rhetoric of restoring the authority of knowledge in schools and society masks the reality of state disinvestment in the institutions that produce and disseminate it. Fewer resources, more authoritarianism: this formula is doomed to failure. Furthermore, it effectively obscures the urgent need to redefine society’s relationship with public knowledge. This is crucial in a context vastly different from the last century, shaped by the development of the internet and the web—an information space characterized by peer-production and participation, as theorized by researchers like Manuel Castells and Yochai Benkler.
Rebuilding the Infrastructure of the Public Debate
The diagnosis is stark: our public knowledge infrastructure is simultaneously weakened, fragmented, and discredited, demanding urgent action. The first step must be to unite those who share common values and whose work, commitment, and passion are dedicated to producing, disseminating, and fostering an understanding of reality based on reason. This coalition includes researchers from all disciplines, teachers, journalists, librarians, information specialists, and a broad array of professions—all of whom we might call “knowledge workers.”
Achieving this unity requires us to relativize, not abolish, our distinct professional identities. We must forge numerous alliances, develop and maintain shared tools, and coordinate our actions. The aim is to gradually regain influence, not over the public debate itself, but over the foundational knowledge framework that makes meaningful debate possible.
In short, we must rebuild the public knowledge infrastructure collaboratively, at the intersection of individuals, institutions, and these professions.
We are not starting from scratch. Multiple intellectual traditions have historically built bridges across professional identities, such as between social sciences and journalism, fostering a dialectic far richer than sterile opposition. Beyond obvious historical figures like Robert Park, C. Wright Mills, or Howard Becker, numerous current practices involve researchers and journalists working together to produce representations of the social world based on robust inquiry methods and capable of nourishing public debate. The excellent book La France Invisible (Invisible France), published in 2008 under the joint direction of Stéphane Beaud, Jade Lindgaard, and Joseph Confavreux, is one example among many.
Second, we must radically redefine how information and knowledge are produced and disseminated.
A widespread societal demand for participation is apparent in diverse contexts such as culture, the economy, and civic engagement. This phenomenon, well-documented in academic research (e.g., the discussion between Henry Jenkins, Mizuko Ito, and Danah Boyd in Participatory Culture in a Networked Era), requires attention from the professions involved.
Those who have built expertise through their work should not feel threatened by this desire but rather strengthened by their ability to share their methods and involve actors without prior expertise in the co-production of information and knowledge.
Citizen science, citizen journalism, active pedagogy, and popular education are more necessary than ever to rebuild a fundamental connection to and ownership of the knowledge society needs.
The VERA platform, developed at the EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) to support participatory research on humans and society, is one place where such collaborations can flourish through joint projects.
Finally, we must secure resources to halt the funding decline that affects all actors of the public knowledge infrastructure. Convincing arguments are essential to secure funding, irrespective of whether the source is public or private. One relatively simple argument we can all rally behind is this: liberal democracy cannot exist without a high-quality public debate.
Yet, liberal democracy and public debate are not decreed into existence; they thrive because our societies care for and support what makes them possible: the historical pillars of research, education, and the press, at a minimum.
A new social contract, based on the elements outlined above, must be established with them.
The Aspasia Project: The Public Debate as a Common Good
Neglecting, isolating, despising, or disqualifying the pillars of the public knowledge infrastructure is the surest way to cause the entire edifice to collapse. What kind of society would replace it? One marked by anger and frustration, possibly political violence. Above all, collective decisions grounded in fundamental ignorance of the relevant realities are inevitably bound to fail. A post-truth society does not benefit anyone.
We must convince powerful resource-holders, public and private funders, policy makers, to choose a different societal path. Persuading them is our task; investing wisely is theirs. The dramatic international events unfolding now should strengthen our case.
Aspasia, Pericles’ companion, is both a historical and legendary figure. While Pericles is renowned for strengthening Athenian democracy directly, Aspasia cultivated its intellectual foundations: philosophy and rhetoric. As both a woman and foreign resident in Athens, Aspasia was doubly barred from direct participation in political life and public debate. Despite this exclusion, she is reputed to have significantly influenced Athenian democracy through her intellectual and social activity. Her admirers saw this influence as positive, highlighting the importance of culture and knowledge as foundational pillars of democracy.
Aspasia can also inspire us on another level. Her status as an excluded woman and foreigner serves as a potent reminder that genuine democracy requires diversity, equity, and inclusivity. Today, she stands as a guiding figure for all seeking to unite in protecting and repairing the infrastructure of public debate and democracy—our essential common good.
Pierre Mounier is research engineer at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Deputy Director of OpenEdition Research infrastructure, co-coordinator of OPERAS Research infrastructure, co-director of the Directory of Open Access Books, co-coordinator of the European Diamond OA Capacity Hub.
