Javnost - The Public, Vol. 31 - 2024, No. 2
Recovering the Democratic Value of Public Discourse
The decline of democracy in the US entails the surge of authoritarianism, ascendency of demagoguery, dispersal of the democratic majority, and weakening of public reason. Dissent, envisioned as a rhetorical practice of democratic deliberation, resists authoritarianism by advancing democratic values. Accordingly, this paper examines democracy as a minority voice, explores the deliberative capacity of dissent, and identifies the rhetorical properties of deliberation. The paper argues that dissent, in its fugitive aspect, is dispersed across an array of modest sites, guided by a deliberative ideal partially realised, and framed by democratic values. Dissent functions in this capacity as an itinerant, recurring source of democratic renewal on occasions of political crisis. It is an adaptation to structural constraints that provides a nurturing aspiration to prompt political agency, establish realistic expectations, and sustain vigilance. While the immediacy of the authoritarian threat and corresponding questions about the role of democratic communication are addressed in terms of the 2024 general election in the US, the democratic challenge in the US is indicative of the abiding immediacy of the authoritarian threat to other democracies and suggestive of deliberative adaptations for restoring the vitality of democratic communication and culture. Complacency in democratic theory and practice is counter-indicated.
Full text (available at Taylor & Francis) | Export Reference | Link to this article
Anti-Systemic Counterpublics: Rethinking the Counterpublic Sphere
Amid debates over the impact of social media platforms on democratic societies, there is increasing academic interest in how they offer new spaces for destabilising forces and movements that challenge democratic values, practices and norms. This article proposes an analytical framework to study “anti-systemic counterpublics”—defined as arenas for production and circulation of discourse that undermine the legitimacy of the established socio-political order. Integrating insights from both counterpublics literature and the theoretical literature of anti-system parties, this study shifts focus from progressive counterpublics seeking to expand the discursive space for marginalised voices and groups to anti-systemic counterpublics contesting the dominant socio-political order. The analytical framework delineates three dimensions of anti-systemic counterpublics: the content of their discourse (discursive), their modes of articulation and expression (performative), and their strategies for alliance-building and positioning within broader information landscapes (positional). Using two case studies—anti-lockdown movements and a news outlet—I illustrate how such counterpublics often align with fringe political actors and hyper-partisan news media. These cases help illuminate their strategies, from crafting persuasive messages to mobilising identities, and opposing mainstream actors and narratives. This framework offers a lens to understand the evolution and influence of anti-systemic voices, both in digital and non-digital spaces.
Full text (available at Taylor & Francis) | Export Reference | Link to this article
Counterpublics and Structural Change in Media and Politics: A Theoretical Framework on Transformations Within a Long-Term Historical Perspective
The paper contributes to current debates on counterpublics and the applicability of the concept to various ideological contexts with a long-term historical perspective on structural changes in media and politics. It analyses problems of theory formation, offers an alternative approach and places current upheavals in the context of previous changes. Based on a literature review of current research in view of the increasing importance of right-wing actors’ online communication, a shift in theory is identified. On the one hand, theories of hegemony are expanded to describe alleged exclusions and, on the other hand, by emphasising the discursive construction of counterpublics, actors’ claims and perceptions are adopted as analytical criteria. As an alternative to approaches that focus on discursive construction of actual or alleged exclusions, this conceptual article presents a definition of counterpublics as opposed to structures of (hybrid) media systems and offers a framework to examine ideas and practices of counterpublics derived from classical approaches of counterpublics and adaptations based on findings of communication and media research. A sketch of transformations in communication history in the US and Europe from press under feudal rule to diversifications in hybrid media systems in liberal democracies is used to illustrate the framework.
Full text (PDF/ePub) | Export Reference | Link to this article
Not Forgetting Black Lives Matter: Memory Protest and Counterpublics
This article examines the relationship between social networks, protest and memory. It begins by focusing on activists’ attempts to supplement official narratives before going on to explore the way the digital offers mechanisms that both ameliorate and heighten the fear of forgetting. It goes beyond an investigation of the role played by “activists” in these dynamics and reflects upon the memory work undertaken by “ordinary people.” These arguments are underpinned by an analysis of Black Lives Matter hashtags such as #SayHisName. It argues that the ubiquitous and repetitious sharing of tweets in which the names of those who have died at the hands of the police are hashtagged should be understood as an online commemorative practice similar to that undertaken at in real world vigils. Finally, it highlights the way in which the hashtag #SayHerName draws the public’s attention to persistent intersectional inequalities and so expands activist and ordinary people’s understandings of police violence in America and beyond. This article concludes by suggesting that the hashtag #SayTheirNames both recalls the individuals who have already died and anticipates the deaths that are yet to come in an effortful and ritualised moment of not forgetting that Black Lives Matter.
Full text (PDF/ePub) | Export Reference | Link to this article
How do English-Speaking Users Discuss the Wuhan Lockdown: A Longitudinal Analysis of Public Spheres on YouTube
Drawing on Chantel Mouffe, Mikhail Bakhtin, Judith Butler and others, we examined how English-speaking YouTube users discussed the Wuhan lockdown from late January to June 2020. We argue that news-prompted public spheres are affective, contextualised and short-lived and our findings suggest that the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic outside of China is closely related to the worsening sentiments of English-speaking publics on YouTube. Comments are also significantly associated with the changing severity of the pandemic, reflecting the changing concerns of publics regardless of the central theme of news stories. The divergence of the sentiment scores of user comments is also salient among different media spaces. These findings suggest that a de-localised, universal global public sphere is misleading and more nuanced and contextualised studies are warranted.
Full text (available at Taylor & Francis) | Export Reference | Link to this article
Public Service Media in Northern Ireland: Prominence and Vulnerability in a Small Media System
Public Service Media remains at the centre of the public sphere in Northern Ireland. Public Service Media organisations such as the BBC broadcast in a society that remains politically and culturally divided. This has been the case for decades, even if the worst of the violence in Northern Ireland has now dissipated. The Northern Ireland media system includes local media provision, along with provision from the rest of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. This article identifies Northern Ireland’s media system as sharing characteristics with what Puppis (2009) defines as a small media system, under slightly different conditions. This article takes a Critical Political Economy approach to Public Service Media organisations operating in Northern Ireland, in order to argue that while there is prominence in the place of PSM in the media system, there is also vulnerability inherent.
Full text (PDF/ePub) | Export Reference | Link to this article
Far Right > Digital Rights: The Precarity of Free Expression Internet Access Net Neutrality and Data Privacy in Bolsonaro’s Brazil
The election of Jair Bolsonaro to the Brazilian Presidency in 2018 was a politically destabilising event with far-reaching consequences. The fate of digital rights in Brazil was particularly impacted, with the legacy of the celebrated Marco Civil da Internet rights charter called into question. By examining the many ways that the fragile gains of the Marco Civil were corroded during the Bolsonaro presidency – including systematic attacks on freedom of expression online, disinformation campaigns, the violation of network neutrality through zero rating, and the continuing assault on privacy rights – we can understand the multi-pronged nature of Bolsonaro’s assault on the public sphere in Brazil as well as the inadequacy of digital rights in safeguarding against the conjoined threats of platform capitalism and far-right populism.
Full text (available at Taylor & Francis) | Export Reference | Link to this article