Fragmented and Polarised? The Public Sphere in the Postfactual Age, Vol. 31 - 2024, No. 3
Fugitive Truth: Renewing the Public Sphere in the Age of Post-Truth
In the sixty years since the publication of Jürgen Habermas' magnum opus, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the public sphere now faces a new threat in the era of “post-truth” politics. The preponderance of lies, mis/disinformation, “fake news”, “alternative facts”, conspiracy theories, and the general breakdown of trust in established sources of knowledge and information has led to the fragmentation and deepening polarisation of the public sphere - a situation deliberately promoted by right wing populist forces intent on fighting the “culture wars”. At the same time, the political space is being disrupted, in a different way, through new social movements and radical activism particularly around issues of climate change, inequality, racial injustice, and police violence. My aim is to show how these contemporary forms of dissent are engendering a new “structural” transformation of the public sphere. They create autonomous and critical spaces of collective engagement that call into question the legitimacy of dominant power structures. Understanding this process requires an alternative rendering of the relationship between truth and politics - something I develop through Michel Foucault's rethinking of the critical impulse of the Kantian Enlightenment and his later work on parrhesia.
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Not About Facts but Emotions? Political Polarisation as a Problem of Redescription
Political polarisation, e.g. following the refugee movements of 2015 or the Covid pandemic, is often explained by emotions. The latter are widely exploited as a political strategy, while points of view are often discredited as based on mere emotion rather than “rational” thought. This development challenges the idea of participants being moved by the “unforced force of the better argument” (Habermas 2001) or the idea that consent was the goal of debating. Not only has this resulted in an environment of “post-truth” (Hyvönen 2018), but the motivation of participants to take issue with political questions can be described more interestingly than as a search for truth or a better reasoning.
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What Is the EU’s Vision of Democracy in the Post-Truth Scenario? A Conceptual Analysis of the Institutional Narratives of the Public Sphere in the “Democracy Action Plan”
Contributing to recent academic and public debates on how European democracies should respond to a scenario of “post-truth politics”, this article explores the idea of democracy that underlies current regulatory responses in the “European Democracy Action Plan” (EDAP). It offers a conceptual analysis of the institutional narratives in the EDAP illustrating normative expectations of the public sphere and transformations of the basic concepts in the European polity. It revisits the famous Habermasian systemic view of deliberation emphasizing the interconnections of the social and institutional realms through the public sphere in democracies. We argue that previous scholarship has focused too much on the presumed loss of consensus originated from the digital transformations in the public sphere without taking into consideration other institutional changes within the EU. The analysis of the key concepts illustrates the normative expectations of specific measures and shows that there is evidence of a systemic view in the EDAP, with different modes of intervention, partially coherent with Habermas' normative expectations. We conclude that the vision of democracy in the EDAP has been developed for decades to legitimate the EU's development and initiatives, but that it also incorporates a reformulation of some concepts justified by a post-truth scenario.
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Fragmented and Polarised? The German Public Sphere during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
The digital age has brought about fundamental questions about the viability of the public sphere. While a shared and inclusive communicative space is widely considered to be a fundamental requirement for democratic deliberation, the rise of social (and other digital) media has prompted concerns about a potential fragmentation of the public sphere. Accompanied by the simultaneous decline of quality journalism, social media have facilitated the emergence of semi-public echo chambers of like-minded people. Against the backdrop of debates on post-truth politics, such echo chambers are important arenas for the dissemination of false information, but they also undermine the epistemic added value of deliberation by inhibiting discussion on competing truth claims. Based on the argument that post-truth politics is intimately connected to the fragmentation of the public sphere, this article analyses the extent to which the German public sphere has shown signs of polarisation and fragmentation in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. This is done by investigating to which extent to which debates in leading German media have managed to adequately represent all relevant perspectives on the Russian invasion, and conversely to which extent dissonant voices have been excluded from such debates.
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Does the Centre Hold? Public Sphere Configuration Democracy and the Quality of Political Talk in Sweden
In the present article, key conceptual and regulative requirements for quality public democratic talk to be maintained are identified and the linguistic economy of civic conversation about common affairs in the Swedish public sphere gauged; the relationship between public talk, power, and identity is charted; and exposure and response horizons for further quality slippage with Swedens's institutional frameworks visited. A distinction between width and amp difference is introduced to separate democratically acceptable from unviable modes of conversational engagement and provide a new platform for analysing this space. Democratic history and theory is also visited, showing how cognitive moral conversation is a precondition for democratic governance. It is ultimately shown that if democratic politics wishes to remain within its remit, key ideals need safeguarding. It is concluded that the well-known challenges brought out by Levitsky & Ziblatt have not yet affected Swedish politics as they have American politics, but that risks for graver deterioration of struggling conversational and normative formats are visible.
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Exploring affective Polarisation of the (Digital) Public Sphere in Slovenia: The Case of Marshal Twito
The last decade saw the issue of polarisation garnering increased scholarly attention. While political polarisation has been almost unequivocally studied as synonymous with ideological polarisation, scholars have recently addressed polarisation along partisan lines manifesting through strong in-group favouritism and out-group unfavouritism, labelled as affective polarisation. This paper investigates patterns of affective polarisation in the Slovenian (digital) public sphere, through analysis of discourse of former Slovenian PM Janez Janša on Twitter. The affective-discursive analysis of Janša’s Twitter resulted in the identification and exploration of four affective-discursive practices: Dangerous Outsider, Pride and Patriotism, Immoral and Incompetent Women and Defection. We find that through interplay of these practices and by employing strategies of discursive closure, Janša successfully fuels polarisation among partisans by solidifying divisions along the in-group-out-group axis. The paper contributes to affective polarisation literature by demonstrating how political actors condition competitive environments around different social identities thereby minimising opportunities for meaningful deliberation and debate beyond the differences.
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Polarisation News Consumption and Beliefs in Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories: Early Signs of the Fragmentation of the Public Sphere in Iceland
A common explanation linked to increased polarisation has focused on changes in citizens’ information diets, with like-minded people apparently becoming increasingly isolated in online echo chambers. This article investigates whether news audience polarisation has increased in Iceland in recent years and if there is polarisation in Icelandic society concerning beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories. Iceland is an interesting case study since it is very small and still quite homogenous, but experiencing rapid societal changes and a media landscape in turmoil. We utilise data from representative surveys conducted in 2017 and 2022. Findings show that news consumption patterns in Iceland have shifted towards online platforms, with a significant increase in online news consumption across all age groups, and a decline in the use of traditional legacy outlets. News audience polarisation appears, however, to remain relatively low in Iceland, with most news brands reaching a mixed and centrist audience. We find that gender, education, and political ideology are related to beliefs concerning misinformation and conspiracy theories focused on climate change and refugees. Moreover, our results suggest that trust in the mainstream media, as well as news consumption from partisan outlets, are related to beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories.
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