Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Rethinking the Public Sphere in the Age of Social Media

Abstract

The present paper is dedicated to the phenomenon of the public sphere which is currently undergoing significant transformations under the influence of the Internet and social media. The main goal of the article is to find a new approach to the modern development of the public sphere by rethinking it from an Arendtian perspective. The first part examines the main actual changes taking place in the public sphere under the influence of social media, and concludes that the classical concept of the public sphere, dating back to its early notion of Jürgen Habermas, needs to be rethought, this requiring a new approach which would take into account the actual changes and new circumstances in the development of the public sphere. It is proposed to use Arendt's understanding of the public sphere as one of the sources of this new approach which remains relevant today in many ways. The second part examines Arendt's notion of the public sphere as compared with the concept of the public sphere of early Habermasian writing. As a result of this consideration, it is concluded that, in a number of points, Arendt's notion of the public sphere is better suited to an understanding of the modern public sphere than the classical Habermasian concept. In the third part, I rethink the existing trends in the development of the digital public sphere from Arendt's standpoint.

The existential stakes of platform governance: a critical literature review

“…In addition, much more detailed work is needed to theoretically underpin the emerging field of platform governance, while a systematic literature review could certainly help us understand when and how the term gained traction. As hinted throughout the paper, platform governance enables us to explore the implications of online content regulation and the governance deliberations to the public discourse and the public sphere in general ( Papacharissi, 2002 ; Salikov, 2018 ). Yet, we ought to be aware of its limitations and risks.…”

Online democracy: Applying Hannah Arendt's model of democracy to the internet

“…Although acknowledging the problematic nature of social media, the proponents of the claim that the current form of the internet is in line with Arendt's ideas simultaneously highlight those features of the internet that Arendt would have positively assessed. It is primarily about the possibility of reviving the council system of participation on the internet, thanks to the fact that the digital public sphere consists of many segments whose participants are linked by common interests (Salikov, 2018, pp. 98–99; Smith, 2017, pp.…”

“…From what has been said, it follows that the internet in its current form, when viewed through an Arendtian lens, clearly has several problematic characteristics. The first problem concerns a fact highlighted by all the authors who have used Arendt's arguments to evaluate democracy on the internet – that there is no clearly defined political sphere on the internet (e.g., Barney, 2003; Frick & Oberprantacher, 2011, p. 20; Salikov, 2018; Schwartz, 2014; Smith, 2017; Smith, 2020; Spaid, 2019). If I use Arendt's terminology, then the internet is closest in form to the social, which obscures the differences between the private and the public.…”

“…198–199; see Forestal, 2021, pp. 32–33; Salikov, 2018: 92). Arendt's conception of appearance is another part of her work that shows why the current character of the internet is problematic.…”

The Digital Transformation of the Public Sphere, Its Features in the Context of Various Political Regimes, and Its Possible Influence on Political Processes

“…These spaces serve as an alternative to traditional ones, are more open for participation, allowing citizens to "cooperate and express their opinions, and serve as watchdogs over society on a peer-production model" (Benkler, 2006: 177), and to "reorient themselves from passive readers and listeners to potential speakers and participants in a conversation" (213). In other words, the digitalization of the public sphere contributes to the strengthening of the social and political activities of citizens, opens the way for non-professional politicians and public persons (Elmer, Langlois, McKelvey, 2012: 6) as well as for members of those groups for which it was previously closed (Salikov, 2018). At the same time, some scholars note that digitalization maintains the growing fragmentation and isolationism of the public sphere (Bright, 2018;Dahlberg, 2007;Papacharissi, 2002;Sunstein, 2009), and contributes to the phenomenon that Cass Sunstein called the "balkanization" of the public sphere (2008).…”