Where is the public of ‘networked publics’? A critical analysis of the theoretical limitations of online publics research

Ojala, Markus; Ripatti-Torniainen, Leena

doi:10.1177/02673231231210207

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…It seems that the more there no longer seems to be any material basis for a substantive public sphere, the greater the collective need for continuing to imagine it as such. While on the one hand, 'the debate on a new post-factual age has seen the revitalization of normative concepts of democracy and the public sphere' (Van Dyk, 2022), the theorization of publics in communication and media studies has increasingly been empirically flattened and disconnected from such normative conceptions in critical theory (Ojala and Ripatti-Torniainen, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Post-truth conspiracism and the pseudo-public sphere

de Zeeuw

2024

Front. Commun.

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Rather than seeking to recuperate the ideal of a digital public sphere or lament its demise with the rise of social media platforms, in this paper I seek to identify the dangers of precisely this insistence to imagine the Internet as a public sphere. It is this curious insistence and persistence that, I claim, may feed into precisely those post-truth media dynamics such critical accounts worry about and rally against. The success of viral conspiracy narratives like Pizzagate and QAnon, as well as other forms of mis- and disinformation, hinges not (only) on the absence or distortion of a healthy democratic public sphere, as is typically assumed, but (also) on its persistence as an imaginary in an environment that obeys an altogether different set of logics, namely that of ‘communicative capitalism’ and ‘information warfare.’ Whereas the former has drawn most critical attention in connection to current post-truth dynamics (e.g., the effects of targeted advertising and the role of algorithms in creating polarizing echo chambers and filter bubbles), I will instead focus on the latter. The unique problem and ‘cunning’ of what I refer to as ‘post-truth conspiracism’ is that it draws on idea(l)s of digital publicness to establish its own epistemic legitimacy, as well as derive its unique powers of persuasion, while also mobilizing the full tactical arsenal of information warfare in a global attention economy. The resulting weaponization of digital public sphere imaginaries complicates attempts to recuperate the idea(l) of a digital public sphere as a solution to a ‘polluted’ information environment.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%