I have been reading an essay by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. His theme is the changing character of the public sphere, where debate and discussion lead to the formation of public opinion, which in turn influences public policy making. This was also the subject of his first major book – The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – which was published fifty years ago and which I read when I was a graduate student. (Full disclosure: I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Habermas’s work and its application to the theory of democracy. In addition, I have just written a review of this essay plus the first volume of his history of philosophy, both recently translated into English, which should appear in the TLS early in the new year.)
Today, the challenge to the integrity of the public sphere has less to do with the growth of mass circulation newspapers, which rely on advertising revenue, and more to do with new social media, which rely on the consumers themselves to become the producers of content. Nowadays we are all authors, and this is a great advance in freedom as voices that had been excluded or distorted from the public sphere, can now be clearly heard. To some extent, the media has been democratised, which is undoubtedly positive for the development of free and open societies. And yet, these new freedoms are often being exercised with scant regard to the responsibilities that freedom brings. As Habermas says: Just as printing made everyone a potential reader, today digitalization is turning everyone into a potential author. But how long did it take until everyone was able to read?
Continue reading “Editing myself”