Social Media and the Digital Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Philipp Staab and Thorsten Thiel

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2022, vol. 39, issue 4, 129-143

Abstract: This article explores the question of how to understand social media following the Habermasian theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere. We argue for a return to political-economic fundamentals as the basis for analysing the public sphere and seek to establish a characteristic connection between digital-behavioural control and singularised audiences in the context of proprietary markets. In the digital constellation, it is less a matter of immobilising the citizen as a consumer but rather of their political activation – albeit in conditions under which commercial interests have primacy: privatisation without privatism.

Keywords: digital capitalism; Jürgen Habermas; public sphere; social media; structural transformation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:264182

DOI: 10.1177/02632764221103527

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