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Social scientist Habermas (archive image): "Desert noises"
Photo:
Martin Gerten / picture alliance / dpa
In the midst of other, certainly more important social affairs and news, a message has been lost in the past few days.
From a sociological and political point of view, however, these are remarkable things, which is why I would like to point them out here.
At the age of 92, the philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas adapted his study "Structural Change of the Public" against the background of a mediatized, digitized public. The work, published in 1962, has long been considered a paradigmatic view of our democratic society.
His theoretical revision appeared in the form of an essay entitled "Thoughts and Hypotheses on a New Structural Change in the Political Public" in the journal "Leviathan".
The most recent edition, entitled “A new structural change in the public?” With numerous authors, is explicitly devoted to a review of Habermas' approach.
To what extent these considerations and hypotheses realign the earlier theses, that is what the democracy scientist and journalist Oliver Weber outlined in a text that is well worth reading.
Arrive in the media present
To put it roughly and very briefly, Habermas' famous study deals with the question of the extent to which rationality negotiations are possible in a political, mass media public that contribute to the preservation of both fundamental and necessary democratic negotiations. For the social sciences, it has apparently not yet been theoretically clarified how a society works in which political communication - and also propaganda, hate and fake news - takes place to a large extent via digital platforms and social networks.
Habermas therefore explicitly deals with Facebook, Twitter & Co. in old age and comes to a rather sobering conclusion. He states that the new digital tools, which should actually lead to more democracy through more communication, more exchange and more authorship of individual individuals, rather created an anarchic and tribalistic semi-public that is less about rational democratic progress. What appears to be a somewhat anachronistic finding (
late to the party
)
from a communication or media science perspective
can, from a social science perspective, be interpreted as a welcome arrival in the media present.
From a purely practical perspective, many people should have already realized today that the old utopian dream of the Internet - egalitarianism, equality of all users, communication at eye level - in a confusing attention economy does not necessarily lead to more attention for everyone involved or to more democracy.
And this is how Habermas also recognizes:
"This great emancipatory promise is drowned out today by the wild noises in fragmented, self-circling echo rooms."
My impression is that the sociologist does not completely lapse into media pessimism here.
Rather, it is a conciliatory recognition of new potential while simultaneously considering the possibilities of abuse:
“And the worldwide organizational potential offered by the new media serves right-wing radical networks as well as the brave Belarusian women in their persistent protest against Lukashenko. The self-empowerment of media users is one effect; the other is the price they pay for being released from the editorial guardianship of the old media as long as they have not yet sufficiently learned how to deal with the new media. Just as book printing turned everyone into potential readers, digitization today turns everyone into potential authors. But how long did it take for everyone to learn to read? "
With all the dangers of the internet and our illiteracy, he finally comes to the conclusion that an answer to the democracy-endangering, anarchic, irrational confusion of the semi-public social networks could lie in directing the attention of the (old) professional mass media in a qualitative manner;
in the filtering power of quality journalism, which is responsible against fake news.
"A democratic system as a whole is damaged if the public infrastructure no longer draws the attention of the citizens to the relevant issues that
need to be decided and can no longer guarantee
the formation of competing public, that is,
qualitatively filtered
opinions."
The editorial society
As much as this finding seems familiar, of course, as a SPIEGEL columnist, I can't argue with such a finding.
It is the duty of a democratic society to provide media structures through which a rational political opinion and will-formation is guaranteed.
With all my love for quality journalism, I would not deny a certain part of the semi-public sphere of the Internet a similar quality of political rationality.
I would like to emphasize the journalistic power of many participants in this "new" political public - although it is not just about authorship.
Because in 2019 the media scientist Bernhard Pörksen described
the utopia of an editorial society
at the
re: publica
conference
: »The editorial society is a society in which the maxims and ideals of good journalism have become an element of general education. For example: check first, publish later, always hear the other side, don't make an event bigger than it is, be skeptical in dealing with power, show the injustice in the world. "
So when Habermas describes that, thanks to digital platforms, we are all potential authors, the overall societal claim is perhaps that we all also have to become editors. Something as technically simple as a retweet or a comment then becomes the field of application of one's own media competence and media ethics - after all, with every communicative act in the digital public, we have to question ourselves whether we are reproducing or addressing what is criticized by distributing a content, enlarging or counterproductive content make visible in the first place, use voyeurism or depict grievances, strengthen those in need of validity, which one would actually have to starve through disregard, or dismantle them through public criticism.
In the past, we balanced these difficult negotiation processes of the attention economy in various cases, with Trump and the AfD - or we last discussed them in relation to right-wing extremists at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The democratization of the network in combination with economically rewarded affection, in which platforms benefit more from indignation, anger and ridicule, as well as from a lack of legislation on the one hand and a lack of media ethics on the other, also lead to abuse and systematic dehumanization, as we do could see at Rainer Winkler.
This is where the mobilizing and network dynamic forces of a society are at work, which is not only in permanent representation of the individual ethos and affiliation, but also subjects them to a permanent digital review.
The mutual perceptibility, which results in a constant evaluation of actions and what is said, is also economically and socially rewarded and promoted in digital space.
The practice of public criticism thus becomes a very lucrative transaction for platforms and thus shifts the discursive relationships of domination, which author Michael Seemann illustrates in detail in his book "The Power of Platforms: Politics in Times of Internet Giants".
No separation in E and U culture
So you have to develop a very specific awareness that “citizens” become “citizens” in digital space, not just “users”. For this you have to strictly and honestly crochet your own media usage reasons apart, free yourself from economic manipulation or counter it with an ethics of digital speaking and acting, author colleague Friedemann Karig calls it the ethics of sharing. Do I just make my values visible to everyone through my communicative actions and do I strengthen them - or do I strengthen myself by devaluing others? Do I see social networks as a social corrective or collective ought?
Habermas' "considerations and hypotheses on a renewed structural change in the political public" are at best a new step for the social sciences towards a more precise assessment of social realities in the digital age.
A separation into E and U culture, into anarchic, uncontrolled social media and classic, professional mass media and a hope associated with this seems less helpful to me.
Rather, we as a society should consider how we can also ensure a rational political public in social media and not only hold quality media accountable for this, but also the platform operators more resolutely.