Transformations in the public sphere: an introduction

This special issue revisits the concept of the public sphere in light of profound transformations in contemporary communication environments. Bringing together analytical and critical-theoretical perspectives from political theory, political science, and communication studies, the contributions examine both the structural and agential transformations of public sphere(s) under changing socio-technical conditions. They show how platformised media, digital information flows, disinformation, polarisation, and declining trust in institutions are reshaping the conditions of public deliberation and democratic will-formation. At the same time, they respond to longstanding critiques of the public sphere’s exclusions, including its gendered, racialised, and Western-centric assumptions, and demonstrate the need for renewed theoretical attention as well as conceptual and methodological innovation in order to understand these complex dynamics.

Rather than treating the public sphere as a singular arena, this introduction emphasises the plurality of publics, the distributed character of deliberation, and the constitutive role of emotions, stories, and lived experience in public debate. Framing publicness as both democratic practice and political ideal, it positions the special issue as a contribution not only to rethinking the normative and analytical value of the public sphere, but also to identifying the democratic characteristics of contemporary public spheres, diagnosing their vulnerabilities, and exploring the conditions under which publicness can endure.