Political Deliberation vs. Social Media Branding in Crisis-Prone Capitalist Democracies

A Discussion of Habermas’s New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere

Authors

  • Michael Hoffman School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, Florida Atlantic University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54195/jps.18504

Keywords:

digital authoritarianism, surveillance capitalism, echo chambers, social media, human rights, public sphere

Abstract

This review essay discusses Jürgen Habermas’s recent reflections on the threats to deliberative politics by a new structural transformation of the public sphere. Renewing his 1962 concept, he analyzes “crisis-prone capitalist democracies” as the necessary condition for transforming the public discourse of self-determined citizens into political branding that seeks to manipulate the citizen as a consumer. Habermas then identifies social media’s blurring of the private and the public realms already in the perception of democratic deliberation as the sufficient condition for today’s commodified discourse in a new political public sphere that has been colonized by the digital marketplace.

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Published

2024-08-02

Issue

Section

Debate

How to Cite

Hoffman, M. (2024). Political Deliberation vs. Social Media Branding in Crisis-Prone Capitalist Democracies : A Discussion of Habermas’s New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Journal of Political Sociology, 2(1), 111-134. https://doi.org/10.54195/jps.18504