Digital Democracy and the Digital Public Sphere

Christian Fuchs is a critical theorist of communication and society. He is Chair Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation at Paderborn University’s Department of Media Studies. He is co-editor of the journal tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. He is the author of many publications, including the books Digital Capitalism (2022), Foundations of Critical Theory (2022), Communicating COVID-19: Everyday Life, Digital Capitalism, and Conspiracy Theories in Pandemic Times (2021), Marxist Humanism and Communication Theory (2021), Social Media: A Critical Introduction (3rd edition, 2021), Communication and Capitalism: A Critical Theory (2020), Marxism: Karl Marx’s Fifteen Key Concepts for Cultural and Communication Studies (2020), Nationalism on the Internet: Critical Theory and Ideology in the Age of Social Media and Fake News (2020), Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism (2019), Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter (2016), Digital Labour and Karl Marx (2014), and Internet and Society (2008).

I. Introduction 1. Democracy, Communicative Democracy, Digital Democracy II. Foundations of Digital Democracy 2. The Dialectic: Not Just the Absolute Recoil, but the World’s Living Fire that Extinguishes and Kindles Itself: Reflections on Slavoj Žižek’s Version of Dialectical Philosophy in Absolute Recoil:Towards a New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism 3. The Critique of the Political Economy of the Media and Communication 4. Power in the Age of Social Media 5. The Praxis School’s Marxist Humanism and Mihailo Marković’s Theory of Communication 6. Sustainability and Community Networks 7. Karl Marx, Journalism, and Democracy 8. Towards a Critical Theory of Communication as Renewal and Update of Marxist Humanism in the Age of Digital Capitalism 9. Digital Democracy, Public Service Media, and the Public Service Internet III. Conclusion 10. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Alienation: Challenges and Opportunities for the Advancement of Digital Democracy