A New Digital Public Sphere: Towards Democratic Social Media

Abstract

This thesis explores what changes need to be made to current forms of mainstream social media to fulfill their role as facilitator of rational-critical debate in the ideal-type digital public sphere. It provides a historical reconstruction of the public sphere, following Habermas, to critique current deployments of the public sphere and produce an ideal-type public sphere. Critical thinking is categorized as an essential disposition of citizens within the public sphere, and this can be realized through the fostering of the habits of intelligence and cognitive diversity. It is explained how these values of critical thinking form an intrinsic and instrumental justification for democracy respectively. This thesis argues that democratic states ought to promote deployments of social media that have no profit scheme, make no use of content recommendation algorithms, and are decentralized. The thesis provides practical implications for democratic states on what they should do to foster these forms of democratic social media. There is reflection on what role these democratic social media can play in digital literacy. The conclusion provides reflection on possible limitations and determines where future ethical inquiry is needed.