For Habermas, the media plays an important role in facilitating democracy by providing the

“communicative infrastructure” for what he terms the “public sphere,” wherein private persons
come together as a public to hold institutions of power to account through robust, rational public
debate.

To function effectively, the public sphere requires unlimited access to information, equal and
protected participation, and the absence of institutional influence, particularly regarding the
economy. It must also be based on “communicative action,” characterized by respectful and open
communication aimed at a common goal of finding the truth.

Applying the above concepts to our current media system and digital technologies, it becomes
clear that our “communicative infrastructure” – television, social media, internet, etc. – may be
undermining our democracy rather than facilitating it. Worse yet, these developments in
communicative technologies, ostensibly created to connect and unite, keep us more divided and
unwilling to communicate with one another than ever before.

This occurs through what Kovach and Rosenstiel term “the paradox of fragmentation,” wherein
“as the public forum grows, the tendency at any one website, Facebook group, chat room, or TV
network is toward specialization.” (237) The more time we spend in our own little corners of the
internet, the more the public forum shrinks. The cycle continues, eventually dissolving whatever
remains of the bonds that once connected us in civil society, and so with it our ability to self-
govern and incite change.

Finally, this public sphere is far from the neutral ideal. It is characterized by supreme
commercial interest, unequal access, institutional and algorithmic surveillance, the selective
filtering and restricting of information, polarization, context collapse, and the erasure of
essentially all meaningful boundaries between the realms of public/private, truth/lies,
work/leisure, and reality/virtual.