Staying with the Secret: The Public Sphere in Platform Society
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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in: Theory, Culture & Society, Jahrgang 39, Nr. 4, 01.07.2022, S. 111-127.
Publikation: Beiträge in Zeitschriften › Zeitschriftenaufsätze › Forschung › begutachtet
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RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Staying with the Secret
T2 - The Public Sphere in Platform Society
AU - Beyes, Timon
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.
PY - 2022/7/1
Y1 - 2022/7/1
N2 - Investigating the structural transformation of the public sphere should reckon with the secret and its modes of organization. The expansion of secrecy effected by the infrastructures, platforms, and applications of media technology is constitutive for the emergence and transformation of ‘digital publics’. Offering a rereading of Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere that is attuned to the organizational principle of secrecy, this paper discusses current notions of mediated publics in juxtaposition with the redoubling of media-technological and organizational secrecy at work in platform society. How are illegibility, opacity and unavailability organized? Instead of assuming accountability, publicity and transparency as epistemological a priori, investigating the transformation of the public sphere would benefit from adopting epistemes of secrecy and opacity.
AB - Investigating the structural transformation of the public sphere should reckon with the secret and its modes of organization. The expansion of secrecy effected by the infrastructures, platforms, and applications of media technology is constitutive for the emergence and transformation of ‘digital publics’. Offering a rereading of Habermas’s Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere that is attuned to the organizational principle of secrecy, this paper discusses current notions of mediated publics in juxtaposition with the redoubling of media-technological and organizational secrecy at work in platform society. How are illegibility, opacity and unavailability organized? Instead of assuming accountability, publicity and transparency as epistemological a priori, investigating the transformation of the public sphere would benefit from adopting epistemes of secrecy and opacity.
KW - digital publics
KW - public sphere
KW - secrecy
KW - secret societies
KW - social organization
KW - technological culture
KW - transparency
KW - Media and communication studies
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133665613&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/02632764221104681
DO - 10.1177/02632764221104681
M3 - Journal articles
AN - SCOPUS:85133665613
VL - 39
SP - 111
EP - 127
JO - Theory, Culture & Society
JF - Theory, Culture & Society
SN - 0263-2764
IS - 4
ER -