Is Habermas on Twitter?

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which such filter bubbles can persist, by examining the structural characteristics of an entire national Twittersphere. Indeed, Jurgen Habermas himself suggests that as "a larger number of people tend to take an interest in a larger number of issues, the overlap of issue publics may even serve to counter trends of fragmentation". The transformation from public sphere to public spheres—and the spread of political and public debate across multiple actors, platforms, and publics—remains an ongoing process. Hashtags have been shown to be crucial to Twitter's response especially to breaking news events, but also enable users to come together around common topics of interest or to engage in shared audience activities. In many ways, issue publics may really be best described as issue communities, and are most likely to gather in the spaces provided by online community platforms—including, centrally, social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.

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