“The platform society makes it harder to realise Habermas’ ideal of the public sphere while
simultaneously making it easier for the development of Fraser’s counter-public sphere.” To
what extent do you agree with this statement?
The rise of digital platforms has transformed how individuals engage with public
discourse, raising new questions about democracy, visibility, and voice in the so-
called “platform society.” This term, developed by José van Dijck and colleagues,
refers to a social landscape where civic, social, and political life is increasingly
shaped by digital platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. This essay
argues that the platform society complicates the realisation of Habermas’ public
sphere while simultaneously enabling the emergence of counterpublics, as
theorised by Nancy Fraser. It begins by exploring how the communicative logic of
digital platforms destabilises the deliberative ideals central to Habermas’ model.
It then considers how these same conditions allow counterpublics to flourish,
offering alternative spaces of resistance and visibility. The essay uses the Black
Lives Matter movement as a case study to illustrate the tensions between
empowerment and constraint in digital activism and concludes by reflecting on
the broader implications of platform infrastructures for democratic discourse.
The structure of the platform society undermines the stability of Habermas’s
public sphere by replacing sustained, rational-critical debate with fragmented,
fast-paced, and algorithmically shaped interactions. Rather than cultivating a
unified civic forum, social media generates dispersed “personal publics” and
“micro-publics” that reflect individual interests more than collective reasoning
(Bruns & Highfield, 2016). These decentralised spaces blur boundaries between
private and public communication, disrupting the transparency and equality
foundational to Habermas’s model (Schirato, 2018). Performative expression and
emotional resonance often take precedence over reasoned discourse, as
algorithms reward attention over argument. In turn, participants adapt their
communicative styles to what is most visible or shareable, further eroding
deliberative norms. As a result, participation is not only uneven but also
susceptible to commercial and technological pressures that distort the
democratic process. Platform infrastructures encourage the circulation of
reactive and polarising content, undermining sustained dialogue and reinforcing
ideological echo chambers. The logic of virality intensifies this fragmentation,
privileging immediacy and spectacle over coherence and consensus. The
platform society thus fosters a volatile discursive environment where the norms
of rationality, inclusivity, and sustained dialogue are difficult to uphold. In this
context, the promise of democratic deliberation is eroded by structures
optimised for engagement rather than civic reason, prompting a necessary
rethinking of how democratic discourse might function in corporatised digital
spaces. Without reform or alternative models for online public discourse, the
foundational ideals of Habermas’s public sphere risk becoming increasingly
obsolete in the context of contemporary digital communication.
While the platform society destabilises Habermas’s unified public sphere, it
simultaneously facilitates the development of Fraser’s counterpublics by
providing marginalised groups with tools to contest dominant narratives. These
counterpublics function as fluid, networked spaces where individuals with shared
experiences or identities coalesce to articulate alternative political imaginaries
(Bruns & Highfield, 2016). Though fragmented, such collectives broaden
democratic participation by giving voice to perspectives excluded from
mainstream forums, embodying the multiplicity Fraser argues is essential to
contemporary democracy (Fraser, 1990). Social media’s capacity to enable
epistemic participation allows these groups to contribute directly to public
knowledge. (Political Quarterly, 2023). This shift redefines who is permitted to
speak and be heard, enabling new forms of visibility and resistance. However,
the same affordances that empower resistance also enable the spread of
misinformation and disinformation, placing new ethical burdens on platforms.
Algorithmic amplification can prioritise outrage or falsehoods, complicating the
epistemic credibility of counterpublic discourse. As digital counterpublics gain
influence, platform governance must balance free expression with safeguards for
truthfulness and inclusivity. While counterpublics reflect the possibility of more
inclusive democratic participation, their development within a corporate platform
society complicates their emancipatory potential. This tension reveals how the
same structures that enable resistance also constrain it, reinforcing the idea that
counterpublics are both empowered and limited by the conditions of their
emergence.
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement is a prominent example of a digital
counterpublic that disrupts dominant discourse through technologically driven
activism and creative protest. The movement arised with the acquittal of George
Zimmerman in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012. BLM quickly
mobilized global attention to anti-Black violence and structural racism through
social media platforms such as Twitter, which function as counterpublic spaces
where historically marginalized Black voices assert oppositional narratives and
cultivate solidarity (Kellner, 2024). As Nancy Fraser notes, counterpublics serve
as “spaces of withdrawal and regroupment” and “training grounds” for broader
agitational efforts (source). BLM fulfills these functions both online and off (Ruiz,
2024). Strategic hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, that have
circulated across the major social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, serve
as tools of memory activism, transforming transient outrage into lasting forms of
resistance. By circulating names and images of victims, BLM contests state-
sanctioned forgetting while building collective memory (Ruiz, 2024). These
methods refuse the constraints of respectability politics and instead embrace
agitation as a mode of resistance. Tactics like performance art, such as the
‘Mirror Casket’ and monument defacement, blur the boundary between digital
and physical activism, forcing dominant publics to confront the ongoing issue of
systematic racial prejudice. In doing so, BLM builds a digital counterpublic that
challenges dominant discourse by centring Black voices, mobilising memory, and
sustaining resistance across both online and offline spaces.
While digital platforms have amplified the Black Lives Matter movement, they
remain constrained by capitalist logics and structural inequities that hinder
sustained systemic change. Social media architectures prioritise spectacle and
virality, often reducing protest to consumable content and stripping it of its
political urgency. Visual tactics, such as activists meeting the gaze of police,
perform a radical refusal to submit and enact a “Black counter-gaze” that turns
the lens back on power (Yoganathan, 2020). Yet once shared online, such
imagery risks being aestheticised—flattened into symbols of resistance rather
than calls to action. Viral chants like “Hands up, don’t shoot” function as
acoustical disruptions of dominant soundscapes, but their political weight is often
diluted through rapid circulation (Ruiz, 2024). The architecture of social media
also exposes activists to surveillance, hostility, and algorithmic erasure,
complicating the formation of stable counterpublics (Kellner, 2021). The platform
economy’s preference for emotional intensity over political clarity undermines
the durability of protest movements, while algorithms disproportionately elevate
moderate reforms over abolitionist demands. Despite this, BLM continues to
rework digital space through subversive interventions—whether through sonic
jamming, protest art, or reappropriated monuments—that momentarily rupture
dominant narratives (Yoganathan, 2020). These interventions, however, remain
embedded within a system that commodifies dissent and limits the reach of
radical critique. BLM’s digital counterpublic does not escape the contradictions of
the platform society—it navigates and contests them, revealing both the
potential and limits of online resistance.
The platform society makes it more difficult to realise Habermas’ ideal of the
public sphere while making it easier for counterpublics, as theorised by Fraser, to
emerge and assert influence. This essay has shown that the structure of digital
platforms weakens the foundations of Habermas’ model by promoting
fragmented, emotionally charged, and algorithm-driven communication that
disrupts rational-critical debate and equal participation. At the same time, these
platforms have empowered marginalised groups to build alternative spheres of
discourse that challenge dominant narratives and extend democratic
participation beyond traditional boundaries. The Black Lives Matter movement
demonstrates how digital counterpublics can mobilise collective memory,
confront hegemonic power, and reframe public discourse through creative and
disruptive tactics. Yet it also reveals the structural limits of the platform society,
where activism is often commodified, surveyed, and shaped by commercial
interests. Although these digital spaces allow for new forms of resistance, they
do not offer a clear path to systemic transformation. Instead, they present a
contested terrain where visibility and voice must constantly be negotiated. The
public sphere is not simply displaced but reshaped, requiring a new
understanding of what democratic engagement looks like in an age defined by
platforms.
Leganto Sources
Media and the Public Sphere
https://mq.alma.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/61MACQUARIE_INST:MQ/
12224599830002171?lang=en&viewerServiceCode=DigitalViewer
Is Habermas on Twitter? Social media and the Public Sphere
https://www-taylorfrancis-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/reader/read-online/
20d5194a-549e-4eda-ace9-708c244ecc43/chapter/pdf?context=ubx
What Social Media Facilitates, Social Media should Regulate: Duties in the New Public
Sphere
https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-
923X.13011
Google scholar sources
Not Forgetting Black Lives Matter: Memory, Protest and Counterpublics
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13183222.2024.2342743#d1e99
Black Lives Matter movement uses creative tactics to confront systemic racism
https://theconversation.com/black-lives-matter-movement-uses-creative-tactics-to-
confront-systemic-racism-143273
Habermas and the mutations of the public sphere
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01914537231223845?icid=int.sj-full-
text.similar-articles.1
Other
Platform society
Newsreel.pte.hu. (2017). Platform society | University of Pécs. [online] Available at:
https://newsreel.pte.hu/glossary/platform_society
