The digital public sphere, comprised of a wide variety of message boards, information outlets, discussion fora and news channels, all enabled via social media and the world wide web, has on paper at least enormous potential to encourage the development of what Habermas referred to as a ‘critical reasoning public’ (1989). This is a public that, just as in the heyday of the 18^th public sphere, held nation states to account and spoke truth to power – the public sphere effectively acting as a check on undemocratic practices. The reality, based on recent evidence, is that the public sphere of the 21st century has squandered this potential, with critical reasoning in short supply and struggling to make itself felt in a world of celebrity gossip and antagonistic behaviour. Online dialogue is a world away from a digital republic of letters and the genesis of a new age of enlightenment.                

Much of the blame for this of course rests squarely on some of the usual suspects, the rent-seeking behaviour of modern capitalism chief among them. But blame should also lie at the feet of educational institutions, especially universities whose stated aims include the development of critical reasoning and the search for enlightenment. Their lack of presence in the digital public sphere is a striking feature of modern intellectual life. This is a serious oversight given what is at stake: overcoming the distortions of the digital public sphere, the misinformation, profiteering, commodification, as well as the widespread epistemic injustices and flagrant anti-democratic practices, depends, as Sevignani puts it (2022: 93) ‘on democratic learning processes in publics that foster the flourishing of communicative competences’. Of all the public institutions, universities are uniquely placed to help facilitate these ‘democratic learning spaces’ but have ceded this territory in the informal world of digital communication and opinion formation.    

Why such a disconnect between the universities and the public? Given the make-up of the digital public sphere, there are technological and spatial elements at play in this disconnect as well as the commodifying issues mentioned above. While these issues are significant, this paper aims instead to examine a more fundamental concern which is the relation between the universities and the public. Specifically, the paper will explore the extent to which universities engage with the process of intellectualising the public, or public intellectualism. In order to do this, the paper will first of all: provide some historical context for this relation and detail how this relation has been impacted by social transformations; second, identify the mechanisms of public intellectualism (for example, evidential, communicative, pedagogical) and their institutional embeddedness, and third, critically examine the content of public intellectualism – for example, welfare and economic redistribution, justice, knowledge and power, the public good, democracy, voice and representation. The paper concludes by detailing some implications of this for the future of critical reasoning in the digital public sphere.            

The paper adopts a historical and theoretical approach to the topic of the digital public sphere, with an obvious starting point being the work of Habermas. Habermas’ classic text The structural transformation of the public sphere (1989[1962]) provided an account for the rise of a critical reasoning public in countries such as England in the eighteenth century. Habermas traced the development of this sphere from its original role as a mouthpiece for the state to its transformation into a public debating chamber set against the interests of states. Greek in origin, conceptions of the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ and of the public sphere received a new lease of life with the growth of the modern state and of civil society alongside it. As a mediator between society and the state, the public sphere for Habermas is a crucial element of a properly functioning democracy, offering a privileged space for the ‘people’s public use of their reason’ (offentliches Rasonnement) (1989: 27). The publication, in English in 1989, has since spawned a wide range of intellectual debates across the social sciences and humanities, its influence at its heaviest in fields such as sociology, communication and media studies, linguistics, political science and literary studies. Its presence in education debates, however, is markedly less so, which is an oversight given Habermas’ own emphasis (albeit indirectly) on learning spaces and processes as tools of communicative deliberation and political transformation. A cursory appreciation of the topic would suggest that the public sphere is fertile ground for a study of educational questions, especially as regards the public framing of these questions, the politics of educational knowledge and the role of social movements in influencing educational outcomes. This paper aims to grapple with these concerns and to critical examine in particular the relation between universities and the now digitally-oriented public sphere, especially as it manifests itself in the 21st century. The historical focus is significant: this century has seen a ‘virtual transformation’ of the public sphere via the proliferation of social media, while also witnessing a questioning of expert knowledge cultures and a growing suspicion of educational authority. Educational professionals and institutions now more than ever have to compete against other sources of knowledge formation and production, making the development of a critical reasoning public an even more challenging proposition.

Expected outcomes relate to two key elements of the paper: 1) exploring the mechanisms of public intellectualism. The paper will include detail and analysis of how institutions engage the public through evidence-based arguments and discursive practices alongside various educational strategies and forms of public pedagogy; 2) The second expected set of outcomes revolve around critically examining the content of public intellectualism, and this may include an analysis of how institutions (through their research centres, foundations, outreach programmes) engage the public in dialogue around pressing social issues such as welfare, care and economic redistribution, migration and citizenship, struggles over social justice and equality, identity and representation, notions of the ‘public good’, and wider concerns over the future of democratic states. The paper concludes by detailing some implications of these findings for the future of critical reasoning in the digital public sphere, which will include reconsiderations of existing institutional policy, strategies of impact and knowledge exchange as well as the role of academics and students in reshaping the public sphere for the 21st century.

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