Dalla sfera pubblica alle camere d’eco. Jürgen Habermas sul nuovo mutamento strutturale della sfera pubblica

In this article, I review the structure and main arguments of the latest essay collection published by Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere and Deliberative Politics (2022). I also critically discuss some of his theses after placing them in relation to the broader context of the author’s works. In this volume, Habermas examines how new media have profoundly transformed the democratic public sphere. While they initially expanded access to communication and information, allowing more people to participate in virtual debates extended across time and space, their promise of fostering free and pluralistic argumentative exchange has been unfulfilled. Social media platforms, dominated by a few multinational corporations, encourage fragmentation into «echo chambers», the polarization of opinions, and the spread of fake news. This change has deep consequences for democracy, marking a new phase compared to the previous «structural transformation» Habermas analyzed in his first book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, from 1962.