Our Science, Technology and Society list publishes books that examine the social, political and economic implications of developments in science and technology.
Recent highlights have included Data Lives, The Imposter as Social Theory and We Have Always Been Cyborgs. Path-breaking book series include Dis-positions: Troubling Methods and Theory in STS and Contemporary Issues in Science Communication.
Science, Technology and Society
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This chapter turns to the dynamics of public sphere criticism as a field of political struggle in the digital age. The tense relationship between dystopian and utopian elements as a driving force of public sphere conflicts is traced along three lines: (1) the post-truth challenge in the truth orientation and rationality of public debate, (2) the privacy challenge in the balancing of private and public use of digital media content and platforms and (3) the populism challenge in the contested modes of empowerment of the will of the people. By raising this research agenda of the social and political fields of public sphere criticism, I depart from the narrow confines of media research and its emphasis on media effects to explore the full potential of public sphere research as a theoretical foundation of digital society and its rapid transformation. Instead of focusing on media audiences simply as receptacles of media content, I reintroduce the notion of the public, which is distinguished by critical reflection, and, as such, is norm-guided and reunited to a utopian vision of society and democracy.
The last chapter critically reassesses and ultimately rejects the notion of post-democracy. Mirrored through the critical eye of the public sphere, the world after disruption most likely takes shape as one of renewed democratic forms and practices. When facing the challenges of digitalization and transnationalization, the democratic public sphere will undergo profound transformations, but it will still be populated by critical citizens and progressive social movements. The notion of public sphere resilience is introduced precisely for this purpose, to refer to the everyday practices of critical citizens who might not heroically fight for the reclamation of democracy but will still work tirelessly towards reclaiming their rights, call for trustworthy information and seek alliances to challenge the power of states and industries.
From fake news to infringement of privacy in digital spheres, the changing landscapes of media and public communication have completely transformed contemporary democracies in recent decades.
Disruptions of media functioning can be seen as evidence for a transition from democracy to post-democracy, but how plausible is this scenario? Using empirical evidence, the author asks how imminent the threat of the end of democracy is, and how it can be restored.
Exploring the creative and destructive ways individuals and groups make use of new digital and social media in democratic societies across the world, the book presents a much-needed critical theory of the public sphere as we enter the new digital age.
This chapter turns to contemporary public sphere struggles as resilience and resistance to democratic backlash. I will identify the critical voice of citizens and progressive movements by looking at manifestations of public sphere resistance and resilience in the context of digitalization and globalization: first, the rebalancing of private–public relationships; secondly, the populist backlash and the struggle over political representation; and thirdly, the COVID-19 pandemic public sphere. Selected examples of public sphere resilience refer to: (1) the rebalancing of the public–private relationship with regard to the power of digital industries and the emergence of what is called ‘surveillance capitalism’; (2) the populist and anti-populist backlash, and the struggle over political representation as exemplified in the 48 per cent anti-Brexit mobilization in the UK, the ‘Popolo delle Sardine’ mobilization in Italy, the Yellow Vest Movement in France, and the #FridaysforFuture international mobilization of the younger generations; and (3) resilience and resistance during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown of the public sphere. This detracts attention from considering the new media as an arena of claims and strategic political mobilization to the digital public sphere as the principal arena for the contestation of democratic legitimacy.
Several books have appeared since the early 2000 forecasting the erosion of liberal democracy in connection with what is identified as deep disruptions of media and communications. Much collected evidence suggests that the best days of democracy are over, and that democracy might soon come to an end. But what binds democracy and the media so closely together? Why is the destiny of democracy so intimately related to the health of public communication and the media? This chapter proposes a research framework that locates spaces of democracy within the ongoing ‘structural transformation of the public sphere’ in the digital age. According to this account, public sphere transformations are driven by internal critical forces of disruptions and renewal. With its emphasis on the linkage between the identification of public sphere disruptions in the digital age and critical forces of public sphere renewal, the chapter contributes to our understanding of digital society as a space for the contestation of democracy.
This chapter traces the ideational dimensions of the public sphere. To validate the evolving form of public sphere criticism, and to find evidence for how it relates back to the utopia of a possible new beginning, I will systematically approach the notion of the modern public sphere and trace its transformation. This requires us, first, to engage with the key texts of Jürgen Habermas and to reconstruct the legacy of the European Enlightenment that formulated the linkage between publicity and reasoning. Secondly, I will identify the core normative dimensions of the public sphere and their interlinkage with democracy. Thirdly, I discuss degrees of erosion of democratic norms and public sphere principles. I investigate these accounts of democratic decay not as an empirical diagnosis but as a form of normative critique. As such, I am interested in what facilitates critique, who promotes it and what the cognitive prerequisites are for expressing critique in the form of specific knowledge about empirical facts and causalities. I call this a sociology of knowledge of public sphere critique.
This chapter delivers an empirical account of ongoing public sphere transformations. I will recapitulate the stock of knowledge about media and public sphere disruptions and their devastating effects on democracy. Within critical media studies, analytical knowledge about media malfunctioning and failures is, however, concurrently taken up by various social carriers and translated into forms of public critique and political mobilization. I distinguish between the critique of instrumental and functional performance and the normative critique of media. Both have developed in parallel, establishing rituals of media critique that are internal to the discipline of media studies (in the tradition of what is called critical media studies), transdisciplinary (in the tradition of cultural studies, as well as approaches of political economy), or external, as a universal template for the critique of media content and performance that is applied by public intellectuals and political actors as well as by audience members.
The rise of freelancing has become a global trend, including in South Korea, where there is growing interest in this type of work arrangement. However, the term ‘freelancer’ is not clearly defined and is used interchangeably with other terms, such as independent workers, free agents, one-person entrepreneurs and portfolio workers. This lack of clarity has resulted in the notion of freelancers not yet reaching social and legal consensus. Despite the lack of official statistics, studies have identified the increasing demand for and importance of freelancers in society, particularly with the changes in entrepreneurial structures and technological development. This chapter aims to examine the characteristics of freelance work, the insecurity experienced by freelancers, and their experience with the social security system in South Korea, particularly focusing on the four major social insurances. This analysis is related to cell 3 of the thesis matrix, which represents melting labour excluded from institutional protection, such as platform workers and freelancers.
The concept of melting labour served as the analytical prism throughout the book to establish the contours of emerging precarious workers and their variety. The book focused on melting labour as companies and capital evolved the capital accumulation mode alongside technological development. The issues observed in newly expanding forms of work overlapped with the Korean labour market, such as platform work, freelancers and other long-standing issues related to non-regular workers and precarious self-employed workers. The new non-standard forms of work went beyond the departure from the standard ‘employment relationship’, and the forms of work were changing in ways that differed from existing standards. However, the precariousness issues associated with these types of work were consistent with those discussed thus far for non-regular workers. The long-standing problems of non-regular workers and those brought about by the emerging ‘form’ of work needed to be explored from a comprehensive and integrated perspective.
This chapter examines the labour status of platform workers in the Korean digital labour market, situated in cell 3 of the theoretical framework, which is characterised by a high level of melting labour but a low level of institutional protection consistency. Melting labour emphasises the ambiguity in determining a worker’s identity or employer, resulting in a legal blind spot regarding workers in new forms of work. The inconsistency of existing institutional protection policies and new forms of work brought about by the digital economy results in various forms of precarious work. Official data and legal definitions of platform work in Korea are presented, and the expansion of the platform labour market into diverse sectors with the advancement of technology and high internet usage rates in Korea is explained. The chapter categorises platform companies and workers and conducts interviews with workers in delivery, housekeeping services and high-skilled freelance platforms, examining their working conditions and experiences with social protection. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the precariousness and lack of institutional protection experienced by platform workers in Korea. Specifically, it highlights the inconsistency of the social security system in providing coverage and mitigating insecurity for those situated in cell 3 of the theoretical framework.
