Public sphere ruptures

The linkage between the actors, the digital ecosystem, and the radicalization [Interview with Simone Chambers]

Abstract

Simone Chambers is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of California Irvine. She is a specialist in democracy studies, and her concerns are deliberative democracy, public reason, the digital public sphere, rhetoric, and civility. Among her main works, we can cite the article Bad Civil Society, with Jeffrey Kopstein (Political Theory, 2001); the book Alternative Conceptions of Civil Society, with Will Kymlicka (Princeton University Press, 2002); the book Deliberative Democratic Theory (Annual Review of Political Science, 2003); the book Reasonable Democracy: Jürgen Habermas and the Politics of Discourse (Cornell University Press, 2018); the chapter An Ethics of Public Political Deliberation: The Case of Rhetoric (The Oxford Handbook of Rhetoric and Political Theory - Oxford University Press, 2022); and the book Contemporary Political Theory (Polity 2023).
In this interview, she talks about the importance of thinking about the public sphere in this democratic crisis context. She also explains how considering disinformation and its asymmetry can help us better understand some public sphere ruptures. Besides that, Professor Chambers makes a distinction between partisanship, polarization, and radicalization.
It is a fact that an active and free public sphere will produce differences of opinion, multiplicities, and conflicting narratives, however, she highlights the need to value pluralism and inclusion from a critical perspective. A further concern is the potential dangers of new digital ecosystems that weaken democracy. For her, we should focus on political actors who have tried to undermine democracy.