Der ‚digital-öffentliche Raum‘ als kommunikative Figuration und vergemeinschaftungsideologische Imagination

This paper assesses the notion of ‘digital public spaces’ and grasps it as a discursive conglomerate which combines multiple ideology-laden concepts: the ‘public sphere’ as an ‘open’ and ‘democratic’ space (as opposed to closed private ‘bubbles’), and ‘digital communication’, which is often strictly divided from the non-digital and perceived as either a threat or the great promise of social assemblage. From the perspective of metapragmatic sociolinguistics and the sociology of knowledge, we follow discursive traces of the ‘the public sphere’ and its suturing with ‘digital communication’ within and outside of our own fields in order to show how the conceptual conglomerate ‘digital public spaces’ is bound to evaluations, expectations and projections which need more critical reflection in media studies in order to escape ideological short circuits and simplifications that haunt the field. On the other hand, we argue that the notion of ‘digital publics spaces’ serves important discursive functions in the lifeworlds of media users, as it fuels into contingency-reducing ideological complexes: ideologies of communication (Kommunikationsideologien) which guide social actors’ interaction, and related ideologies of communification (Vergemeinschaftungsideologien) which guide them in the ways they socially align with each others.