Democracy, Governance and Popular Culture in the New Digitized Public Sphere

The growing digitization and internationalization of social interactions, together with the concentration of meaning generating institutions (media, social media, digital platforms, education systems) in large state and private bureaucracies, is transforming the public sphere. Here, the public sphere is understood as the physical and symbolic space in which social actors define their identities and interests, shape the public agenda, imagine possible futures and, ultimately, sustain any binding process of collective decision making.

This highly digitized public sphere creates a new kind of intermediation of social relations, based on algorithms and generative AI. It has deep effects on political, economic and administrative institutions, as well as on popular culture and public policy. It opens unprecedented possibilities for states and corporations to steer how societies define reality, whether to foster conflict or build consensus. This historic transformation overlaps with and may be implicated in major global challenges, including a decline in the wellbeing of certain populations and the marked erosion of trust in the institutions of representative democracy.

This Research Topic seeks an interdisciplinary perspective from political sociology, political science, public administration, public policy, and the sociologies of communication and culture. Its goal is to identify and understand both the constraints and the possibilities that the new public sphere creates for popular culture, democratic processes at all institutional and territorial levels, and the provision of common goods. It especially invites discussion on the viability of Western democracies and their material and cultural welfare systems, including the capacity of public administrations and civil society to make binding collective decisions that are both legitimate and effective.

A second aim is to bring together contrasting perspectives from scholars and practitioners to explore new ways of democratizing decision making in all types of organizations and at all levels. The Research Topic thus seeks not only to deepen knowledge, but also to imagine and suggest scenarios and strategies that promote democracy and material and cultural well being from the local to the global scale.

We welcome well grounded and well documented contributions, including empirical or theoretical research (quantitative, qualitative, case studies or comparative studies), state of the art reviews, methodological proposals and research hypotheses. We also welcome rigorous reports on innovative practices and public policy proposals developed by both academics and practitioners.

Suggested thematic areas include:

• features of the new public sphere and new popular culture
• management of visibility in popular culture and political institutions
• legitimacy and effectiveness of democracy, institutions, public administration, public policies and open government in the digitized public sphere
• inequality (economic, cultural, social, political) and social control online
• democratic innovations and designs in the digitized public sphere
• citizen participation, social activism and popular culture
• impacts of digitization on citizens’ control of political and administrative institutions
• effects of the new digital public sphere on representative institutions and public policies
• impacts of digitalization on decision making in cultural, economic and social organizations
• theorizing democracy as idea and process in the new public sphere
• the role of democracy and governance in building a shared future to address “glocal” challenges.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Registered Report
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Digital public sphere, Algorithms, Generative AI, Democracy, Trust, Participation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.