Democratic resonance or closed lifeworlds?

Democratic conceptions of politics are tacitly or explicitly predicated upon the existence of a functioning arena for the formation and expression of public opinion in an associated media-space. Policy making thus requires a stable and reliable connection to processes of ‘public’ will-formation. These processes formed the focus for Habermas’ influential study on the Public Sphere. This contribution presents a closer look at more recent ‘structural transformations of the public sphere’ and examines the consequences. The causes of these transformations are by no means limited to social media communication. The analysis proceeds in three steps: 1) in some proximity to Habermas, but also by means of the theory of resonance, it seeks to determine the kind of public sphere that a democratic polity requires; 2) it analyses problems within the currently dominant public sphere; 3) which in turn informs a discussion of the possibility to re-establish a ‘functioning political public sphere’.