Paper short abstract:

Based on theoretical frameworks of the public sphere theories and science and technology studies, considering the practices of digital society in China, this research rethinks the global-north-born concepts of the public and the public opinion formed with digital technologies in the global south.

Paper long abstract:

Digitalization brings new possibilities to the formation of the public sphere, the new public, the new means to shape public discussions, and the new sites where public discussions have taken place. Thus, it is necessary to rethink Habermas’ famous discussions and understandings of the public sphere based on European bourgeois contexts.

Intersecting itself from the theoretical frameworks of the public sphere, science and technology studies, considering the novel cultural, political and economic dimensions of the digital society in China, this research revisits the concepts of the public and the public opinion formed with the development of digital technologies in order to theorize further the multiplicity of the public sphere in the new era.

More specifically, this research seeks to ask: how do the developments of digital technologies form a new public? How do the debates in the public sphere theories and STS frameworks help us understand the alternative concepts? And how does developing alternative conceptions based in the Global South challenge our conventional understandings of STS?