Dialogue between government and society in the digital public sphere (theoretical and methodological aspect)

Introduction.  The creator of the holistic concept of the discourse of power and society in a special communicative space located in the border space between them and called the public sphere was the German philosopher Y. Harbermas. For the first time, he outlined this theory in a book entitled "Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. A study on the category of bourgeois society" back in 1962 ^[1]. Since then, the book has been repeatedly published and republished, including in English ^[2]. In Russian, this major work, which was fully included in the corpus of classics of political philosophy of the XX century, was published only in 2016 ^[3].

The book, according to its author, was written at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s, but despite this, Y. Habermas did not make any changes to its numerous reprints. He did not do this in the 19th reissue, published in 1990, from which the book was translated into Russian ^[3]. In the preface to the book, the author frankly admitted: "Rereading my text, written almost thirty years ago, at first I was tempted to start editing – to delete something, and add something, on the contrary. However, the further it went, the clearer it became to me that this would be a mistake" ^{[3, p. 9]}. Having made one correction, Y. Habermas, according to him, would have been forced to explain why he did not revise the entire book in its entirety. Such editing, according to the author, "would have become an impossible task" for him, because he had "been busy with other problems for a long time and could not keep track of all the novelties of scientific literature related to the topic" ^{[3, p. 9]}. And the constant attention to the book from the public, which was maintained for a long period of time, did not allow Yu. Habermas has to correct his theoretical calculations made many years ago, although real life has long gone ahead.

The public sphere of society has always acted and continues its modern existence as the leading substance of the information and communication space, where civil society institutions and organizations enter into an intersubjective dialogue with the authorities on an extremely wide range of socially significant problems and issues. In this article, such concepts as "public sphere", on the one hand, and "dialogue of power and society", on the other, are considered in the same semantic and theoretical-methodological series, since, from our point of view, they are not just inextricably interconnected with each other, but also ontologically assume the existence of each other. The dialogue between the government and society is impossible without the presence of the public sphere. And the public sphere, where public opinion is formed, arises and develops in the process of this dialogue. The termination of the dialogue leads to the disappearance of the public sphere, and in the absence of the latter, the dialogue itself becomes impossible.

The concept of the public sphere in relation to the new infocommunicative and digital realities of the late XX - early XXI centuries was developed not only by Yu . Habermas and his adherents, but also numerous critics and opponents. They, without denying the very fact of the existence of the public sphere, gave it other, different from Habermasian characteristics and interpretations. In the context of the accelerating process of digitalization of all aspects of public life, the concept of the public sphere, although undergoing new and new transformations, does not lose its relevance and attractiveness both in praxeological and general theoretical aspects.

Even before the emergence of modern mass communication media (in accordance with the point of view of Y. Habermas) there was a progressive process of increasing the volume of production and circulation of socially significant information. According to the classical Habermasian concept, the public sphere is positioned as a transparent space for rational discussion based on openness, symmetry and discursive equality of subjects of socio-political communication. The fact is that it is in the public sphere that, during an open dialogue, "what can be called "public opinion" is developed ^{[4, p. 26]}. In accordance with the Habermasian version of the public sphere, Russian researcher R. V. Kuzmenko defines the modern political public sphere of society as a set of "institutional communicative spaces" that contribute to public deliberation, that is, collective "discussion and formation of public opinion" ^{[5, p. 17]}.

Yu. Habermas, in his theoretical interpretation of the public sphere, focused almost exclusively on the early bourgeois European public sphere ^[6]. At the same time, he greatly embellished, idealizing, this public space, which has long been a thing of the past, originally formed in elite salons, coffee shops, libraries through print media, discussions, debates, disputes, etc.

The further expansion of the field of free discourse and the public sphere, which was associated with the emergence of electronic mass media, social networks and digital feedback platforms, remained beyond the attention of Y. Habermas, but he nevertheless declared the beginning of the crisis and the decline of his normative model of the public sphere. The principles on which his interpretation of the public space and the collective (deliberative) search for truth taking place in it by choosing the "best argument" were based did not correspond to the fierce competition, political confrontation, struggle for power, with which the political practice of the late XX and early XXI centuries was richly saturated. For these and many other shortcomings, blunders, illusions, a number of researchers quite deservedly criticized Y. Habermas himself and his theory of the public sphere. Nevertheless, the author himself and the concept of the public sphere created by him have gained unprecedented popularity and spread among political scientists, sociologists, philosophers, historians and lawyers in most countries of the world, including Russia. The aberration of the Habermasian concrete historical model of the public sphere, its doctrinal reception as an almost universal model applicable in the analysis of any socio-historical reality, still plays a huge theoretical and methodological role, including in the study of the latest infocommunicative and digital processes unfolding in the context of the formation of the global information society and digital civilization.

The main part. In the context of the formation and development of the global information society, channels, mechanisms and forms of communication between government and society are becoming increasingly important. Many of them in the conditions of mass digitalization acquire unknown features, ways of functioning and distribution of content. People's daily lives include not only previously unseen gadgets, communicators, high-speed Internet services, but also new channels and means of communication, digital mass media, platforms, forums and portals. Naturally, significant transformations are taking place both in the structure and infrastructure of social, including political, communications, and in the format of dialogue between authorities and citizens, government institutions and civil society. The process of mass digitalization affects this most important sphere of infocommunicative interaction and information exchange between the managing and managed segments of the political subsystem of society. This circumstance is inextricably linked with the ongoing socio-technological transition of almost all aspects of the life of modern society to modern digital, high-tech, breakthrough intellectual technologies. Previously dominant in the sphere of communication between government and society, offline dialogue is undergoing a deep digital transformation and modernization, institutionalized in the narrative context of public policy in the format of online dialogue and digital discourse of the leading subjects and actors of public policy in modern Russia.

Here it is necessary to clarify that by the dialogue of the government and society – both "traditional" and digital – we will understand first of all their infocommunicative interaction, through which socially and politically significant information is exchanged and disseminated. A dialogue is a communication between its two (or more) subjects. Its actors (participants, communicants, subjects. agents) are, on the one hand, representatives of various authorities (federal, regional or local, i.e. municipal). On the other hand, individual citizens or voluntary associations of citizens, that is, non-profit (non-governmental) organizations and civil society institutions, participate in such an intersubjective dialogue.

If in the conditions of the "pre-digital information society" this communication took place mainly directly "face to face", verbally, then, as channels, methods, mechanisms and means of communication were digitized, these interactions (dialogue) began to acquire an increasingly mediated and distant character. In other words, offline dialogue, which has existed since the time of the ancient Greek agora or the Novgorod Veche, began to undergo digital transformation and gradually turn into an online dialogue. This circumstance allowed us to declare the formation of increasingly distinct contours of a new form of democracy – "digital democracy".

By "digital democracy", which has already firmly entered the political thesaurus, we will understand various information and communication practices of political participation carried out on the basis of digitalization of the public sphere, dialogue and deliberation between the authorities, civil society organizations and individual citizens in order to minimize space-time costs and costs in the process of joint resolution of various in nature and content socio-political tasks, problems and issues.

The digitization of mass media, the rapid development of Internet communications and the digital information society in the late XX - early XXI centuries allowed the public sphere to once again enter the process of long–term transformation (but in a fundamentally new socio-cultural paradigm, rather than in the Habermasian model of transformation of the public sphere), built on the basis of social networks, digital civil society and digital democracy. A number of both Western and Russian authors write about the post-Habermasian digital transformation of the public sphere and the digitization of channels and methods of communication between government and society.

Among the Russian philosophers, sociologists and political scientists dealing with the problem of digital transformation of the public sphere, we should mention such authors as A.A. Sukhorukov ^[7], A.V. Sokolov and E.A. Isaeva ^[8], V.N. Yakimets and L.I. Nikovskaya ^[9], D.S. Martyanov ^[10], S.V. Volodenkov ^[11] et al. At the same time, it should be noted that apart from individual articles and publications, there are no systematic and in-depth theoretical, methodological and fundamental studies in this branch of socio-humanitarian knowledge in Russian science.

         Among the foreign studies, it should be noted a group of researchers who are trying to supplement and adapt the theory of the public sphere Yu. Habermas to the new conditions of its existence. So, the collective of authors of the collection under the meaningful title "After Habermas: new perspectives of the public sphere" carried out a purposeful search for foundations and sources of theoretical and methodological interpretation of the processes of transformation and modernization of the modern public sphere other than that of this German philosopher ^[12]. Some of them, like, for example, three authors of this collection at once, are trying to supplement and update the Habermasian version of the public sphere with the ideas of the Soviet philosopher and literary critic M. Bakhtin and members of his circle (V.Voloshinov, L. Pumpyansky, M. Sollertinsky and M. Yudina) ^{[12, p. 28-87]}. Others consider as an alternative to Habermasianism the ideas of the French sociologist P. Bourdieu ^{[12, pp. 88-112]} or, for example, the student Yu. Habermas, the German philosopher A. Honneth (Axel Honneth) ^{[12, pp. 113-130]}.       

     However, in our opinion, the most interesting, from the point of view of the problem we are analyzing, is an article by the North American philosopher J. Boman entitled "Expanding dialogue: the Internet, the public sphere and the prospects of transnational democracy" ^{[12, pp. 131-155]}. From his point of view, the Internet can become a new form of the public sphere, but at the same time, it is very important to rethink what should now be meant by the terms "public" and "public" and what the public sphere will be in the Internet space. Boman notes that the digital public sphere is entering the phase of initial institutionalization against the background of an insufficiently developed terminological apparatus and the lack of scientific justification of the theoretical and methodological foundations of this process.

          The famous German philosopher and sociologist R. Chelikates notes that neither philosophers nor political scientists have yet fully comprehended the ongoing processes of digitalization of the public sphere and the formation of a global transnational public sphere: it would be a huge mistake on their part "to underestimate the creative potential of the transition from offline to online forms of communicative interaction and political action" ^{[13, p.167]}.  At the same time, it would be wrong, given the complex landscape of the new emerging public sphere, to idealize these innovative trends of digital development, or, on the contrary, to denigrate and discredit them.  Therefore, R. Chelikates suggests "first carefully consider some structural features of digitalization, and then comprehend the conceptual, regulatory and political problems that it generates" ^{[13, 167-168]}. 

The Canadian philosopher J. Tilly, in an article entitled "On the global multiplicity of public spheres: the democratic transformation of the public sphere?" argues that in the context of global digitalization, one should speak not about one, but about the totality, that is, about the multiplicity of public spheres, "more or less local, more or less integrated, more or less official, institutionalized and more or less digitized, and not about a universal unified public sphere" ^{[14, p. 167]}. The modern public sphere is a multi–component public sphere, a historical conglomerate or, in his words, "an ever-changing kaleidoscope of diverse public spheres" ^{[13, p. 167]}. Accordingly, digitalization, from the point of view of J. Tilly, it should be understood not as a single and unidirectional process that transforms a previously integral and unified non-digital public sphere, but as a complex and multilevel process that transforms and generates a multitude of digital public spaces and relevant digital publics. All of them, although interconnected with each other, permanently intersecting with each other, "complicate the digital and non-digital gap" between various structural levels and elements of a multi-component global public sphere ^{[13, p.167-168]}. Digitalization, its uneven and multidirectional nature of development in various objectively existing public spheres have dramatically changed the previously unified pre-digital public sphere, once represented by Yu. Habermas. At the present time, according to J. Tilly, digitalization of objectively existing public spheres is an "open social and political process, including many arenas and spheres" of communication between the authorities and society, where different points of view are disputed, political struggle and confrontation take place, mutual understanding, compromise and consensus are achieved between various subjects, actors and agents of public policy.

A significant number of foreign authors highlight the mainstream in the transformation of the modern public sphere, which consists in a progressive and steady process of formation of the global transnational public sphere ^{[15],[16],[17]}. Among the most authoritative authors investigating this phenomenon is the American philosopher N. Fraser ^[18]. In the book entitled "The Transnationalization of the Public Sphere", she examines in detail the applicability of the concept of the public sphere of Yu. Habermas to the realities of the era of political globalization and digitalization of discourse in the field of public policy. According to N. Fraser, the ongoing political debates on the most pressing socio-political issues have long ago, thanks to digital Internet technologies, outgrown existing borders and went beyond the traditional national states and are now taking place at the supranational, that is, at the global discursive level. All this is more than obvious, from the point of view of the researcher, testifies to the formation and institutionalization of a cross-border and inclusive public sphere of communications, discourse and dialogue ^[19]. This circumstance, in our opinion, more than clearly demonstrates that the digital public sphere of modern society not only exists, but also undergoes very significant changes in the process of global digital transformation of the entire complex of existing forms, types and varieties of social communications in its entirety.

 Unlike a number of other thinkers who in one way or another touched upon the problems of the public sphere and public policy, Y. Habermas greatly exaggerates the role of reason and morality in politics, underestimating it from the point of view of the competitive, adversarial or agonal side. Moreover, as a result of a real clash of opinions, discussions, polemics, debates, the subjects of such communication do not always come to a compromise and consensus, show tolerance and tolerance for someone else's opinion, strive to achieve objective truth, and not to impose their opinion as such.

Even in ancient Greece, along with Socratic dialogue as a way of finding the truth together, there were sophistic dialogic practices aimed at heuristic argument, suggestion, persuasion. In such practices, dialogue is a struggle with an opponent, suppression of the interlocutor, and sophistic "logic" is an effective means for discursive victory. H. Arend, analyzing the ancient public sphere, unlike Y. Habermas, saw in it not only an arena for finding agreement, but a place for dispute. The dialogue seemed not so much a verbal interaction as an opportunity to exercise power. "The policy,– writes H. Arendt, –and therefore the public space itself, was the place of the strongest and fiercest dispute" ^{[25, p. 55]}

K. Schmidt and A. Filippov wrote about disputes, the struggle of opinions as an integral attribute of parliamentarism. For them, the decline of the public sphere does not consist in the growth of agonal contradictions, as in Y. Habermas, but, on the contrary, in their artificial overcoming. "The situation of parliamentarism today is so critical because the development of modern mass democracy has made public discussion using arguments an empty formality," the authors argue, "therefore, many norms of modern parliamentary law, first of all, prescriptions regarding the independence of deputies and the publicity of meetings look like redundant decorations, unnecessary and even questionable... Parties ... nowadays no longer oppose each other as opinions in discussion, they act as social or economic power groups (Machtgruppen), calculate mutual interests and power capabilities (Machtm?glichkeiten) of both sides and on this factual basis conclude compromises and coalitions" ^{[26, p. 9]}.

The doctrine of the agonistic model of democracy and agonistic pluralism was developed by S. Mouff and E. Laclo. Criticizing the theorists of the deliberative model of democracy in the person of Y. Habermas, J. Rawls, J. Cohen, S. Benhabib, etc., Sh. Muf reproached her opponents that they naively deny the inherently conflicting nature of modern pluralism. In her opinion, "the ideal of pluralistic democracy cannot be achieved by consensus in the public sphere. Such a consensus is impossible" ^{[27, p. 196]}. In order to function effectively, democracy needs a lively clash of democratic political positions. The researcher emphasizes that political consensus in the public sphere is unattainable, since there really are multidirectional and irreconcilable contradictions within the framework of agonistic, that is, adversarial pluralism: "Creating a space for disagreements and supporting institutions in which these disagreements can manifest themselves are vital for a pluralistic democracy" ^{[27, p. 197]}.

Many representatives of the Russian school of political linguistics hold a similar position. For example, one of its well-known representatives, E. M. Sheigal, argues that "the dialogicity of democratic discourse lies in its fundamental polemicity" ^{[28, p. 82]}. In her opinion, "the agonal nature of political discourse presupposes the use, first of all, of instrumental aggression as a strategy to achieve the goal: overthrowing the opponent and gaining power" ^{[29, p. 294]}.

Conclusion. Thus, summing up our analysis, we can state that at the present stage of the evolution and development of the public sphere, the former offline dialogue between the government (state) and civil society is gradually being replaced by an online dialogue between these leading actors of public policy. Such a dialogue, mediated by digital media, is becoming particularly relevant and is increasingly shifting into the space of the digital public sphere and digital public policy. In the course of digitalization of the public sphere, new communication mechanisms and institutions are emerging in its infrastructure, designed to develop and improve the practices of digital dialogue between government and society. As one of the innovative dialogue mechanisms, digital feedback platforms can be called, which in just a few years of their existence have become entrenched in the institutional design of the digital public sphere. Digitalization of the processes of subject-subject communication between government and society leads to the complication and technologization of the public sphere, giving rise to new forms of civic activity and ways of interaction between public authorities and civil society organizations. 

The German philosopher's concept of the development and institutionalization of social media communications in the context of a new digital reality is gradually turning into an innovative model of digital interaction. In the context of the digital public sphere, both the processes of cooperation between state authorities and civil society organizations and forms of conflict interaction between them are embodied. This circumstance urgently requires modern political science, sociology and philosophy not only to develop modern theoretical and methodological foundations of digital public policy, but also to solve a whole range of practical tasks.

The most priority among them should be the development and institutionalization of technologies for managing digital intersubjective interaction between two leading actors of the digital public sphere: the government and society, the state and civil society, proceeding in the format of an online dialogue. At the same time, despite the special theoretical and methodological significance of the concept of the public sphere by Y. Habermas, it should be recognized that in the conditions of the institutionalization of the information society, it does not fully meet the tasks of today and should be supplemented by other versions of the public sphere. Including such interpretations of public discourse, which examines not only the cooperation of communication subjects, but also their political competition in the context of the theory of post-truth, including digital infocommunicative rivalry, struggle, competition, confrontation, the use of manipulative technologies, methods of conducting hybrid information warfare, production and distribution of fake news. The use of these technologies does not cancel the public sphere, but gives it a new digital configuration, requiring the development of new technologies, tools, methods and forms of work in the field of digital public policy in the process of managing it.