This paper asks: what are the democratic potentials of the digital commons and the digital public sphere? First, the article identifies ten problems of digital capitalism. Second, it engages with the notion of the digital public sphere. Third, it outlines the concept of the digital commons. Fourth, some conclusions are drawn and ten suggestions for advancing digital democracy are presented.
This article contributes to theorising and the analysis of digital capitalism, Internet platforms, the digital public sphere, the digital commons, digital democracy, public service Internet platforms, civil society/community Internet platforms, platform cooperatives, open access, corporate/capitalist open access, and diamond open access. This work also outlines ten problems of digital capitalism as well as ten principles of digital progressivism, a politics that advances the public sphere and the commons and thereby (digital) democracy in society.
There are natural, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of the commons and the digital commons. Capitalism, public service, and civil society media/community media/cooperatives are three forms of organisation and governing the Internet and digital media/technologies. Capitalism colonises and commodifies the (digital) commons and the (digital) public sphere. Alternative models are located outside of capitalism in the realms of the public sphere and civil society as well as their interactions.
In the past 15 years, the notions of big data and social media have become prevalent in everyday life. Associated with it, we have experienced the rise of platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Twitter, Apple, Baidu, Instagram, WhatsApp, WeChat, Alibaba, Spotify, and Netflix. These platforms gather lots of personal user data and provide services such as search engines, video platforms, social networks, online shop microblogs, photo-sharing platforms, messenger apps, or music and film streaming.
This paper asks: What are the democratic potentials of the digital commons and the digital public sphere? First, the article identifies ten problems of digital capitalism. Second, it engages with the notion of the digital public sphere. Third, it outlines the concept of the digital commons. Fourth, some conclusions are drawn and ten suggestions for advancing digital democracy are presented.
Capitalism is a type of society that is based on the logic of the accumulation of power (
Digital capitalism is not a new phase of capitalist development, but rather a dimension of the organisation of capitalism that is shaped by digital mediation. In digital capitalism, social processes such as the accumulation of power, capital accumulation, class struggles, political struggles, hegemony, ideology, commodification, or globalisation, are mediated by digital technologies, digital information, and digital communication. Transnational digital and communication corporations play an important role in digital capitalism.
Twenty-one of the world’s largest 100 transnational corporations operate in the communication, media and digital industry (Table
The dominant transnational communication and digital corporations.
Rank | Company | Country of headquarters | Commodities | Annual revenues (US$ bn) | Annual profits (US$ bn) |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
9 | Apple | USA | digital hardware, software, digital services, online streaming, cloud storage | 267.7 | 57.2 |
11 | AT&T | USA | communication/digital networks, broadcasting networks | 179.2 | 14.4 |
13 | Alphabet | USA | digital advertising, digital services and software (e.g. Google, YouTube, Android OS, Chrome) | 166.3 | 34.5 |
13 | Microsoft | USA | software (e.g. Windows, Office, Skype), hardware (Xbox) | 138.6 | 46.3 |
16 | Samsung Electronics | South Korea | digital hardware | 197.6 | 18.4 |
20 | Verizon Communications | USA | communication/digital networks | 131.4 | 18.4 |
22 | Amazon | USA | online shopping platform, online streaming of digital content, cloud storage | 296.3 | 10.6 |
27 | Comcast | USA | communication/digital networks, broadcast networks | 108.7 | 11.7 |
28 | China Mobile | China | communication/digital networks | 108.1 | 15.5 |
31 | Alibaba | China | online shopping platforms, online payment, online entertainment streaming | 70.6 | 24.7 |
36 | Walt Disney | USA | entertainment content, broadcast networks, digital entertainment and streaming platforms, leisure parks, merchandising | 74.8 | 10.4 |
38 | Intel | USA | digital hardware | 75.7 | 22.7 |
39 | USA | digital advertising, digital services (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) | 73.4 | 21 | |
43 | Nippon Telegraph & Tel | Japan | communication/digital networks | 109.6 | 7.9 |
50 | Tencent | China | digital advertising, digital services (QQ, WeChat), digital games, music and video streaming, | 54.6 | 13.5 |
51 | IBM | USA | digital hardware, software, cloud computing | 76.5 | 9.0 |
58 | Sony | Japan | hardware, video games, entertainment content | 79.2 | 6 |
66 | SoftBank | Japan | communication/digital networks, digital hardware | 87.4 | 2.9 |
69 | Deutsche Telekom | Germany | communication/digital networks | 90.1 | 4.3 |
82 | Cisco Systems | USA | digital hardware, software | 51.6 | 11.1 |
94 | Oracle | USA | digital hardware, software | 39.8 | 10.8 |
2,477.2 | 367.0 |
Digital capitalism has been shaped by ten major societal problems (see
Communication and digital capital exploits communication and digital labour and has resulted in the tendency of capitalist monopolies in the communication and digital industry.
Dominant Internet culture is shaped by a competitive, individualistic digital culture that is me-centred and focused on the accumulation and asymmetric distribution of online attention, influence, reputation, visibility, and voice.
Communication/digital corporations and state apparatuses have created a surveillance-industrial complex.
Capitalist social media are anti-social media that have helped in advancing anti-democratic potentials, digital authoritarianism, digital racism, digital nationalism, and digital fascism.
In algorithmic politics, algorithms create online content and attention, and it becomes difficult for humans to discern which online activities are human and which ones are machinic.
In the online world, there are fragmented digital public spheres where we find filter bubbles.
The digital culture industry has created digital ideology, ideologies about the digital and ideology disseminated via digital networks. Digital advertising and tabloid content dominate the online world. Many digital platforms are digital tabloids.
Influencer capitalism dominates social media and has created asymmetric attention, reputation, and visibility on the Internet as well as an ideological culture dominated by shopping and advertising. Advertising is increasingly hidden and presented as regular content (‘branded content’). ‘Influencer capitalism is not a type of capitalism but an ideology that claims that by being active on social media platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube there are great opportunities for becoming wealthy and famous. Influencer capitalism is the dream, fantasy, and desire of users to become celebrities that accumulate a wealth of social relations, money, influence, likes, positive comments, etc. Influencer capitalism is the online manifestation of the American Dream’s ideological claim that in capitalism everyone has an equal opportunity to make a career, from a dishwasher to a billionaire, by having a good idea and believing in themselves’ (
The high amount of online information flows processed at high speed has resulted in digital acceleration. There is a lack of time and space for sustained political debate.
On social media, one frequently encounters fake/false news and post-factual politics that deny facts and are led by emotionalisation, tabloidisation, and ideology.
The combined consequences of these ten developments are that democracy is under threat and we have experienced the rise of authoritarian capitalism where far-right demagogues dominate politics (
The question arises: What the alternatives are to digital capitalism and digital authoritarianism? Are the digital public sphere and the digital commons such alternatives?
Political communication is an important and indispensable aspect of the political system in all models of democracy. In general terms, it can be said that the public is a central mechanism of the political system. By ‘public’ we generally understand goods and spaces that are ‘open to all’ (
The public sphere is a sphere of public political communication that mediates between the other subsystems of society, namely the economy, politics, culture, and private life. The ideal type of the public sphere is a realm of society that organises ‘critical publicity’ (
The digital public sphere is not a separate sphere of society, but a dimension and aspect of the public sphere in societies where digital information and digital communication are prevalent. The digital public sphere means the publishing of information, critical publicity, and critical public debate mediated by digital information and communication technologies. Not all information and communication via the Internet, mobile phones, and tablets is part of the digital public sphere. When processes of commodification and capitalisation (the logic of economic accumulation), domination (the logic of political accumulation), and ideology (the logic of political accumulation) shape digital practices, the latter do not form a public sphere. The digital public sphere has then, as Habermas (
The mentioned ten tendencies lead overall to a digital sphere that is characterised and divided by economic, political, and cultural power asymmetries. The logics of accumulation, advertising, monopolisation, commercialisation, commodification, acceleration, individualism, fragmentation, automation of human activity, surveillance, and ideologisation turn the digital public sphere into a colonised and feudalised sphere, a pseudo-digital public sphere that is public in appearance only. In digital capitalism, commercial culture dominates the Internet and social media. Platforms are largely owned by profit-oriented corporations. Public service media operate on the basis of a different logic. However, the idea of a public Internet has not yet been able to establish itself and sounds strange to most ears, as there are hardly any alternatives to the commercial Internet today.
Public service media are media of, in and operating through the public sphere. The communication scholar Slavko Splichal (
In normative terms, public service media must be a service
The means of production of public service media are publicly owned. The production and circulation of content is based on a non-profit-making logic and the public service media remit. Access is universal, as all citizens are given easy access to the content and technologies of public service media. In political terms, public service media offer diverse and inclusive content that promotes political understanding and discourse. In cultural terms, they offer educational content that contributes to the cultural development of individuals and society. Public service media have a special, legally defined remit, namely that they have to produce and provide content and services that help to advance democracy, education, and culture. In debates, public service media such as the BBC are often incorrectly presented as state media or state-controlled media. True public service media are legally enabled by the state (licence fee funding, public service remit), but not controlled by the state. Public service media are independent media organisations that are enabled by state laws.
Due to the special qualities of public service media, they can also make a particularly valuable democratic and educational contribution to a democratic online public sphere and digital democracy if they are given the necessary material and legal means to do so.
Life in modern society has increasingly been accelerated, which includes the acceleration of the economy, political decision-making, lifestyles, and experiences (
The predominant media are high-speed spectacles that are superficial and characterised by a lack of time provided for debate. They erode the public sphere and the culture of political discussion. They leave no time or space to citizens for grasping the complexity of society and for developing arguments. What we need today is the decommodification and deceleration of the media. We need slow media (see
Slow media takes the speed out of information, news, and political communication by reducing the amount of information and communication flows. Users engage more deeply with each other and with content. Slow media does not distract users with advertisements, it is not based on user surveillance, and it is not undertaken to yield profit. It is not simply a different form of media consumption, but an alternative way of organising and doing media – a space for reflection and rational political debate. (
Slow media and slow political communication are not new. Club 2 in Austria and After Dark in the UK are prototypical examples. The journalists Kuno Knöbl and Franz Kreuzer designed the Club 2 concept for the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF). It was a discussion programme that was usually broadcast on Tuesday and Thursday. The first programme was broadcast on 5 October 1976, the last on 28 February 1995. 1,400 programmes were broadcast on ORF (
In the UK, the media production company Open Media created a similar format based on Club 2 under the name After Dark. After Dark was broadcast once a week on Channel 4 between 1987 and 1991 and occasionally thereafter. In 2003, After Dark was shown for a short time on BBC.
The producer of After Dark, Sebastian Cody, describes the Club 2/After Dark concept as follows:
Namely, the number of participants in these intimate debates (always conducted in agreeable surroundings and without an audience) was never less than four, never more than eight (like, as it happens, group therapy); the discussion should be hosted by a non-expert, whose job rotates, thus eliminating the cult of personality otherwise attaching to presenters; the participants should be a diverse assortment, all directly involved in the subject under discussion that week; and, most importantly, the programme was to be transmitted live and be open-ended. The conversation finishes when the guests decide, not when TV people make them stop. (
The concept of Club 2 sounds rather unusual to many people today, as we are so used to formats with short duration, high speed and the lack of time in the media and our daily lives. Open, uncensored, controversial, live discussions that appeal to the viewer and the audience are different from accelerated media in terms of space and time: Club 2 was a public space where guests met and discussed with each other in an atmosphere that offered unlimited time, which was experienced publicly and during which a socially important topic was discussed. Club 2 was a democratic public space in public broadcasting.
Space and time are two important dimensions of the public political economy. However, a social space that offers enough time for discussion is not yet a guarantee for a committed, critical, and dialectical discussion that transcends one-dimensionality, penetrates into the depths of a topic and highlights the similarities and differences of different positions. Public space and time must be organised and managed in an intelligent way, so that the right people participate, the atmosphere is appropriate, the right discussion questions are asked, and it is ensured that all guests have their say, listen to each other, and that the discussion can proceed undisturbed, etc. Unlimited space, a dialectically controversial and intellectually challenging space, and intelligent organisation are three important aspects of publicity. These are preconditions of slow media, non-commercial media, decolonised media, and media of public interest.
We need slow media. Online and offline. Let us decelerate the media and create slow media 2.0. Is a new version of Club 2 (Club 2.0) as part of the digital public sphere possible today?
Club 2.0 is an example of a public service Internet platform that helps advancing democratic communication and the digital public sphere. In Club 2.0, the traditional principles of Club 2 are practised and updated (see Figure
Club 2.0.
Club 2.0 is an expression of digital democracy and the digital public sphere. It manifests a combination of elements of deliberative and participatory democracy. Deliberative democracy creates ‘institutional designs of modern democracy’ that are based on the ‘principle of reciprocity’ (
Elinor Ostrom, winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2009, defines the commons with a theory of economic goods that is based on the two features of exclusion and subtractability. For Ostrom, common-pool resources have high subtractability and low exclusivity (
The problem with Ostrom’s concept is that it neglects political economy, i.e. the concept of common ownership. Ostrom thereby de-politicises the concept of the commons. Yochai Benkler argues that influenced by Ostrom’s works, ‘a more narrowly defined literature developed’ (
Commons are an alternative form of institutional space, where human agents can act free of the particular constraints required for markets, and where they have some degree of confidence that the resources they need for their plans will be available to them. Both freedom of action and security of resource availability are achieved in very different patterns than they are in property-based markets. (
For Benkler, the commons are non-market and non-profit-based resources that are available to everyone (for another definition, see
the cultural commons: language, means of communication, education, infrastructures;
the commons of external nature: the natural environment;
the commons of internal nature: the human being.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri (
the natural commons: ecosystems, the earth;
the social commons 1: codes, ideas, images, cultural products;
the social commons 2: physical products commonly produced by cooperative work;
the social commons 3: rural and metropolitan spaces where human communicate, cooperate and interact culturally;
the social commons 4: institutions that provide health care, education, housing, and welfare for all.
Karl Marx stressed that there are resources in society that are produced in a collective and cooperative manner. He argues that universal work creates common goods that are ‘brought about partly by the cooperation of men now living, but partly also by building on earlier work’ and involve the ‘direct cooperation of individuals’ (
But historically, capital expropriated and enclosed parts of nature so that they became private property. In the middle ages, humans used the land, the forests, the fields, the meadows, etc. as common goods. The formation of capitalism involved what Marx (
Socially produced goods are commons when they are collectively owned and cooperatively produced. There is an important moral–political principle underlying Marx and Engels’s thought and politics: those who produce the goods should collectively own them. For Marx and Engels, the central characteristic of a communist society is that there is common ownership of the means of production by the workers:
In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property. […] When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character. (
According to Marx and Engels, the commons are not goods that have certain features as assumed in the theory of economic goods. Rather, any good can be transformed into collective ownership. They argue that the means of production should be common goods. A key feature of neoliberal capitalism has been the transformation of common goods into private property and commodities as part of the process that David Harvey (
Four types and dimensions of the commons.
Sphere of society | Type of the commons | Meaning of the commons |
---|---|---|
nature | natural commons: environmental sustainability | common access to natural resources for everyone, common use of natural resources in environmentally sustainable manners |
economy | economic commons: socialism | common ownership of the means of production |
politics | political commons: participatory democracy | humans who are affected by certain phenomena can take collective decisions about these affairs, basic political rights are guaranteed for all and commonly respect |
culture | cultural commons: culture of friendship | all humans are respected and they are able to understand each other and live together through common practices in everyday life so that friendships and a unity of diversity of lifestyles, identities, and communities are possible |
Euler (
The digital commons are digital resources that are commonly controlled by humans. Table
Four types and dimension of the digital commons.
Sphere of society | Type of the digital commons | Meaning of the digital commons |
---|---|---|
nature | natural digital commons: digital environmental sustainability | common control of the mines where natural resources are extracted that form the physical foundations of digital technologies, sustainable environmental impacts of digital technologies that guarantee the common survival of nature, humans and society (e.g. green computing) |
economy | economic digital commons: digital socialism | common ownership of the digital means of production |
politics | political digital common: participatory digital democracy | collective governance of decisions about the use of digital resource |
culture | cultural digital commons: digital friendships | unity in diversity and common recognition and respect of everyone in digitally mediated communities so that friendships are enabled |
At the level of digital infrastructures, community networks run as cooperatives are examples of a digital commons projects. At the level of software and digital content, free software and non-commercial Creative Commons licences are examples of digital commons projects. Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) has postcapitalist potentials, but has also in various forms been subsumed under capital (see
Cooperatives in the realm of the digital economy advance the economic commons and the political commons because they are non-profit organisations that are collectively governed and controlled. They are not the only digital commons project. For example, public service Internet projects advance the economic commons as they are owned by the public and the political and cultural commons as they are based on public service remits. Digital commons projects do not automatically advance all levels of the commons. For example, community networks do not necessarily reduce e-waste and energy consumption (environmental sustainability). Some aspects of the commons are per definition covered by digital commons projects, whereas others are only achieved by active commitment beyond the foundation of particular projects.
Open access publishing has emerged as a response to the monopoly practices of capitalist publishers. Open access journals and publishing houses very frequently use Creative Commons licences, which make the content of published works a digital common in the sense that it is a common good that can be accessed by anyone and isn’t the exclusive private property of someone but a form of knowledge that is provided to humanity as a gratis resource. On 28 February 2021, 15,989 open access journals were listed in the
But open access is not automatically a true digital common that is a manifestation of all four forms of the digital commons identified in Table
Commons licences should focus on advancing not-for-profit projects that are seeds of postcapitalism. Commons licences such as Creative Commons are not automatically critical of capitalism; some of them are compatible with, subsumed under, and supportive of capitalism. In contrast, diamond open access projects are true digital commons projects that have a non-capitalist character. Diamond open access is,
a form of non-profit academic publishing that makes academic knowledge a common good, reclaims the common character of the academic system and entails the possibility of fostering job security by creating public service publishing jobs. […]
Radical Open Access is a network of diamond open access projects that,
promote a progressive vision for open publishing in the humanities and social sciences. […] We also share a willingness to subject some of our most established scholarly communication practices to creative critique, together with the institutions that sustain them (the university, the library, the publishing house and so on). The collective thus offers a radical ‘alternative’ to the conservative versions of open access that are currently being put forward by commercially-oriented presses, funders and policy makers. […] By showcasing the wide variety of non-commercial, not-for-profit and/or commons-based models for the creation and dissemination of academic knowledge that are currently available, we endeavour to help generate and sustain diversity within the publishing ecology. (Radical Open Access, n.d.)
The question that remains to be answered is if and how the public service Internet projects and the digital commons can contribute to advancing digital democracy. The conclusion addresses this issue.
The digital public sphere is a dimension of the public sphere, where published knowledge takes on digital formats and informs critical public debate. For Habermas, the public sphere has a democratic, non-capitalist and unideological character. Therefore, not all digital knowledge and not all digital communication is part of the public sphere. Public service media are media that are publicly owned by independent not-for-profit organisations that are not controlled but enabled by the state and operate a basic public service remit to provide content and services that advance democratic communication, education, and culture. Public service Internet platforms are Internet platforms owned, operated and maintained by public service media. Just like public service media, public service Internet platforms are media of, in, and operated through the public sphere. Digital civil society projects such as diamond open access platforms and platform cooperatives are not-for-profit digital projects that are commonly owned and governed by the workers who produce the resources underpinning these projects. Public service Internet platforms and digital civil society/community media platforms are both part of the public sphere and the digital public sphere. Their main difference is that the organisation operating, controlling, and owning the platform is in the first case a public service media organisation and a civil society group or community in the second case. Public service Internet platforms operate closer to the state than platform cooperatives and other digital civil society projects. Public service Internet platforms are, however, not controlled, but rather enabled by the state.
Table
Three political economies of digital platforms.
Dimension | Capitalist Internet platforms | Public service Internet platforms | Civil society Internet platforms, digital community media |
---|---|---|---|
economy | digital capital, private ownership of digital platforms that accumulate capital | public service organisation | community ownership, civil society organisation ownership, cooperatives |
politics | governance by private owners, shareholders and managers | governance by a democratically legitimated board | governance by the community of members/workers/users |
culture | publicly available digital content that is prone to ideology and capitalist values | digital content and digital services that realise the public service remits of democratic communication, education, culture, and participation | digital content and services that support user-generation, citizen journalism, and digital participation |
Political colonisation is the main danger that public service Internet projects face. Public service media lose their independence and critical character when governments are able to directly influence the appointment of boards, the hiring and firing of workers, and the produced content. Such media are state-controlled media, not public service media. Just like traditional public service media, public service Internet projects face the danger of political colonisation. Marginalisation and neoliberalisation are the two main dangers that civil society Internet platforms such as platform cooperatives face. The history of alternative and community media is a history of resource precarity and self-exploitative, precarious, voluntary labour. Resource precarity and precarious labour are the two twin political–economic dangers that alternative, community projects face. In addition, digital culture is highly shaped by a culture of individualism and neoliberal entrepreneurialism. The two main dangers that platform cooperatives face is that (1) they remain fair and democratic but small, precarious and unimportant, which can be their ruin, and (2) they turn into capitalist projects.
Nick Srnicek (
The main danger that public service Internet platforms and platform cooperatives face is that they are paralysed or destroyed by contradictions that stem from economic, political, or ideological colonisation, so that they cannot challenge and oppose the power of capitalist Internet platforms. Advancing an alternative Internet can therefore only be successful if it is part of a broader political movement and campaign for strengthening the public sphere and the commons in society. Advancing the digital public sphere, the digital commons, and digital democracy requires progressive politics that address issues such as the following ones:
Advancing digital democracy, the digital public sphere, and the digital commons should be part and parcel of movements, parties, and movement parties that campaign for the
Advancing digital democracy, the digital public sphere, and the digital commons is not a technical question but a question of bringing about
Progressive digital politics needs to stand up for the
Progressive digital politics should demand and advance ending corporate tax havens, corporate tax avoidance, and low corporation taxes. It should campaign for and implement
Digital democracy, the digital public sphere, and the digital commons need
Public service Internet platforms and civil society Internet platforms as well as their users should
Today, digital society is a digital capitalism that undermines democracy, the public sphere, and the common good. Progressive digital politics that advance the digital public sphere and the digital commons along with the public sphere, public services, and the common in general are the active and practical hope for safeguarding and advancing democracy in the age of, and in opposition to, digital authoritarianism.
Global GDP 2019: US$ 33.426 trillion. Source:
The author has no competing interests to declare.
Christian Fuchs is a professor of media and communication studies. He is the Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (