Datafied Empiricism Versus Normative Publicness: A Philosophical Grounding for Assessing the Influence of New Technologies on the Digital Public Sphere

Abstract

New technologies of algorithmisation, data mining, and artificial intelligence appear to elicit contentious impacts on the public sphere. Evaluations of these effects frequently diverge. A noticeable schism exists between critical/normative perspective, which highlights the problematic aspects of data exploitation, surveillance, and imperialism, and market-oriented empirical approaches. Drawing on a conceptual–historical argumentation that links current developments to a longer tradition of social communication research rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, the article highlights the contrast between the normative conceptualisations of publicness and public use of reason on the one hand, and empirical approaches aimed at measuring and managing the public(s) and public opinion on the other. The article first identifies the role of the opposition between Humean empiricism, which is based on the principle of conformity to past habits, and Kantian pure law of publicity, which is systematically opposed to such empiricism on many different layers. This opposition is also rooted in the Enlightenment foundational divide between religious and civil communities. It seems that today, with the predominance of data-driven approaches in adapting opinion to past expectations and beliefs, we are paradoxically again returning to the principles similar to those of functioning of pre-modern (religion- and tradition-based) communities.