Datafication of Public Opinion and the Public Sphere: How Extraction Replaced Expression of Opinion - Hardcover

Splichal, Slavko

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1839984503 ISBN 13: 9781839984501

Publisher: Anthem Press, 2022

Synopsis

The book, anchored in stimulating debates about the Enlightenment ideas of publicness, analyses historical changes in the core phenomena of publicness: possibilities, conditions and obstacles to developing a public sphere in which the public reflexively creates, articulates and expresses public opinion. It is focused on the historical transformation from “public use of reason” through the identification of “public opinion” in opinion polls to contemporary opinion mining, in which the Enlightenment idea of public expression of opinion has been displaced by the technology of extracting opinions. It heralds a new critical impetus in theory and research of publicness at a time when critical social thought is sharply criticising and even abandoning the notion of the public sphere, much like the notion of public opinion decades ago, due to its predominantly administrative use.

About this title

About the Author

Slavko Splichal is Professor of Communication and Public Opinion at the University of Ljubljana’s Faculty of Social Sciences, fellow of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and member of Academia Europaea. He is founder and director of the European Institute for Communication and Culture and editor of its journal Javnost – The Public.

Edition details

• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1839984503
• ISBN 13: 9781839984501
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 182