Winter Semester 2017

The Collapse of Public Openness?

Social media channels and new communications technologies are obscuring the familiar lines between social and political categories of social order: everything private becomes public, and everything public becomes private. A fact becomes an opinion, an opinion an alternative fact. Spheres of action and norms undergo a transformation, the patterns of behaviour change, and politics appears with a new face. Talk shows, Twitter and selfie sticks fuel medialisation of the private sphere into a fight for visibility. The mania for collecting big data by the industry and state penetrates facets of our lives that many people possibly no longer wish to protect. The public sphere, the traditional scene of democratic politics and social order, becomes an arena of a diversity of populistic self-glorification and rage. Waves of agitation, tweets by the masses and fake news shroud the light of public openness and displace political debate. Democracy needs openness and participation by its citizens. Politics – as Socrates noted – is worthy only if it’s truly public. The papers of this year’s Studium Generale seek to delve into the whereabouts of political openness.
- The private sphere becomes political and public: social media and big data. Through self-glorification via the media, voluntary input of data and economically driven collective media give rise to new spheres. But what is really arising there? Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, glassy patients, while government, medical and economic covetousness transform the anticipated private and public order. New visibilities create new invisibilities. What is visible for whom, what disengages itself from visibility?- Democracy and openness. What does democracy need? Participation by citizens and openness. Do public referendums rescue democracy? How democratic are one’s negotiations in public? - Varied populism? On fake news, alternative facts, lies – big and small, hidden and apparent. The phenomena of the “scared citizen” and the “angry citizen,” and their creation and exploitation.
- Who or what is actually “against openness”? From the left id.
Lectures held at 7 pm in the Audimax AM4 on the university campus; except in the IMGWF Auditorium on 25 Jan. 2018.
Director: Prof. Dr. Christina Schües, Prof. Dr. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter. With the support of the Hanseatic University Foundation.

Dates:
Thursday, 2 Nov. 2017
Roberto Nigro (Lüneburg):
Die Erfindung des Gemeinsamen: zur Kritik des Privaten und des Öffentlichen

Thursday, 14 Dec. 2017

CHANGE
: Paper by Ruth Wodak (Vienna/Lancaster):

Die \'Eliten\', das \'Establishment\' und das \'Volk\': Identitätspolitik und Öffentlichkeit
had to be cancelled due to illness.

Instead, we hope you’ll look forward to the paper by Ruth Heß (Hannover):

Neu umkämpfte Öffentlichkeiten in der Geschlechterpolitik. Von ,Gender-Wahn', \'Frühsexualisierung' und \'Homo-Lobby'

Thursday, 25 Jan. 2018
Emmanuel Alloa (St. Gallen):
Wachablösung. Wenn Transparenz Öffentlichkeit ersetzt
Thursday, 1 Feb. 2018
Simone Dietz (Düsseldorf):
Wie echt ist Öffentlichkeit?