With the passing of Jürgen Habermas, we have lost one of the most influential thinkers of our time. Born in Düsseldorf, this philosopher shaped our understanding of the democratic public sphere like few others. Over the course of decades, his extensive work on deliberative democracy provided a normative framework that extended far beyond political theory and also shaped interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research at the DIID.
Habermas’ central thesis was as simple as it was radical: Democracy does not thrive solely on elections or institutions, but on public communication. Legitimacy arises through communication—more precisely, where free citizens exchange arguments, examine reasons, and, in the best case, allow themselves to be persuaded by better arguments. In this understanding, the public sphere is not merely a space for the expression of opinions, but a productive communication process in the truest sense of the word, in which social problems are articulated, evaluated, and addressed politically.
This idea also serves as an important theoretical reference point for research at the Düsseldorf Institute for Internet and Democracy (DIID). The very name of the institute points to a central question that has accompanied Habermas’s work for decades: How do communicative infrastructures change the democratic public sphere? While Habermas initially posed this question in the context of modern mass media, research at the DIID focuses on the digital public sphere and the role of the internet in democratic communication.
Many projects at the DIID build on this perspective. They examine the conditions under which online discussions achieve deliberative quality, how digital platforms structure political communication, and how new forms of digital participation can influence democratic decision-making processes. In doing so, they address a central tenet of deliberative democracy theory: that democratic legitimacy depends largely on how public communication is organized.
In research on digital publics, this perspective has long served as an important theoretical framework because it views democracy as a communicative process and articulates the normative conditions for rational, inclusive, and respectful discourse. At the same time, empirical research consistently shows that such communicative processes do not arise automatically, but rather depend heavily on institutional, technical, and social conditions.
New research priorities at the DIID also address this tension. In recent years, there has been increased focus on how digital technologies—such as algorithmic systems or artificial intelligence—can support deliberative communication processes. The question remains the same one that runs through Habermas’s work: How can we design spaces for communication in which public understanding becomes possible?
Habermas’ work has thus not only shaped philosophical debates but also opened up a research agenda that remains relevant to this day. The study of digital publics, online political communication, and new forms of democratic participation continues to stand in the shadow of—and at the same time engage in a productive dialogue with—his theoretical project. For research at the DIID, Habermas’s work remains a central point of reference. For anyone engaged with the internet and democracy ultimately always asks a question that Habermas formulated: Under what conditions can public communication generate democratic legitimacy? A look at the present makes it clear that there is much work to be done here.