Reviewing the Literature on Counterpublics

Up next in this final ICA 2024 conference session is Niklas Venema, whose focus is also on counterpublics. These have become a key concept for analysing polarised and fragmented communication environments in hybrid media systems, with the focus initially mainly on empowering counterpublics that support marginalised communities, while more recently we have also needed to theorise far-right counterpublics that require a further adaptation of this concept.

What is being studied under this term, then, and how it is conceptualised? The present study conducted a literature search of English and German articles between 2000 and 2023, identifying some 139 relevant articles, and examined their research approaches.

Counterpublic research has grown substantially since 2013, with a substantial growth especially in recent years. Most of the focus (77%) is on marginalised communities (women’s and LGBTIAQ+ rights activists, anti-racists, migrants, ethnic or religious minorities, diasporic groups); only 14% of articles focus on counterpublics associated with historically dominant orders like far-right and anti-immigration activists, conservative activists, or climate sceptics. Some of the latter reject the counterpublics concept as inappropriate for their objects of research. 59% of these articles focus on social media platforms or Websites.

Fraser, Habermas, Warner, Asen, Jackson, and Squires are some of the most mentioned scholars, while Negt & Kluge as the originators of the counterpublics concept are largely absent. Some younger authors are especially associated with the study of right-wing counterpublics, pointing perhaps to the emergence of a distinct field.

Such work is often qualitative (65%); theoretical (14%), mixed-methods (12%), or quantitative (9%) studies are rarer. The emphasis of work on right-wing counterpublics is mainly on Europe (42%) or North America (35%), even though there are also many such phenomena in countries like India or Brazil. There still is a pronounced need to do more to analyse the rise of the far right, beyond its discursive power and actors’ claims, from longitudinal perspectives, beyond the Global North.