News
Guest talk on algorithmic public spheres
1 Jun 2026
"The" public sphere no longer exists — but what concepts can we use instead? Professor Axel Bruns had some answers last week.
How can contemporary public communication spaces be grasped conceptually and empirically? This question preoccupies many communication researchers — and it stood at the heart of the talk that Prof. Axel Bruns (Queensland University of Technology) gave last week during his visit to the research unit of Prof. Mario Haim.
His talk centered on the concept of "algorithmic public spheres" — communication spaces shaped by algorithms from both above (e.g., platform algorithms) and below (e.g., algorithmic actors within communicative spaces). Bruns also discussed how publics and related concepts such as groups and communities can be understood in the age of algorithmic content curation. The discussion that followed focused on the regulation of major technology companies and their role in selecting the content users get to see.
A video recording of a similar talk, delivered at ZeMKI Bremen, is available on Axel Bruns' website.
An open-access article by Axel Bruns on the topic has also been published in Communication Theory: https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtad007