Habeas Habermas : How Does The Digital Circulation Of Information Shape Legitimacy In The Public Sphere?

• In Event: (Dis)Trust in Public-Sector Data, Technology, and Science - I: Environment and Scientific Legitimacy

Abstract

Habeas corpus, a Latin legal term, demands that governments legitimate their authority. The move towards digital government unleashed new debates over authority and legitimacy. A decade ago, the technopolitics of open data promised rational decision-making through data exchange. Unlike the distribution of information through coffee houses in the public sphere imagined by Habermas (1990), more data provided less certainty and fewer informed debates. Competing interests no longer rely on the same evidence to legitimate their position. Contemporary publics evolve around relationships with what Mark Warner (2002) calls an "addressable object" that centers reality and bounds unrelated individuals. Originally limited to the circulation of print journalism, a public or counter-public (Fraser, 1990) may emerge around the distribution of a text broadly construed to include videos, images, or even spreadsheets. Evelyn Ruppert (2013) studied datasets that center discursive conversations that often challenge the state in what she calls "data publics". How does the digital circulation of information shape the legitimacy of data publics, counterpublics, and the state? We consider two examples that demonstrate these dynamics. In early-stage research, we interrogate counter publics emerging within marginalized communities around the circulation of digital material in response to the state. A longitudinal ethnography illustrates how financial open data, generated through digital regulatory compliance, simultaneously built legitimacy through policy and undermined it through implementation. We reflect on who has the authority to confer the legitimacy of data and how this engages with the technopolitics of state power.

Authors

• Anne L. Washington, New York University

• Kandrea Wade, CU Boulder