Purpose

The public is often associated with a spatial entity: the sphere. Recent technical developments, however, raise questions about the applicability of the sphere as a concept in social, political or economic studies. This paper aims to discuss two different intuitions related to spheres regarding operational and territorial attributes. It identifies a growing discrepancy between these intuitions as a result of the spread of digital technology in society. The notion of the sphere must therefore be used more carefully in the future.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper takes a conceptual approach based on constructs developed by Habermas for the analysis of the bourgeois public. The resulting twofold model is validated on the background of current research in organisational science and general considerations about the effect of digital technology on society.

Findings

The paper identifies an increasing inconsistency in the conceptions of social spheres, which implies that accustomed spatial concepts cannot further be used as before in this context. Exemplary evidence about this divergence is gathered from extant work in the field.

Originality/value

While a lot has already been said about social dynamics in the digital age, their consequences for the applicability of the sphere as a spatial concept have not yet been properly addressed. The paper identifies a fundamental problem in the discourse on social spheres in the digital age that challenges the internal consistency of the concept, independently from any further epistemological or ontological considerations.

中文翻译：

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球体歪斜：数字时代的运营、领土和公众

目的

公众通常与一个空间实体相关联：球体。然而，最近的技术发展提出了关于该领域作为社会、政治或经济研究中的概念的适用性的问题。本文旨在讨论与领域相关的两种不同直觉，即操作属性和领土属性。它发现，由于数字技术在社会中的传播，这些直觉之间的差异越来越大。因此，今后必须更加谨慎地使用球体的概念。

设计/方法/方法

本文采用了一种基于哈贝马斯为分析资产阶级公众而开发的结构的概念方法。由此产生的双重模型在当前组织科学研究的背景下和对数字技术对社会影响的一般考虑因素进行了验证。

发现

本文发现社会领域概念的不一致越来越多，这意味着在这种情况下不能像以前那样进一步使用习惯的空间概念。从该领域现有的工作中收集了关于这种差异的示例性证据。

原创性/价值

虽然关于数字时代的社会动态已经说了很多，但它们对球体作为空间概念的适用性的影响尚未得到妥善解决。本文确定了数字时代社会领域话语中的一个基本问题，该问题挑战了概念的内部一致性，独立于任何进一步的认识论或本体论考虑。