The decline of public trust in mainstream journalism has become a defining concern for contemporary democratic politics. Although this trend is frequently attributed to digital misinformation, algorithmic amplification, and the accelerating pace of online communication, these developments alone cannot explain the depth of the present crisis. The problem is also institutional. Legacy news organisations are increasingly perceived as operating within networks of political and corporate influence, making traditional claims of editorial independence less persuasive than before. Under these conditions, assertions of objectivity are often interpreted not merely as professional norms but as institutional practices whose authority has itself become contested. The resulting gap between journalistic self-understanding and public expectations has intensified wider debates over credibility, legitimacy, and the democratic role of the press. This paper reconsiders this crisis through the philosophical resources of classical Cynicism, bringing Diogenes of Sinope into dialogue with Michel Foucault’s account of parrhesia, or fearless truth-telling. Distinguishing Socratic, political, and Cynic forms of parrhesia, it argues that democratic truth-telling derives authority not from institutional position alone but from ethical commitment, personal vulnerability, and the willingness to accept public risk. The discussion also revisits the political economy of legacy media, reassesses prevailing assumptions about whistle-blower motivations, and employs the “Snowden paradox” to clarify the continuing relationship between individual truth-tellers and institutional mediation. It further examines the problem of “bad parrhesia,” where algorithmically rewarded outrage appropriates the appearance of fearless speech while weakening democratic deliberation.

The 1922 seizure of Fuyang, Anhui Province, by the “Old Foreigner” (Laoyangren) bandit clique exposed the catastrophic consequences of localized military privatization during the Beiyang era (1912–1928), a period marked by rapid shifts in provincial control and the absence of consolidated state authority. This article reconstructs the collapse of Fuyang’s system of defense, hollowed out by the predatory kinship-military structure of the Ni clan, to argue that the boundary between state protection and banditry had effectively dissolved. Building on debates over the Chinese public sphere, the study demonstrates how the administrative paralysis that followed the sacking of the city inadvertently catalyzed a transregional civic mobilization. Drawing on press reports and historical memoirs, it traces how Anhui natives in Shanghai utilized modern media not merely as a channel for public opinion but as an alternative mechanism of political contestation to check warlord impunity. The Fuyang case reveals a paradox: state fragility did not simply atomize society, but compelled temporarily disarmed revolutionary and civic elites to forge new, if ultimately constrained, networks of political accountability across regional boundaries. In doing so, they transformed the public sphere into both a humanitarian arena and a strategic instrument against warlord rule.

Public debate is central to most theories of democracy, yet few cross-national studies have examined its association with democratic satisfaction. This article identifies three features of national public spheres – pluralism, information, and respect – and presents annual measures of these features for 175 countries from 2000 to 2020. Among electoral democracies, pluralism remained stable, but the quality of information and the respectfulness of debate tended to decline during that period. Using data from the European Social Survey and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find that higher levels of pluralism, information, and respect correlate with greater democratic satisfaction, even after controlling for other democratic institutions, various socio-economic factors, and past levels of satisfaction with democracy. Notably, respect remains associated with higher democratic satisfaction when controlling for the other features of the public sphere. These findings call for further research into the relationship between non-electoral components of democracy and political attitudes.

Arising from the 2024 European Political Science (EPS) annual debate, this article examines the role of expertise in transnational governance (TNG) with a focus on political science. It explores how transnational governance reconfigures the spaces and contexts for expert engagements in global policy making and transnational administration. In these evolving spaces of jurisdiction, the democratic potential, accountability, and legitimacy of expert knowledge are not only shrouded from the Global Majority but cannot be assumed to be inevitable. The article outlines some meanings attached to TNG and suggests democratic considerations cannot be conceived or operationalised in the same ways as at nation-state levels of governance. First, TNG is a series of overlapping but fragmented transnational spheres of public sector activity as well as hybrid public-private jurisdictions where democratic principles are yet to be normalised and embedded. Second, the accountability and legitimacy of sources of expertise in the policy sectors of TNG can be counter-swayed by latent features of ‘epistocracy’, or expert rule, in transnational policy communities.

Should we adopt broad, anticipatory regulatory frameworks for AI to address its wide-ranging societal impacts? This Article argues that such a universal approach is misguided. Instead, it contends that we should adopt a two-track regulatory strategy that maintains agnosticism about AI’s uncertain long-term trajectory while implementing targeted interventions to address specific, documented harms in the present. The Article develops this argument through a case study of generative AI systems in digital media, examining how these technologies are reshaping the algorithmic dynamics of the public sphere. Tracing the ways in which AI-powered content generation and curation are amplifying long-standing challenges like the erosion of shared epistemic foundations, the entrenchment of echo chambers, and the concentration of informational power, the Article highlights the limitations of the EU’s horizontal AI Act and the potential of China’s more focused, domain-specific approach to regulating these harms. Drawing on this analysis, it makes the case for a hybrid governance model that combines targeted oversight of AI’s known dangers with a continuing spirit of regulatory humility and openness toward its transformative potential. In an age of rapid technological change, this balancing act offers a path beyond the false choice between reactive overregulation and reckless laissez-faire - one that remains attuned to AI’s contextual nuances while advancing the public interest.

The internet, once celebrated as a decentralized public sphere, is increasingly undermined by practices such as generative search and shadow banning, which divert traffic and suppress visibility. Generative search, powered by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), synthesizes content into direct answers, bypassing websites and depriving them of traffic and revenue. This threatens the sustainability of independent content creators, small enterprises, and the open web ecosystem. Shadow banning, a practice that intentionally reduces the visibility of social media posts through algorithmic moderation, exacerbates these issues by chilling free expression and limiting transparency and accountability.

This article explores these opaque practices through a legal and regulatory lens. The first part examines the rise of generative search, analyzing its technological and legal implications, including copyright infringement, unfair competition, and unjust enrichment. It also evaluates potential solutions such as licensing agreements and agentic AI. The second part focuses on shadow banning: algorithmic dissuasion, de-ranking, and the reduction of traffic, with specific attention to China’s Regulation on Algorithmic Recommendations (RAR) and the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). Both frameworks offer partial solutions but fall short of ensuring fairness, transparency, and redress mechanisms.

Ultimately, the shift toward centralized control by dominant platforms prioritizes profit and risk management over innovation, fairness, and diversity in online expression. To counteract these trends, regulatory interventions, algorithmic transparency, and equitable frameworks are essential. Without such measures, the internet risks losing its character as a democratized public sphere for free expression and innovation.

In this introduction, we briefly define Canadian philosophy and discuss its importance before introducing the authors who contributed to this special issue and their articles. The history of Canadian philosophy has been understudied, and there is a need for new philosophical work on the challenges facing Canada. Some articles collected in this special issue examine the history of philosophy in Canada, while others subject contemporary issues to philosophical analysis. The contributors to this special issue include Ian H. Angus, Robert Timko, Anna Brinkerhoff, Stefan Lukits, Charles Blattberg, Ronald A. Kuipers, Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp, Delphine T. Raymond, Frédérique Jean, Rémi Poiré, Matthew Robertson, Janet C. Wesselius, and R. Bruce Elder.

What counts as a human and as a proper human life has been a lifelong preoccupation of our species. Today it is digitalism, technology, and AI triggering renewed nightmares and hopeful dreams around being human. Through an examination of Samanta Schweblin’s novel “Little Eyes” (Kentukis in the original), I show how humanities are crucial to (i) keep track of what is new and old in these shifts and (ii) maintain a vigorous public sphere that is qualitatively different from gamified individual and social relations. The result is the defense of an idea of public life that stands beyond our individual private desires, marking a stark contrast with a vision of society in which we relate to others and the public as we would to toys we play with.

This essay traces the emergence of a linguistically and culturally bifurcated public literary-cultural sphere in Sri Lanka from the early twentieth century to the postcolonial present. It looks at key “moments” in the history of literary-cultural public discourse and argues that different visions of what a Sri Lankan identity could be jostled for influence. However, the colonial political economy under which this literary-cultural sphere developed, and the ensuing majoritarian political developments in post-independence Sri Lanka, overdetermined the linguistically and culturally segregated “form” this literary-public sphere eventually developed. Through the critical exploration of this history, this essay demonstrates that the literary and the political imaginations reproduce each other and that the literary-cultural public sphere is best understood as a contingent space shaped by ideological and political forces that can be both progressive and regressive rather than a normatively progressive or “open” space of public engagement.

French political science remains an enigma for the rest of our discipline. Despite its early involvement in establishing the study of politics, today it is relatively small, fraught with internal difficulties and largely unknown in the rest of the world. Notwithstanding these traits, this article argues that, over the last three decades, political science in France has institutionalized, internationalized and deepened its engagement with the public sphere. Indeed, not only are student numbers expanding, but colleagues in our discipline consistently produce original and robust data and publications. Based upon statistics and participatory observation over the last 30 years, this piece’s central claim is that although much could of course be improved, contemporary French political science is now well positioned to make more sustained contributions to our discipline as a whole. Understanding better and highlighting the positive aspects of its trajectory provide ways of striving towards this goal.

The editorial to the symposium briefly contextualises current debates on the European ‘public sphere’ and/or on absence thereof. In light of concern with the EU's so-called ‘democratic deficit’, the issue of how to create a polis without a demos has focused, in part, on the role of the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) with respect, for example, to the mass media, law, and organisations within civil society. The editorial introduces the individual papers and seeks to identify their potential contributions to academic and policy debate within and beyond the EU.