Game of Thrones:"The fight between Rhaenyra Targaryen and her half-brother Aegon for control over the Seven Kingdoms. Both of them thought they belonged on the Iron Throne. When people started declaring for one of them or the other, their fight divided the kingdoms in two. Brothers fought brothers, dragons fought dragons. By the time it was over, thousands were dead. And it was a disaster for the Targaryens as well. They never truly recovered."
As social media platforms like Facebook grow, so the old institutions of the public sphere are withering. Those which survive seem to have no option but to do business with the dominant platforms, which only increases those platforms’ power to shape our discourse.
Habermas saw the public sphere as a virtual space in which private citizens come together to hold their governments to account. The mass media had a role in this, along with civil society organisations such as trade unions and NGOs. Together, these institutions shared information and ideas and created forums in which people found their collective voice.
