The communication ecosystem in the digital age is undergoing an unprecedented structural transformation. The rise of digital platforms, intertwined with the process of media infrastructuralization, is reshaping the mechanisms through which communication publicness is formed and distributed. The publicness of communication refers to the alignment of content, process, and objectives of information dissemination with the public interest—conducive to the consolidation of social consensus and the demonstration of public value. It emphasizes that communication activities should promote equitable access to information resources, facilitate open discussion of public issues, and contribute to the ongoing construction of social trust.

Erosion of communication publicness and dual nature of media infrastructuralization

Currently, digital platforms are evolving from information intermediaries to “operating systems” wherein society functions, yet the meta-ethics and meta-norms regarding platform publicness remain underdeveloped. As a result, the publicness of communication is often under threat, and the rational dialogue and deliberative space essential to the public sphere is increasingly eroded. This is evident in several phenomena: “traffic supremacy,” which marginalizes serious issues in favor of entertainment-oriented content; the intensification of “echo chambers” and the polarization of public discourse that fracture social consensus; and the contagious spread of misinformation, the rise of post-truth ideologies, and the erosion of the factual foundation of social trust.

Fostering communication publicness is a systematic project involving institutional design and legal frameworks, while also relying on the material possibilities afforded by evolving media technologies. The ongoing process of media infrastructuralization offers an opportunity for the transformation of communication publicness. Infrastructure media is deeply embedded in the workings of society, performing essential service roles and characterized by standardization, systematization, and invisibility. Its inherent nature endows it with public attributes. For instance, WeChat’s super-app ecosystem has expanded beyond its social networking origins to become a gateway to public services, with its technical architecture shaping the rules and boundaries of public participation.

Media infrastructuralization is an objective techno-social process with dual effects: it holds the potential to amplify public benefits while also introducing risks and challenges. At the current stage, digital platforms constitute both the starting points and the basic units of media infrastructuralization. They have become infrastructure for generating, extracting, recording, and analyzing ever-growing volumes of data. In this context, multiple factors threaten the publicness of communication—including the concentration of platform power, algorithmic black boxes and vested interests, polarized public sentiments and the erosion of public rationality, weakened communication ethics due to traffic-driven logic, and “technological drift” in the course of digitalization. Two principal risks accompany media infrastructuralization: first, private commercial platforms acquire “quasi-public power” by controlling infrastructure media; second, the workings of society become highly dependent on the stability of infrastructure media, such that a single technical failure could trigger systemic risks.

Strengthening theoretical research on communication publicness and collaborative governance

Research on infrastructure, in a broader sense, suggests that media technology constitutes a “material force” embedded within social structures. Media as a carrier presents both risks and opportunities to increase public benefits—raising the challenge of how best to regulate and design it.

First, there is a need for a scholarly reexamination of communication publicness in the digital age. The understanding of communication publicness within journalism and communication studies should engage in an in-depth dialogue with Science, Technology, and Society (STS) studies and technology ethics, with a focus on the material dimension of communication. Disciplinary barriers between communication studies, STS, ethics, and public administration should be dismantled to establish a theoretical framework for media infrastructuralization.

Second, advancing multistakeholder, public-interest-oriented collaborative governance of digital platforms is imperative. Traditional media governance models—hampered by slow-moving government regulation, immature self-regulation by platforms, and the incentivizing logic of traffic-driven economies—are ill-equipped to meet the challenges posed by rapid technological evolution. This necessitates the development of a dynamic, adaptive governance framework.

Third, at the societal level, it is important to rebuild social trust and practical rationality in the digital age by promoting digital literacy education, democratizing media technologies, and empowering the public, ultimately establishing a three-dimensional collaborative governance framework of “technology-institution-culture.” This is not only vital to preserving the value of communication publicness, but is also a crucial practice in building a human-centered technological civilization.

Huang Yueqin is a professor from the School of Journalism and Communication at Central China Normal University.