In 2022, we commemorate the centenary of the publication of Ferdinand Tönnies's voluminous, in-depth Kritik der Öffentlichen Meinung (Critique of Public Opinion) and Walter Lippmann's influential and provocative book Public Opinion. Tönnies's book was a unique attempt to conceptualise public opinion as an essential part of the general theory of society renowned for the Gemeinschaft–Gesellscahft dichotomy. It remained largely ignored, though, much like the book of Tönnies's older thought companion Gabriel Tarde, L’Opinion et la Foule (Public Opinion and the Crowd), published two decades earlier (1901). In contrast, Lippmann's work and the famous Lippmann–Dewey debate on public opinion in the 1920s still resonate in the literature today. The influence of the aforementioned valuable ideas from the beginning of the last century, however, was greatly weakened by the invention of opinion polls. With the rise of opinion polls in the 1930s and subsequent decades, critical thinking about publicness and public opinion was largely marginalised. The long-lasting ontological and epistemological crisis in critical studies of public opinion and publicness ended in the late 1980s with the publication of the English translation of the work of another German author, Jürgen Habermas: Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit, first published 40 years after Tönnies's Kritik. Habermas's work continues the classical tradition of the social theory of publicness but also radically breaks with it. Thus, it has sparked vibrant debates and disputes over ‘the public sphere’ up to the present time.

A century after the vibrant in-depth theoretical debates on public opinion, we seem to be facing completely different problems, largely stemming from the development of digital communication technologies. The increasing availability of digital communication channels and networks has changed the nature and the significance of human communication. All human activities from economics and politics to the arts and education have become inextricably linked to the use of digital communication technologies and networks. Easier access not only allows an exponentially growing number of people to communicate more efficiently and express their views publicly, no matter what they are, but also allows corporate-owned social network platforms to systematically and often covertly monitor and influence users’ online communication and even offline behaviour.