Digital conference: Republica 2024: The loud middle

Today’s hero wears shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. No doctor’s coat and white shoes. No suits in dark blue. He didn’t invent a cancer drug. No wars ended. In November 2023, he simply grew a beard, put on cheap glasses frames and reserved a hotel room near Potsdam via booking.com. Now he is the most insulted person on right-wing extremist social media channels. And the most celebrated speaker at Republica 2024.

Jean Peters, former performer with the PENG collective, has been an investigative journalist for the research network for some time Correctiv, is faced with almost a thousand people standing and applauding him frenetically at the end of his lecture at Europe’s largest conference for the digital society in Berlin. For a short, intense moment on this Monday at the end of May, the old spirit of Republica blows over the exhibition grounds at Gleisdreieck.

Correctiv, this investigative journalism collective financed by donations and therefore working with few resources, achieved with its research into a meeting between representatives of the AfD and CDU with right-wing extremists in a hotel near Potsdam, which all the major leading media with their well-equipped investigative departments, All the scientists who were also represented at Republica had been working for a long time: to warn society about the dangers of right-wing extremist, anti-constitutional tendencies with such clarity that a large-scale protest could finally be mobilized. “Who cares?” – Who cares? That was the motto of this year’s Republica. In this case: a pleasing number.

Correctiv brought back a journalistic underdog feeling that had originally characterized the digital trade fair. 2007 as a conference for online culture by the Berliner Blogs Spreeblick and Netzpolitik.org Founded, Republica initially revolved around education “from below”. Johnny and Tanja Haeusler became known to Spreeblick in 2004 when they made known the opaque business practices of the ringtone provider Jamba. The internet activists at the time were concerned with the “public cause”. res publicawhich they consciously managed beyond the big media companies.

Today, ARD, ZDF and WDR have long had large stages on the Republica; Numerous federal ministries, including the Bundesbank, are among the sponsors and main partners; Politicians such as Robert Habeck, Annalena Baerbock, Ursula von der Leyen, Karl Lauterbach and Hubertus Heil can be seen up close. Tech companies like Tiktok and YouTube also operate large stands – which always leads to interesting paradoxes. For example, in the ARD Lab you could listen to a lecture about the “Tagesschau” appearance on Tiktok, where Isabella David Zagratzki, Head of Social Media, and Patrick Weinhold, Editorial Director of Social Media, reported, among other things, on their struggle with the algorithm news content is demonstrably disadvantaged (see also a study by Nieman Labs), while two meters away Tiktok was promoting the European elections with a campaign. The digital present is highly contradictory and that is exactly why such an exuberant conference is needed, at which, according to self-reports, over 1,650 speakers from 60 countries appeared in front of around 30,000 spectators over the three days – in a cheerful multi-perspectival manner.

This is how you see: Today’s anti-hero also wears shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, but in radical chic with excessive understatement. The first morning was about him, Elon Musk. “Lost on Platforms” was the name of the talk, which discussed the sometimes painful “loss” that users felt after Musk bought Twitter and opened it to extreme and anti-democratic commentators of all kinds under the name X. The journalist Katharina Nocun, who, among other things, runs a political blog, sharply criticized Musk’s “open door policy”. She receives X photos of weapons – with a winking smiley. What was once an internationally accessible source for journalists to conduct research – where else can you get original quotes from Biden or Macron so quickly? – is now only destructive. Dirk von Gehlen, on the other hand, director of the think tank at the SZ Institute of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, pleaded for confidence and learning effects. Our generation has simply not learned to use the new communication technologies carefully. The next generation will do better. His suggestion – and this one also sounds like a return to the early years of Republica: concentrate on your own websites and blogs when it comes to journalistic publications. “Stop fixating the range,” he pleaded. Relevance is important.

From the perspective of a large media group like the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, this is easier said than done. Dem People’s rabble-rouser, a donation-financed online blog that is committed to combating fake news and online hate, had its non-profit status revoked in May. Similar to Correctiv or that Constitution blogwhose founder Maximilian Steinbeis impressively presented the potential at Republica democracy-threatening consequences of a Thuringia ruled by Björn Höcke outlined, it is precisely the donation model that makes investigative journalism in this form possible: as a free information offering for everyone.

However, Republica cannot come close to this status due to its performative self-contradiction. The conference for the “public cause” costs a sporty 299 euros. After all, many contributions can also be made retrospectively Youtube for example the lecture by the Berlin sociologist Steffen Mau, who – based on his book “Trigger Points” written with Thomas Lux and Linus Westheuser – countered the narrative of a divided society. According to Mau, there is still a middle ground in Germany that is quite communication-oriented but has so far been silent, which is only being driven apart by the populist emotionalization of trigger topics (cargo bikes, gender madness!) in politics and the media. This was also Robert Habeck’s plea: “You have to understand how populism works.”

Republica lived up to its claim as a digital conference with numerous lectures on AI and big data. But ultimately, the super election year of 2024 was about an age-old question: How do we want to talk to each other in public – without hate and manipulation?