Defective debates: Why we need to argue better as a society. Panel discussion with Korbinian Frenzel, Julia Reuschenbach, Ricarda Lang und Nathanael Liminski

Germany has no shortage of public debates. There are discussions, arguments and disputes everywhere. But do these debates do what they should ideally do in a democracy? Do we talk to each other in order to learn about other perspectives? Do they result in decisions and solutions? The recent parliamentary election campaign in particular is likely to have reinforced doubts about this. Heated debates on highly symbolic issues have deepened rifts and pushed the often central issues of the future into the background. Much of what was discussed and promised before the election was obsolete just a few days later.

Why do politicians keep getting lost in these sham debates? What part does journalism play in this? How does social media exacerbate the problem that we talk a lot, but apparently not with each other but against each other? Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the FU Berlin, and Korbinian Frenzel, a journalist at Deutschlandfunk, have written a book entitled ‘Defective debates. Why we need to argue better as a society’. Against the backdrop of current developments, they want to discuss with Ricarda Lang, Member of the Bundestag for the Green Party, and Nathanael Liminski, Minister for Federal and European Affairs, International Affairs and Media of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, why politics and the media repeatedly fall into the unhealthy patterns of an agitated attention economy. And what ways out of the discursive impasse there are.