ABSTRACT
Drawing from Jürgen Habermas’ critique of the public sphere, this chapter reflects on the means by which neoliberal capitalism, enabled by the state, works to censor citizens by facilitating their exclusion from the digital public sphere on social media. I argue that the prohibitive cost of and lack of access to Internet and broadband services in Ghana represent a crucial structural impediment to participation in the digital public sphere. I also examine the neoliberal capitalist justifications that create and perpetuate an unjust regime, which inevitably recreates a bourgeois public sphere regarding social media use. I conclude my chapter with a reflection that the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened the concern about the digital divide and has heightened the need to reexamine how significant portions of the population are systemically shut out of the digital public sphere.
