In this interview, recorded at the APSA annual conference in Vancouver on 12 September 2025, Prof Simone Chambers (UC Irvine) discusses her article ‘Deliberative Democracy and the Digital Public Sphere: Asymmetrical Fragmentation as a Political not a Technological Problem,’ Constellations 30(1) 2023: 61-68. She explains how the fragmentation and privatization of public life, which poses a challenge for representative government, is not primarily due to the rise of social media but to authoritarian actors attacking democracy by wrecking the public sphere.