Does the personalization of publics strengthen or undermine democratic participation and public debate?

This essay asks you to critically evaluate the positive and negative influences of social media on public discourse and debate. How do they affect the ability of citizens to set the agenda for political discussion and change? Although you are invited to present a specific view on the question, you nonetheless need to present a convincing argument, building on the course readings and examples we discussed in class. Feel free to bring in additional cases as you see fit.

Structure of your essay

Start with a brief review how social media have transformed the public sphere. Properly define the public sphere and summarize the key arguments from the course readings about the ways publics become personalized and how has that has affected the ways people form their opinion on important issues and participate in public debate. Explain the main differences between the networked/personal publics of today and the public sphere of the pre-digital era. The article by Christian Fuchs should be helpful to address this relationship.

Then move on to present different examples that illustrate how the personalization of critical publics has changed the balance of power in terms of who gets to speak and whose voices are heard but also who or what determines the distribution of attention and power. Carefully evaluate positive and negative effects by showing how the democratizing potential of social platforms is mediated by bots, trolls, fake-news and algorithmic filters and trends.

As we have seen, the fact that each one of us has become a broadcaster in her own right opened us to harmful and manipulative influences, that affect not just how and what we think, but also how we act on our beliefs and the effects we are able to achieve in the public sphere.

Conclude by presenting your view how significant these negative influences are for democratic participation and how far they can be attributed to social media directly.

Be carefully no to think of social media in isolation but look back at our discussion on technological determinism and social affordances. Society and technical infrastructures always shape each other. It’s never a one-directional influence. So, if media never determine societies in and of themselves, then the question becomes what makes the technical, economical, and aesthetic features of social media undermine or harm the democratic possibilities they hold.

Length: 800 words

Deadline: Thursday April 11, 10 am

Format: Medium Classblog

Grading Criteria: The standard criteria for blogposts apply