Surfing the Public Square: On Worldlessness, Social Media, and the Dissolution of the Polis

Abstract

This paper employs Hannah Arendt’s characterization of the social, which lacks location and mandates conformity, to evaluate social media’s: a) challenge to the polis, b) relationship to the social, b) influence on private space, d) impact on public space, and e) virus-like capacity to capture, mimic, and replicate the agonistic polis, where “everything [is] decided through words and persuasion and not through force and violence.” Using Arendt’s exact language, this paper begins by discussing how she differentiated the political, private, social, and public realms. After explaining how online activities resemble (or not) her notion of the social, I demonstrate how the rise of the social, which she characterized as dominated by behavior (not action), ruled by nobody and occurring nowhere, continues to eclipse both private and public space at an alarming pace. Finally, I discuss the ramifications of social media’s setting the stage for worldlessness to spin out of control, as the public square becomes an intangible web. Unlike an Arendtian web of worldly human relationships that fosters individuality and enables excellence to be publicly tested, social media feeds a craving for kinship and connection, however remotely. Leaving such needs unfulfilled, social media risks to trump bios politicos.

Online democracy: Applying Hannah Arendt's model of democracy to the internet

“…Specifically, the passion for manifesting personal lives on the internet causes the internet to collapse into privacy, rather than being a prototype of the Arendtian public sphere within which an essentially plural (global) humanity can come together in difference and create new commonality (Barney, 2003, pp. 108–110; Frick & Oberprantacher, 2011, p. 20; Schwartz, 2014, p. 181; Spaid, 2019, p. 678). A second, related, problem is that the purpose of the internet is largely economic, which undermines democracy rather than complements it (Barney, 2003, pp.…”

“…The last criticism concerns social media as a sphere, where, according to some, democracy practically takes place on the internet. The main problem with social networks is that their purpose is not political but rather social: They encourage non‐action, “the form of speech whereby banter and chatter matter more than exposing one's actual perspective” (Spaid, 2019, p. 677). Consequently, online social networks are not intended to connect different people and facilitate political deliberation but rather to connect friends and acquaintances and entertain (Smith & Wales, 2000; Forestal, 2021, pp.…”

“…From what has been said, it follows that the internet in its current form, when viewed through an Arendtian lens, clearly has several problematic characteristics. The first problem concerns a fact highlighted by all the authors who have used Arendt's arguments to evaluate democracy on the internet – that there is no clearly defined political sphere on the internet (e.g., Barney, 2003; Frick & Oberprantacher, 2011, p. 20; Salikov, 2018; Schwartz, 2014; Smith, 2017; Smith, 2020; Spaid, 2019). If I use Arendt's terminology, then the internet is closest in form to the social, which obscures the differences between the private and the public.…”