“This Hearing Should Be Flipped”: Democratic Spectatorship, Social Media, and the Problem of Demagogic Candor

Abstract

How concerning should it be that most citizens encounter political life chiefly as audiences? Facing this fact, democratic theorists increasingly respond by reconceptualizing “the spectator” as an empowered agent. Yet this response risks overlooking how evolving forms of media reconstitute audiences in ways that undermine efforts to ascribe agency to any given spectating activity. To illustrate this problem, I consider Jeffrey Green’s idealization of candor, which holds spectators to be empowered when leaders are denied scripted appearances. In contrast, I show that social media occasion a case of irreverent candor wherein spectators claim authenticity by derailing online conversations, thereby valorizing a kind of unscriptedness that perpetuates outgroup marginalization and facilitates demagogy. Paradoxically, such candor disempowers spectators while rendering them more “active” agents. I thus argue that empowerment requires audiences to interrogate their own spectating practices—a possibility I locate in Hannah Arendt’s thought and interactions surrounding Black Lives Matter protests.