There’s a relationship between democracy and privacy, and it is changing the nature of the political relationship between the individual and society. One way to understand this is to consider the audio dynamics of cocktail party conversations. As Wired Magazine helpfully pointed out, there is a precise formula for the right number of people in any given party. It depends on the size of the room: no more than one person per 21 square feet. Too many voices, and the decibel level of the conversation next to yours will be such that you have to raise your voices, raising the volume of the noise in the room which requires everyone else to do the same and it gets noisier and noisier.
Take the analogy online. Try holding the attention of an audience online for any length of time when there are so many distractions in the form of other online conversations. One solution is to get louder – upping the rhetorical ante, posting the most scandalous images or outrageous claims. This prompts other online groups vying for the attention of your group to adopt similar tactics and like the party noise a rhetorical chain reaction ensues.
If we think of the internet as a virtual public sphere, and take an approach inspired by Jürgen Habermas which places importance on sustained, civil and rational debate, the prospects for online democracy are not improved by large-scale participation on social media.
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