Essay: The rise of social media and how it is used now

Social media has become an intimate part of everyday life. It has taken over conversations, interactions, businesses and democracy. Social media has brought about a dynamic world where everything has been made accessible to everyone in every part of the world.
In this essay I will be discussing, elaborating and referencing Habermas in relation to Christian Fuchs, describing the public sphere in the eighteenth century and how it evolved, the rise of social media and how it is used now. I will also be discussing some of the writers who are optimistic and pessimistic about Twitter. Further into the essay will be arguments for and against Twitter as a social media platform and social media in general. There will be a discussion on the Impact of Twitter on the public sphere as well as the democracy. Last but not least, provide an evaluation and conclusion on why Twitter is not a public sphere.
Before the formation of the public sphere, the king or the Lord was the only one who was considered public. The public representation was merely stating their authorities before the people than for the people they governed (Media text, 2019). The public and private realms were not separated during that time (Sparknotes, 2019). With time, the nobility and church rule came to an end in the eighteenth century paving way for the rise of the bourgeois society in Europe. The formation of the bourgeois society meant that people were free to discuss day-to- day issues that were of general public interest. According to Habermas, the public sphere refers to a domain of our social life where such thing as a public opinion can be formed where citizens deal with matters of general interest without being subject to coercion in order to express and publicize their views (Habermas, 1989).
The public sphere was formed in coffee houses and salons and people would meet to talk about art, literature economics and politics. Even though the public sphere was for everyone, the poor people could not access it. It was composed of the rich and educated people such as the business men. The conversations were mostly egalitarian. With the development of economic and political discussions, people became more enlightened and required freedom of speech and free press altogether. However the public sphere began to change halfway into the century due to industrial revolution.
With the rise of corporations and mass media, this meant that the division between the private and public spheres disappeared. The pure intentions of the coffee houses and salons also disappeared. From the journalism of Private men of Letters to the public consumer services were only for hobbies. Eventually, they disappeared due the rapid growth of the publish industry. Many people begun forming groups and creating journals due to the rapid rise of free speech. As a result, media houses begun running articles because of profit and not due to public interest. Government formation became necessary in order to regulate businesses, merges and monopolies. Relationships stopped being horizontal and ended up being vertical as influenced by feudalism. Advertising psychology was used to influence public opinion and debate. The public sphere according to Habermas lots is character due to the rise of the growth of the popular press in the nineteenth century, the impact of advertising and the influence of public relations.
Habermas version of the public sphere has been criticized by many people such as Nancy Fraser and recently Christian Fuchs. Nancy Fraser is a feminist who describes the public sphere as a theatre in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk for debating and deliberating rather than for buying and selling She contextualises Habermas’ theory of the public sphere as the “rise and decline of a historically specific and limited form of a public sphere, which Habermas calls the ‘Liberal model of the bourgeois public sphere’” which argues that, “under altered conditions of the late twentieth century ‘welfare state mass democracy, the bourgeois or the liberal model of the public sphere is no longer feasible. Nancy Fraser sees Habermas’s public sphere as exclusionary, excluding lots of people, so that the bourgeois public sphere uses “a discourse of publicity touting accessibility, rationality and the suspension of status hierarchies is itself deployed as a strategy distinction. Habermas’s public sphere is criticised by Nancy Fraser for excluding women and the non-bourgeois. (Fraser, 1990. Pg. 57-61).
Habermas describes the public sphere as having certain characteristics: public opinion was formed in the public spheres, all citizens have access to the public sphere. There was freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, association, publication of opinion of general interest without coercion and debate over the general rules governing relations (Habermas, 1989).
Christian Fuchs in relation to Habermas argues that, Habermas’s concept of the public sphere is a space for political communication and access to resources allows citizens to participate in the public sphere is important. Fuchs further continues her theory by stating that Habermas’s notion of the public sphere is a concept that helps to analyse whether modern society lives up to its own expectations. It simply allows testing of the freedom of speech and public opinion are realized or rather limited by the distribution of educational materials or resources (Fuchs, 2014).
Christian Fuchs comes up with seven questions which help determine whether certain social media platforms are indeed a public sphere. One, is there a democratic ownership of the media organisation and resources? Two, is there any political or economic censorship? Is there an overrepresentation of view-points of corporate elites or of uncritical and pro-capitalist view-points? Who can produce content and how visible, relevant and influential is the produced content? How frequently used are political communication sites within more general platforms? How independent are the sites and discussions from economic and state interests? How valid and inclusive is political online discussion? (Fuchs, 2014).
Given Fuchs argument, techno-euphorists and techno-sceptics emerged in regard to Fuchs Argument. Clay Shirky, Jodi Dean and Zizi Papacharssi are all euphorics while Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov are sceptics of the Twittersphere. According to Clay Shirky, social media enhances freedom. Social tools create what economists would call a positive supply-side shock to the amount of freedom in the world. To speak online is to publish, and to publish online is to connect with others (Fuchs, 2014 pg. 185). Audiences are no longer disconnected from each other, they talk back (Bell, 2018). Zizi Papacharissi, like Shirky, argues that political activities that were in former times “activities pursued in the public realm” are today practised in the private realm with great autonomy, flexibility and potential for expression (Fuchs, 2014, p. 185).
However, Malcolm Gladwell is not in support of Fuchs and argues that social media tools have far from reinvented activism. He further adds many of our Facebook friends and much of that happens in Twitter is bound by weaker ties. Its Gladwell’s consistent persistence that social media has no impact on “high-risk” activism (Loizos, 2010). He also argues that, activists carrying out protests and revolutions are at high risk of becoming victims of police violence or the people their protest is directed towards. Activism requires a high risk which is not the case with social media activism (Fuchs, 2014, p. 187-188). On his side is Evgeny Morozov who argues that Twitter revolution is based on a belief of cyber-utopianism- “a naïve belief in the emancipatory nature of online communication that rests on a stubborn refusal to acknowledge its downside” that combined with internet centrism, forms a techno-deterministic ideology (Fuchs, 2014 pg. 188). He believes that social media and the internet at large are used by authoritarian regimes to expose dissidents and manipulate the public (The fifth wave, 2011).
Twitter is an open form of social media where anyone and everyone can access information. It is also one of the many forms of microblogs which allows users to only type in two hundred and eighty characters. Another famous microblog is Weibo owned by a Chinese company. Unlike Facebook, one does not have to be friends with someone in order to see any content and there is no character limit. But Twitter is mostly used to express feelings and emotions. It offers the possibility to quickly and spontaneously write something and is very instant and temporary (Sluis, 2009).
Twitter today is used for a variety of reasons in many ways by different people. Twitter is used for connecting people. Given that Twitter is an open source, anyone from any part of the world can access a tweet without limitations or restrictions. It allows users to engage in both debate and humorous conversations. Also Hashtags (#) are a very popular Twitter feature that allows users to share a conversation of the same interest. Twitter is also used to share information real time. Such information is mostly breaking news from around the world. Examples of stories that broke on Twitter are such as: the Chinese earthquake, technology blogger had already tweeted about the earthquake before any mainstream media could air the story. The death of Michael Jackson also broke on Twitter. TMZ broke the story on Twitter before it was even confirmed mainly because they relied on an unnamed source. Lastly, a story is told of a how a Japanese journalist was kidnapped in Northern Afghanistan and tweeted to his freedom. Twitter is also used for marketing. Companies can build content and promote using hashtags which could also gain them followers. Twitter is also famously known for creating hashtags movements which mostly aim to tackle problems in society such as inequality. A famous hashtag is #MeToo which was started by Tarana Burke for victims of sexual assault or rape.
Fuchs builds an argument on why Twitter is not a public sphere. She argues that Twitter should not be a subject of hope for the renewal of democracy and publication nor the cause of concerns of violence. Instead we should all focus on inequality and how to get rid of it. She further continues to add that social media in itself does not cause revolutions or protests but they are embedded into contradictions and the power structures of contemporary society. Just because the media is prevalent, that does not mean they are completely unimportant in situations of uproar and revolutions. They are simply not yet the revolutionary tools the techno evangelists claimed them to be.
Twitter cannot be a public sphere due to a number of reasons: to begin with, Twitter has a character limit of two hundred and eighty, which makes it difficult for someone to fully express themselves. According to Habermas, there is freedom of speech in the public sphere. In relation to this, there is no freedom of speech on Twitter. Countries where the government is trying to exercise its power over its people, ensures that no one is able to speak against them. And the only way to achieve this is to limit social media platforms. Such countries with authoritarian governments include: China, Iran, and North Korea. Not everyone has access to Twitter. Only those people with access to internet connection can access Twitter and are able to participate in the day-to-day discussions and engagement. However those without internet, the old and the poor do not have access to Twitter. In reference to Habermas, the public sphere is accessible to everyone which is not the case with Twitter or social media. Also, we see Nancy Fraser criticizing Habermas’s theory as not being entirely inclusive as it leaves out women. Twitter is also inaccessible in countries like China, a communist state, where it has been replaced by Weibo. In addition, Twitter is asymmetrical. An analysis of the most used hasthags in 2010 shows that politics was marginal and that music and dating were the most used hashtags (Fuchs, 2014, p. 190). As much as Twitter is known to be uniquely engaging with politics, it is mostly used to express emotion, feelings humour and opinion. Although political discussion exists, it does not dominate. Also, the ratio of commenting to re-tweeting is asymmetrical in that people tend to re-tweet political discuss more instead of commenting. This does not bring about discussions and debate. This goes against Habermas’s definition of a public sphere, of debate over the general rules governing relations.
However Twitter can be a public sphere. There is freedom of speech and publication of opinion on Twitter. Many a time people express their views pertaining inequalities and unfair treatment under a given context. For example, police brutality, is a case that occurs on Twitter frequently and people always engage and express themselves tagging relevant people who they feel can help. Twitter also allows people to debate over general rules and governing relations. A good example is Brexit. Brexit has for the longest time been a huge topic of discussion and more often than so, has been discussed on Twitter. People have been able to give their views for and against Brexit and also engaged one another.
A society in which this media is prevalent, they are not completely unimportant in situations of uproar and revolutions, but they are not yet the revolutionary tools the techno-evangelists claimed them to be (Fuchs, 2014). Social media has had an effect on the public sphere and has also impacted on the economic and political realms. It has approved to have a power that can gather masses to destroy authoritative empires, end oppressive regimes and help protestors get the action they need. A good case study is the Arab Spring.
In the spring of 2011, democracy uprising occurred in several North African states such as Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco. It all began when a Tunisian street vendor, Mohammed Bouazizi, lit himself on fire in-front of the Governor’s office in protest after harassment by police due to not having a licence for his fruit cart. The protests that happened thereafter in Tunisia forced their leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee and seek refuge in Saudi Arabia (History, 2019). This act is what catalysed the Tunisian Revolution and other revolutions in Northern countries although some have remained at war with themselves and external governments such as Syria. According to Christian Fuchs based on her book, Twitter and Democracy: A new Public Sphere? She talks of the Egyptian revolution, which is part of the Arab spring, where survey results show that face-to-interaction was the most important form of activists protest communication followed by television, phones, print media SMS and social media was last. Egyptian revolutionaries considered face-to-face and phone communication more important as compared to using social media. Fuchs quotes Curran by saying “Digital media contributed to the dissent, facilitated the actual organisation of protests and disseminated news of protests across the region to a wider world if the rise of digital communications technology did not cause the uprising, it strengthened them” (Curran 2012, pg.54).
Social media that is, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram have indeed changed society and politics. Clay Shirky and Jodi Dean have the right to be optimistic about social media because: in reference to the public sphere and democracy respectively: Social media has enhanced interaction. People no longer have to meet in salons or coffee houses to discuss matters pertaining to general interest because they can do it over their devices. It is still as interactive and an easier way to express public opinion just as Habermas defined the Public sphere. News travels faster through social media. Social media gives the chance for news and information to be transmitted in real time and will reach a wider range of audiences within a very short time. This allows people to carry out debate at any time anywhere in the world. Audiences can address issues pertaining to injustice and inequality and hold people accountable and call for action. This is just as Habermas described, the formation of public opinion and freedom of expression which is a dimension of the public sphere. People all over the world can call for justice by posting about it on social media and attracting a huge audience which will then support them. Social media also impacts on democracy positively in that, it has changed campaigning. Politicians can now carry out campaigns online as in the case of Obama. He used Facebook and Twitter as part of his campaign instead of campaigning fully on tour. He was able to do much more by using his Twitter and Facebook account and the hashtag #Obama2012 (The Guardian, 2011). Also, the public is able to interact with their leaders and what happens in there da-to-day lives by seeing tweets and posts. Donald Trump is known for his Constant presence on Twitter which is a form of engagement with the public.
However, people like Malcolm Gladwell and Evgeny Morozov also have a right to be pessimistic about social media. Social media can cause misinformation and panic. This is brought about by the spread of fake news or exaggeration of an on-going situation. Fuchs mentions the moral panic that is associated with the London riots. According to Habermas, a public sphere should contain freedom of expression and publication of opinions. Freedom of expression has been misused many times and lead to cyber bullying and body shaming of individuals which is a negative society trait. In democracy, social media and politics bring about foreign interference. During the 2016 USA elections, Russian entities set up and promoted fake Facebook page to influence public sentiment, using social media as an information weapon (Chakrabarti, 2018). Social media can also create echo chambers. Echo chambers allows for people to see one side of the agreement in which they agree with and not both perspectives.
Therefore, looking at Christian Fuchs seven questions to establish whether Twitter or rather social media is a publish sphere, it is clear that Twitter is not a public sphere. This is because there is obdurate political censorship in countries such as North Korea and China. Twitter is exclusive of the old people and those who do not have access to the internet. It is only powerful to entertainers and celebrities who have an oligopoly of the publicistically effective and politically relevant formations of assemblies and associations (Fuchs, 2014). Political content production is not visible to everyone and not everyone can produce content given censorship and authoritative states. Ownership is individual as again, countries like China own and regulate the media and social media sites. Social media is not universally accessible to everyone in terms of political communication given they cannot access the sites or forums and contents to discuss and carry out political debate. Most social media platforms are not independent from economic and state discussions. Twitters capital accumulation model uses three mechanisms: promoted tweets, Promoted trends and promoted accounts (Fuchs, 2014). The quality of political discussion is not top notch as it is flawed with less commenting and engagement and only re-tweets. Also, politics is not the main social media concern as people tend to discuss about feelings emotions and entertainment.
In conclusion, Twitter is predominantly an information tool and not a communication tool (Fuchs, 2014). As much as Twitter has taken the world by storm being the go-to platform for activists, media companies, celebrities and the public, much more has to be done. A lot tweaking is needed for social Media to become the public sphere that was referenced and discussed by Habermas. Two hundred and eighty characters is definitely not enough to form public opinion and carry out debate.
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7.5.2019