Chapter 8. Twitter and Democracy: A New Public Sphere.

A microblog is a development of the blog which is a website where postings are published, and where the latest postings are put first on the page. A microblog is a blog with shorter postings, and it is characterize by the more complex interaction pattern of the Web 2.0 social media. Certain users have followers, and thereby sends texts to certain people. Murphy have three characteristic traits of the microblog. First, the users publish short postings, and have a public profile. The postings are collected on the users’ page, and anybody can read it. The user decides what micro blogs to follow. Twitter and Weibo are the most popular micro blogs in the world.

Habermas has a definition of the public sphere. It is events and occasions that are open to all, all citizens have access. The public sphere is often where the political discussion takes place, and those discussions should be unrestricted, for instance these meetings should be characterized by the freedom to expression. Habermas idea of the public sphere has its roots in Marxian political theory. Habermas argues that private property is necessary to participate in the public sphere, but that the wageworkers are denied this. The bourgeois class also only serves their own interests. There is a critique that Habermas has to much focus on the bourgeois class. Feminist critique of Habermas concept is that women during history haven’t had access to the public sphere, and as a consequence today some groups form separated public spheres, and some argue that a true public sphere consists of many smaller public spheres. However, Garnham talks about the necessity for a bigger public sphere, he argues that it is better that there are fewer media that more people consume, than a lot of smaller with special interest, there is a need for some kind of unity in a society. Habermas argues that the public sphere is a place for public debate, and a place where a battle over property and intellectual skills takes place.

There are different views on social media, including Twitter, and what they do to the politics of the world. Clay Shirky argues that the social media is strengthening the freedom of assembly, and is opening up the public sphere. She means that the new social tools are making it easier for people to work together. Anybody can publish, and as a consequence of this freedom to publish there are freedom of (digital) assembly.

Zizi Papacharissi argues that social media is connecting the personal to the political. Before the private sphere was in a way isolated, now it is connected to the world. There are new ways to be politically active, participating on political issues on social media. Twitter has demolished the border between private sphere and the public political sphere, now the private is the political realm. However, she doesn’t talk about that real people in a crowd is more visible and threatening to the people with power.

Jodi Dean argues that social media has taken people to a state of post-politics. Papacharissi is talking about the new private political sphere. For Dean, this is the same as foreclosure of politics. Dean means that political activities on social media is something else than real political struggles in real life, that are more time-consuming and risky.

Malcolm Gladwell argues that real political struggle, in real life, is dependent on real ties and trust between people, and that online these ties are weak. Therefore, twitter activism only works when there are no risk involved.

Evgeny Morozov argues, in line with Gladwell, that Twitter is political activism for a lazy generation, there is no risk involved and, for instance, joining a Facebook group doesn’t have any real impact. Morozov means that the belief in “Twitter evolution” is based on cyber-utopianism, a view that denies the downsides of the internet and have the thought that the web will free mankind. Shirky argues that even if there are many barely committed actors on social media, committed political actors definitely can effectively use Twitter and Facebook in their political struggle. One could also notice that only 7 % of Twitter trend topics were political. Also, during the protests in Egypt, face-to-face communication, phone and broadcasting were more important.

Erik Elmrud