{"id":15928,"date":"2015-11-03T10:52:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-03T15:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15928"},"modified":"2015-11-03T10:52:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T15:52:16","slug":"does-twitter-smoosh-the-public-and-private","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=15928","title":{"rendered":"Does Twitter “smoosh” the public and private?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In The Atlantic<\/a>, Robinson Meyer explains why Twitter seems not to be as fun or as socially satisfying as some other networks. He thinks it uncomfortably and unsuccessfully\u00a0“smooshes” together\u00a0aspects of oral communication (spontaneity, rapidity, and interactivity) with aspects of written communication (permanence, sharability, and the capacity to reach strangers). Meyer thinks that “the more visual social networks have stayed fun and vibrant even as the text-based ones have not. Vine, Pinterest, and Instagram don\u2019t traffic in words, which can be reduced to identity-based magnum opi [that should actually be magna opera<\/em>], but in images, which are a little harder to smoosh. Visual conversations have stayed chatty, in other words.”<\/p>\n

Meyer’s theorists are\u00a0Walter Ong and\u00a0Bonnie Stewart, but there are also hints of Habermas in the article: Ong is quoted on the “human lifeworld,” and Meyer notes ways that the public and the private “get smooshed.”<\/p>\n

A core Habermasian insight is that there are different norms appropriate to private and public speech.<\/p>\n

In public, you must make arguments that can persuade strangers. You must therefore provide adequate reasons and explanations for everything you say. Since you\u00a0can’t assume that strangers understand your assumptions and experiences, you must make them evident.\u00a0You are accountable for your remarks and should be responsive to reasonable critiques. You should (generally)\u00a0take the same positions when\u00a0talking to different people. When Mitt Romney complained\u00a0to donors about the 49% of Americans who were “takers,” but he didn’t want the 49% to hear him, he became one of many public figures who have been caught violating the norms of public speech.<\/p>\n

In private, the norms are authenticity, spontaneity, and responsiveness to the concrete other people with whom you have relationships. You should (generally) say what you really feel in the moment, although you are also obligated to care about what the individual who hears you thinks and feels. That may\u00a0require tact. You need not fully explain your thoughts, and your explanations certainly need not convey entire, self-sufficient arguments to strangers. You are not responsible for treating everyone alike. In fact, you are obligated to favor some people, the ones you love and who love you. You have a right to privacy, so if you are videotaped saying something that you wouldn’t want strangers to hear, that is a violation of your rights.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0is dangerous to confuse these domains, to “smoosh” the public with the private. Often,\u00a0marketing and political propaganda\u00a0consists of pretending to have an authentic private conversation while actually influencing strangers. Voters mistakenly choose candidates based on their impressions of politicians’\u00a0private lives, which are irrelevant at best and\u00a0fictional at worst. Meanwhile, powerful\u00a0people privatize the public sphere by making policy decisions on the basis of personal relationships and inventing spurious justifications or avoiding rationales entirely. Prying journalists and governments violate privacy.\u00a0And\u00a0sometimes ordinary people retreat from the public sphere\u00a0and either take no positions at all or\u00a0develop irresponsible positions on public matters because they can’t or\u00a0won’t\u00a0interact\u00a0with strangers as if they were real decision-makers.<\/p>\n

I am not sure, however, whether Twitter exemplifies the smooshing of public and private that worries Habermas. Twitter\u00a0is a fairly flexible platform. You can use the 140 characters to address the public,\u00a0although that will often require embedded links. Or you\u00a0can use the 140\u00a0characters to keep your close friends informed about your social plans. You can develop a persona as a public person or as a private one.\u00a0The two can be confused, and awkwardness can arise. For instance, as Meyer notes, disclaimers that “RTs do not constitute endorsements” are odd ways\u00a0of\u00a0distancing a\u00a0Tweeter from the content. But it could be that Twitter is a useful vehicle for both public and private conversations, and the feeling of tension\u00a0simply reflects the parlous condition of our public life, more broadly.<\/p>\n

See also:\u00a0Habermas illustrated by Twitter<\/a>;\u00a0protecting authentic human interaction<\/a>;\u00a0friendship and politics<\/a>;\u00a0Ostrom plus Habermas is nearly all we need<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer explains why Twitter seems not to be as fun or as socially satisfying as some other networks. He thinks it uncomfortably and unsuccessfully\u00a0“smooshes” together\u00a0aspects of oral communication (spontaneity, rapidity, and interactivity) with aspects of written communication (permanence, sharability, and the capacity to reach strangers). Meyer thinks that “the more visual […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civic-theory","category-internet-and-public-issues","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15928"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15958,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15928\/revisions\/15958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}