Invisible Audience and Echo Chamber Effects

Developing a theory for the remote audiences of digital networks, we dialogue with social psychology and social theory to describe a novel form of communication that is delivered to everyone and no one at the same time. This is the invisible audience. At the same time as people express themselves to a generalized, invisible audience over social media, the ‘everyone’ of this invisible audience is often narrowed in a very specific way: echo chamber effects. The invisible audience and echo chamber effects both reinforce a solipsistic horizon for every person, and these individual horizons come partially together under echo chamber effects, constituting a multiplicity of separate ‘homophilic assemblages’ characterized by normative and political alignment, one-dimensional communication, and black-and-white thinking. We call this a ‘splitting public sphere’. On the whole, rational debate is curtailed, under the reign of soundbites, memes, and angry venting. The lack of exposure to reasoned disagreement makes people more susceptible to authoritarian rhetoric and propaganda.

The Age of Evasion

America is now in the Age of Evasion. Our public events are scripted and phony. Our political rhetoric is filled with lies. Our symbols are fake. Our proposals are unreal. Virtue signaling has replaced reflection. We avoid deep questions, such as, in the abortion controversy, when life begins. Cancel culture has drowned rational debate. Politics are narrow and frozen. We long for more in our public life but feel that it is out of reach. We evade out of fear of the consequences of the Death of God. We do not want to acknowledge how alone we feel. We need a new story.

COVID-19 Pandemic, Transparency, and “Polidemic” in the Republic of Korea

This article examines the development of the Republic of Korea’s strategy to prevent the spread of COVID-19 with particular focus on ethical issues and the problem of politicization of public communication. Using prominent examples of stakeholders who have acted and expressed themselves in highly contradictory ways on the topic of the pandemic, we provide an analysis of how the public health policy discourse has entered into the realm of politicization and elaborate on the danger that this phenomenon poses in terms of rational debate and appropriate policy measures geared toward the public’s safety. Considering the role that the Republic of Korea have had in global media coverage of quarantine policies and epidemic prevention, we believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because it provides a new perspective and insights into the forces at work within and around a prevention strategy that has both been lauded and seen as highly controversial.

Education, Democracy and Living With Disagreement

This paper will revisit issues to do with the roles of education and an ostensibly liberal democracy in a world rife with disagreement. It seems certain that the outcome of the revisiting will be an insistence that to be true to themselves, the provision of education at both the individual and societal level must cling hard to the key notions of truth, objectivity, and rational justification in a world that perhaps more than any other time is inclined to doubt whether in any final sense these notions have much going for them. Disagreement is the challenge and spur to the reaffirming of our belief in the importance of rational debate in both the private and public spheres.

Dialectic and Intersection of Sufism and Kalam in the 1st and 2nd Century of Hijri

This article seeks to examine the dialectic of Sufism orientation and Kalam with a special focus on the intersection between these two realms during the 1st and 2nd centuries of Hijri. This study emphasizes three aspects: the background and chronology of the intersection, the issues arose in it, and the characteristics of this intersection. The study reveals that political and sociological along with intellectual and academic factors became the background of the intersection between Sufism and Kalam in the 1st and 2nd century of Hijri. The main issues developed in this intersection dealt mainly with faith (īmān), infidelity (kufr), the problems of human deeds (af‘āl al-‘ibād), and the relationship of the essence (dhāt) and the divine attributes (ṣifāt) of Allah. There have been three characteristics of the intersection that can be mapped. Firstly, the interrelation of doctrine and political attitudes. This means that there is a strong correlation, even integration, between the doctrine of a sect (firqah) and political attitudes. Secondly, thematic theological interconnection. This means that there are common issues that are discussed in matters of theology. Thirdly, rational debate is based on rational approaches. This means that the conflict of thoughts occurred is essentially a dialogue because it is not on a different study line, but in the same area using a rational approach.

Conspiracy theories and reasonable pluralism

The popularity of conspiracy theories poses a clear challenge for contemporary liberal democracies. Conspiracy theories undermine rational debate, spread dangerous falsehoods and threaten social cohesion. However, any possible public policy response, which would try to contain their spread, needs to respect the liberal commitment to protect pluralism and free speech. A successful justification of such a policy must therefore: 1) clearly identify the problematic class of conspiracy theories; and 2) clarify the grounds on which the state is justified in acting against them. This article argues that the prevailing epistemic approaches to conspiracy theorizing cannot fulfil these criteria. Defining conspiracy theories by their flaws in reasoning, questionable coherence or factual mistakes can neither sharply distinguish problematic conspiracy theories from other, non-problematic worldviews nor justify state action. Thus, we propose to understand conspiracy theories through their ethical unreasonableness. We hold that containment of conspiracy theories is justifiable insofar as they undermine the liberal-democratic ideals of mutual respect, freedom and equality. We then show that such ‘ethical’ criteria for conspiracy theories can be sufficiently robust and clear-cut so that they can serve as a useful guide for public policy.

Ustaša crimes, Serbian victims, numbers and politics: toward a rational debate

The number of Serbs who were murdered by the Croatian Ustaša regime is still contentious, even though there is broad agreement on the figures among expert historians. The issue is blurred by authors who ignore the canon of scientific discovery. Ustaša terror was awful enough, the author argues. Distorted numbers trivialize debate and degrade the victims.

‘Maza Nahin Aya’: Negotiating Sensationalism in Pakistani Television News Practices

Over the course of the last 18 years, privatised television news channels have transformed the nature of the national news culture in Pakistan. In addition to sensational news packaging, leading current affairs talk-show hosts routinely capitalise on aggressive interrogative tactics to antagonise politicians on air, producing a dramatised performance that feeds a politics of publicity. Within this context, the emancipatory potential of television once celebrated through media deregulation in the early 2000s has since been replaced with a disdainful liberal discourse on the lack of critical-rational debate. Based on in-depth interviews with a range of television news professionals in Karachi, I explore how Pakistani news media professionals negotiate the tension between a principled commitment to protecting the ‘independence’ of mass media and a cynical disavowal of its existing forms. Sensationalist media programming is certainly not unique to Pakistani television, and an increasing interest in postcolonial news publics continues to provide much needed perspectives from non-Western models of journalism, yet I believe a scholarly focus on media sensationalism remains impoverished without an understanding of the contextual constraints within which television news producers mediate their livelihood. In this article, I argue that the prevailing discourse on the ethics of journalism in Pakistan becomes a productive site through which the differences between privileged and vulnerable media labour emerge as most apparent.

Early Enlightenment Shifts

This chapter focuses on the tensions concerning doctrinal matters between several Committees for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland and the three Divinity professors John Simson (1667–1740), Archibald Campbell (1691–1756), and William Leechman (1706–85). It analyses how the themes of innovation, toleration, and rational debate marked theological debates in the early stages of the Scottish Enlightenment. The cases of Simson, Campbell, and Leechman exemplify how in a relatively short time span, the General Assembly and the Kirk started dealing with doctrinal debates concerning orthodoxy and heresy in a more moderate manner, and how the status of the Confession of Faith was subject to discussion, even if there were no proper debates on subscription in eighteenth-century Scotland.