2012 Mary Stephan All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest and most sincere gratitude to my thesis adviser, Professor Kam Shapiro, for his patience, understanding, and encouragement. This thesis owes much to his careful eye and incisive questions. It would be difficult to overstate my gratefulness for his generous assistance every step of the way. I also extend warm thanks to the members of my thesis committee, Professors Shamira Gelbman and Nancy Lind, whose comments and direction contributed to the project. My gratitude is also due to Professors Carlos Parodi, Ali Riaz, and Sherri Replogle for their personal guidance, generosity, and support. The burden of writing was lightened by the bigheartedness of my friends and colleagues. Dan Thetford, Tim Glaza, Eric Porter, Scott Stephan, and Ibada Wadud deserve special thanks for their comments, insight, and good humor. I wish to thank my family, whose encouragement and faith in me has ever sustained me. I especially thank my parents, Professor Richard Gardiner and Beth Shafer, who raised me, taught me, and loved me. Finally, I dedicate this thesis to God, the origin of all wisdom, sustenance, and grace, in whom all things are possible. M. E. S.

Contents Contents Tables Figures 1. Just Like Me: An Introduction Communication and Deliberative Democracy Personal Encounter with Difference Overview of the Project A Word about this Projects Methodological Approach Limitations of the Project vii xi xiii 1 5 6 8 10 11

2. Transformational Encounter: Deliberative Democracy and Personal Encounter with Difference 15 Deliberative Democratic Theory: Toward Transformation 17 The Bourgeois Public Sphere 20 Difference and Particularity in Democratic Communication 22 Necessary Conditions of Deliberative Democracy 26 Deliberation Ought to be Reasonable and Informative 26 Deliberation Ought to be Reciprocal and Respectful 28 Deliberation Ought to be Inclusive and Equal 29 Personal Encounter with Difference Underpins Essential Conditions Encounter with Difference Facilitates Communal Reasoning and Informs Encounter with Difference Enhances Reciprocity Encounter with Difference Enhances Inclusiveness 31 32 34 35

Personal Encounter with Difference a Necessary, but not Sufficient, Condition 3. Democratic Networks (and Networks of Networks)

36 37

Network Theory and the Discovery of Scale-Free Networks40 Arborescent and Rhizomatic Networks 47 Problematizing Plantlife: the Stoloniferous Network 51 Similarity Breeds Connection: Homophily and Network Patterns 56 Virtuous Enclaves? 60 Cultivating Democratic Networks 63 4. Encountering Difference Online: Self-Organization, Social Media, and Democratic Communities 65 Encountering Difference, Democracy, and Thinking Networks Self-Organization and Scale-Free Networks Historical Self-Organization and Technological Innovation Self-Organization Online 65 68 70 74

Self-Organization in the Structures of Social Networking Site Memberships 75 Self-Organization in the Exchange of Information 80 Self-Organization and Democratic Society 5. The Structural Transformation of the Cybersphere 82 85

Habermas and the Degeneration of the Public Sphere 87 Online Discourse on USENET and the Eternal September 89 Early Self-Representation Online on Personal Websites 92 Personalized Advertising and Dividualization 95 Like +1 102 Network Lock-in 105

Restoring Democratic Possibilities References

107 111

Tables 1. Types of Networks and Characteristics 2. Facebook Networks in Global Cities 55 79

Figures

1. Wael Ghonims original January 25 event posting

2. Barabsis illustration comparing random and scale-free networks 43 3. An illustration of the clustering coefficient 45

4. A contrast between a stoloniferous plant and a rhizomatic one 52 5. Paul Barans representation of three types of networks 54 6. A comparison between the commutes of Philadelphia merchants in 1829 and 1862

71

7. A visualization of the authors personal network of friends on Facebook 76 8. Kovas Bagutas representation of the Twitter following of five influential Twitter accounts in Iran in 2009 77 9. A visualization of the exchange of information and opinions about #OccupyWallStreet from November 15, 2011 81 10. The authors website in 1999 11. The authors website in 2002 12. Facebooks appeal to businesses 93 94 98

13. A targeting mechanism for advertisers on Facebook 14. A sample Sponsored Story on Facebook 15. Like and other buttons on a third-party website

99 100 104

Just Like Me!

1
Just Like Me: An Introduction Public discussion is a political duty. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (Whitney v. California 1927) The belief that thought and its communication are now free simply because legal restrictions which once obtained have been done away with is absurd Removal of formal limitations is but a negative condition; positive freedom is not a state but an act John Dewey (1927, 168) On January 14, 2011, Wael Ghonim, who had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday, created a Facebook event with a few of his friends. They invited members of a Facebook group to join and scheduled the event for eleven days later. In those eleven days, a staggering eighty-five thousand members accepted the invite (Hauslohner 2011). Then, on the morning of January 25, between fifty and a hundred thousand people congregated at the events planned location, in Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt (Dehghanpisheh et al. 2011; Ratnesar 2011). These attendees to what Ghonim had called the Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment spoke out against the authoritarian Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the police state he had instituted during his thirty year reign (Sutter 2011). Mubaraks regime cut off Internet and mobile networks within forty-eight hours, severing Egyptians access to information for several days, and Ghonim was arrested shortly thereafter and put in secret detention, where he was interrogated for his participation in the organized protest (Arthur 2011; Abdoun 2011). These measures only galvanized the protesters, who continued to 1

2 | JUST LIKE ME demonstrate for the next eighteen days. Finally on February 11, millions of Egyptians celebrated as Mubarak fled Cairo with his family for Sharm el-Sheikh. While Egyptians acknowledged the instrumentality of

Figure 1. Wael Ghonims original January 25 event posting.

Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube in their cause, Western media more enthusiastically highlighted this sensational story in their broadcasts, dubbing the uprising the Facebook Revolution (Hauslohner 2011). Here was the example that so many optimists insistent on the democratizing potential of the Internet yearned forthe example which had ultimately gone unfulfilled in the Iranian Twitter Revolution of 2009 (Irans Twitter revolution 2009). The self congratulatory reports announced that the West

AN INTRODUCTION | 3

had finally created a concrete tool for facilitating democratization. Just a week after Mubaraks official resignation, some began to wonder if, and how, the model might be replicable in other contexts (Melber 2011). Designating the spread of protests across the region the Arab Spring, several authors wistfully hearkened back to 1989, the year that the ideology of capitalist democracy was most visibly vindicated (Sarotte 2011). Yet these reports heralding the inauguration of democracy in Egypt were premature. Whereas the Egyptian people were largely united in their desire to oust the repressive regime, the transition to a shared decision-making process has been anything but smooth (Fadel and Londono 2011). In the last several months, Egyptians have begun to protest anew; the audible unison of their voices in the January demonstrations has since been choked by the difficulty of establishing consensus among fractured groups (Mayton 2011). The Washington Post has reported that protests e been organized by various groups including women for equal rights, by Coptic Christians against discrimination, by high school students against exams, by drivers angry about the price of gas. Even ballet dancers and musicians at Cairos opera house have held sit-ins over pay (Wan 2011). Conflict erupted across the nation between members of the lower-class and Egyptian elites. The formation of a mechanism through which this plurality of concerns and perspectives may be negotiatedthat is, a democratic governmentyet remains incomplete. In providing a platform for discussion across public groups, Facebook and Twitter seem to have less to contribute. In their search for consensus, many Egyptians have arrived at an understanding similar to those suggested by several democratic theorists in the last several decadesthat the establishment of such a government must be predicated upon a willingness and capacity to engage in dialogue. Only through crosscutting discourse can disagreements be resolved. [T]oday, there is cause for hope that consensus on the future of Egypt can be built and delivered through action that incorporates social justice and a

4 | JUST LIKE ME tolerance for others ideas, writes a journalist for Dawn, a Pakistani newspaper, continuing,
We are seeing this already, in the willingness to listeneven when one disagreesto counter views and counter protests than those who continue to push for reform and change It is exciting to see all Egyptians getting involved, began Shaimaa Gomaa, a 29-year-old artist, who pointed at the different cross-sections of people who had come out on July 12 to voice their opinions. We are a people with strong views so there needs to be honest discussion about what is going on and after the few days when people thought they knew best, so its good to see this finally happening. (Mayton 2011)

The Egyptian revolution, we can surmise, was therefore in no way accomplished on February 11th; that was just the first step of a much more intensive process. Democratic forms of government, as illustrated in the Egyptian exampleand in the Czech, South African, and South Korean examples, tooare not simply achieved, but rather are ongoing projects that require continuous communication, and a willingness to listeneven when one disagrees. Without meaningful communication across lines of difference, the communal process of decision-making is in jeopardy. Here the contribution of social networking sites like Facebook to an earnest discussion, in which speakers are eager and willing to listen to disagreement, is less clear. Can online social networks facilitate communication, so essential in democratic government, to the same degree that they facilitated the first incitement of protests? On the one hand, social networking sites on the Internet do provide the opportunity for interactive discussion between widely varying groups of people. On the other hand, literature has emerged that indicates such sites arent bringing different people together, and instead, are assembling and unifying people of like minds and like interests (Pariser 2011; Sunstein 2007). Are the conversations required by healthy democracies possible in an environment with News Feeds and Dashboards, where users have the ability to ignore unwarranted conversants, eliminate disagreeable status updates, and instead

AN INTRODUCTION | 5

populate their online surroundings with those things they want to see? If were filling our online environments only with things we Like, what will become of our democracies? Communication and Deliberative Democracy The Egyptian example demonstrates what Seyla Benhabib (1996b, 73) has referred to as an inevitable value-pluralism. Simply put, different approaches and demands are bound to be expressed by varied groups in modern societybe they Coptic Christians or ballet dancers. However, in a political community, their divergent interests must be reconciled somehow. After all, the ballet dancer and Coptic Christian must each contribute taxes to the same national government, come to an agreement about what curricula will be taught in their public schools, and make shared decisions about how to institute political reform. Egyptians must, by virtue of their geographical proximity, cooperate in particular decision-making processes. As Iris Marion Young (1996, 126) puts it, [a] polity consists of people who are stuck with one another. The challenge is to figure out some mechanism by which citizens can make decisions together, despite of the inevitable value-pluralism inherent in modern society. To that end, democratic theorists have developed a model that enables meaningful exchange across variously interested groups, known as deliberative democracy. This approach has discourse across groups play the central role in integrating divergent interests. In meaningful discussion, citizens are able to share their perspectives, and, as a result, mutually transform their opinions. Theorists of democracy have spent much time debating the quality and type of communication that befits a democratic regime; these debates have splintered deliberative theory into myriad sub- and counter-theories, including Youngs extension of

6 | JUST LIKE ME the model into what she calls communicative democracy. * Nevertheless, all deliberative theorists agree that democratic communication must, in some form, include and engage divergent parties. That is to say, citizens cannot be excluded on the basis of their membership in particular groups. Personal Encounter with Difference A related and equally important component of democracy, however, requires not just the formal allowance of all citizens to articulate their varied positions, but also the willingness of others to listen to those articulations. The mere fact that anyone can freely utter his opinion, as Jrgen Habermas (1989, 227) put it, is not sufficient. We can recall the abovementioned observation that in the budding Egyptian democracy what is necessary is the willingness to listeneven when one disagrees. This thesis focuses on the ways individuals personally contribute to deliberative democracy by being willing to listen, or at the least being willing to come into contact with other worldviews. As such, it focuses on what I call personal encounter with differencethat is, citizens personal experiences of other perspectives. In this thesis, the term personal encounter with difference describes the degree to which individual citizens come into contact with citizens of dissimilar experiences, interests, or worldviews. I borrow this approach from Diana Mutz. In her work, she takes diversity not to refer to a broad range of differences within an aggregate, nor to the extent that each differs from the other within the aggregate, but rather to the extent that a given person is exposed to those of oppositional views versus those of like mind (Mutz 2006, 13, emphasis added).

Following Enslin et al. (2001), I group Young and other thinkers that build on the deliberative model under the umbrella term deliberative theory.

AN INTRODUCTION | 7

Mutz (2006, 79) uses the term cross-cutting exposure to describe the activity whereby people talk politics with someone who has political views that are to some recognizable degree different from their own. Instead of exposure, in this project I prefer to use the term encounter, specifically because exposure connotes passivity where individuals ought to be considered more active participants in encountering others. * We all have some degree of control over the degree to which we encounter difference in our daily lives. It is often not simply a case of our being exposed to difference by some external entity, but of our choosing when, where, and how to interface with those of differing experiences, interests, and worldviews. The term encounter, rather than exposure, emphasizes the role of personal agency in communication across lines of difference. Today, emphasis on personal agency is of growing importance because we increasingly have access to tools that allow us greater control over our environments. One such toolwhich this thesis explores in-depthis the social networking site. In the second half of this project, I assess the extent to which individuals are able and willing to listen in the context of online social networking sites. Unfortunately, too few discussions of political communication online have brought into the fold critical questions about exposure to otherness in terms of the deliberative model of democracy. This thesis thus seeks specifically to consider how this essential practice is or is not successfully met in the communication that transpires on social networking sites.

* Because exposure invokes the passive voice, I also hesitate to use the term for fear that I may be compelled to suggest that citizens ought to expose themselves! The only scholar I have seen consider this thus far is Lincoln Dahlberg (2007), in his introduction to Radical Democracy and the Internet, and this work is highly theoretical. What online experiences this text offers regard specifically political sites online, rather than tackling trends of general interaction on the most commonly used sites.

8 | JUST LIKE ME Overview of the Project This thesis takes up two major tasks. First, it argues that personal encounter with difference is a necessarythough not sufficientcondition of deliberative democracy, and proposes a specific method by which we can examine the prevalence of personal encounter with difference. Second, it evaluates the prevalence of personal encounter with difference on social networking sites, and uncovers some of the factors that influence the extent to which citizens personally encounter difference online. The four chapters below take each of these steps in turn. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that personal encounter is a necessary component of the deliberative democratic model. While various deliberative democratic theorists disagree about particular characteristics of the deliberative model, they all concur that democratic discourse requires a capacity for citizens to transform their personal preferences. Transformation occurs in tandem with three conditions of the deliberative model: reasonableness, reciprocity, and inclusion. Personal encounter with difference, as I demonstrate, underpins each of these necessary features. Without some semblance of personal encounter with difference, citizens cannot engage in communal reasoning; they struggle to be mutually respectful; and individually reproduce contours of exclusion. Thus, a measure of personal encounter with difference is at the least a minimum baseline for a deliberative democracy. In the second chapter, I suggest that if we want to study the prevalence of personal encounter with difference, we must develop a new framework for considering and evaluating democratic systems. Because personal encounter with difference entails the personal contact between two or more people, we must look at the interrelationships at the personal levelrather than focusing on individual practices or on systemic inequalities, as other thinkers have. Borrowing from a new field of science called network theory, I propose that we begin to think of democratic systems in terms of the assemblage of relationships between

AN INTRODUCTION | 9

individuals that constitutes the system. Certain structures seem to facilitate more personal encounter with difference than others. By closely considering the structure of these interrelationships, we can learn a lot about whether or not personal encounter with difference occurs in a systemsuch as, say, a social networking site. The third chapter applies this network-minded framework to social networking sites, to explore the relative presence or absence of personal encounter with difference online. It discovers that increasing self-segregation of individuals into groups of likeminded people diminishes the prevalence of personal encounter with difference. Following a discussion of historical instances of self-segregation, I find that self-segregation is particularly evident in social networking sites. Specifically, there are unmistakable signs of self-segregation in both the membership structures of such sites and in the exchange of information and content across those structures. Groups of like-minded social networking site users selfsegregate to the detriment of personal encounter with difference online. Finally, the fourth chapter focuses on the ways particular mechanisms promoted by the owners of social networking sites exacerbate the problem of self-segregation. Paralleling Habermas account of the encroachment of market forces on the public sphere, and the latters consequent disintegration, I offer a narrative in which sky-high profit margins in online advertising schemes drive the development of sites and services like Gmail and Facebook. Online corporations institute these services with some detrimental effects including: a dividualization of individuals, whereby users are fragmented into aggregations of Likes, status updates, or friends; a degradation of content that results from the gratification-inducing Like button; and the loss of a public space for discussion and exchange. As a result, these devices foster the individual self-segregation that already occurs, further diminishing already inadequate online personal encounter with difference. Social networking sites, therefore, may not be as beneficial to democratic societies as they have sometimes been portrayed.

10 | JUST LIKE ME A Word about this Projects Methodological Approach This thesis will employ a qualitative methodological approach in its investigation of the problem stated above. This kind of research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world and consists of a set of interpretive, material practices that make the world visible qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them (Denzin and Lincoln 2011, 3). The goal of the thesis, as Myers (2000) suggests is the main goal of qualitative inquiry in general, is to offer a perspective of a situation and provide well-written research reports that reflect the researchers ability to illustrate or describe the corresponding phenomenon and in so doing, to discover meaning and understanding, rather than to verify truth or predict outcomes. This methodological approach is intrinsically connected to the concerns raised above. It makes, with Wedeen (2007), the observation that a large-N, quantitative illustration of such a problematical concept as democracy fails to appreciate the complexity of the subjects involved. Postman similarly laments that efficiency and quantitative, calculable data have become preeminent sources of authority in modern times. Such authority indicates the Wests development into a Technopoly, where precise knowledge is preferred to truthful knowledge, as Technopoly wishes to solve, once and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity and subordinate diversity, complexity, and ambiguity of human judgment to technique (Postman 1992, 158, emphasis added). Postman argues this problem is particularly visible in the social sciences, and suggests that the work of Freud, Weber, Mumford, and Mead is less science, and more a kind of storytelling. Their work, he says, like that of the novelist, gives
unique interpretations to a set of human events and support their interpretations with examples in various forms. Their interpretations cannot be proved or disproved but will draw their appeal from the

AN INTRODUCTION | 11 power of their language, the depth of their explanations, the relevance of their examples, and the credibility of their themes The words true and false do not apply here in the sense that they are used in mathematics or science. For there is nothing universally and irrevocably true or false about these interpretations. There are no critical tests to confirm or falsify them. There are no natural laws from which they are derived. They are bound by time, by situation, and above all by the cultural prejudices of the researcher or writer. (Postman 1992, 154)

Democracy, as Cohen (1996) has argued, is constituted of the communal discussions concerning questions about the good and the true. These are not questions that can be left up to statistical analysis. Indeed, Postman (1992, 162) agrees that we ought not to ask of science, or expect of science, or accept unchallenged from science the answers to such questions. Benhabib (1996b, 74) writes that part of this public conversation must pertain to the very methods by which we discuss. Thus, in this thesismy contribution to what I hope might be an ongoing discussion about the form and function of democratic practicesI will not attempt to obscure my subjectivity in research. I only hope that the expositional story I tell, and the interpretations I offer within will, as Postman (Postman 1992, 154) demands, draw their appeal from the power of their language, the depth of their explanations, the relevance of their examples, and the credibility of their themes. Limitations of the Project As with any theoretical project, this thesis faces a number of limitations. First, social networking sites are a new phenomenon, and so much of the work that will be done in this study in investigating the consequences of communication on those sites will inevitably be somewhat immature. In fact, even the public in general is struggling to understand how to interpret and utilize the new technologies (Hargittai et al. 2010). The practices themselves are rapidly changing, and have evolved even during the writing of

12 | JUST LIKE ME this composition. However, this study nevertheless performs an important role as it extends and updates research that is quickly becoming outdated, and provides new directions for continued research. Furthermore, as the thesis largely utilizes data found in secondary research, it cannot, by any means, achieve a complete understanding about all online experiences and patterns of communication. This is, however, not unique to my project. As Postman reminds us, it is always a situated human researcher that asks the questionsand enters the search terms. There are bound to be cultural prejudices, along with other constrictions, that affect the generalizability of the study. However, in candidly acknowledging the narrow scope of my research, I hope that the illustrative power of my examples and interpretation can compensate for this limitation. One last observation about the methods employed in this thesis. The following chapters discuss a number of potential problems with information access in the modern, Googled world, due to the emergence of silos and echo chambers. Because, as a researcher, I have often accessed information with the aid of contemporary mechanisms like search engines and News Feeds, these very concerns necessarily impinge on the ways I have developed an understanding of the topic. I am cognizant of the possibility that, in this research, my own confirmation bias will lead me toward an invalid conclusion. With Jane Mansbridge (Mansbridge 1996, 58), I am aware that a great danger lies in an enclave environment where people of like minds talk only to each otherwhether those be white supremacists, Serbs, feminists, or even politics theorists concerned about the effects of the internet! To mollify those possible effects, I have consciously endeavored to engage in conversation with others of different backgrounds in the academic realm, especially by sharing some of the work offered below in presentations with several academic conference panels. The academy has ever been the preeminent bulwark against

AN INTRODUCTION | 13

myopia, and it is my hope that the argument I offer in this project is a meaningful contribution to that fundamental tradition.

14 | JUST LIKE ME

2
Transformational Encounter: Deliberative Democracy and Personal Encounter with Difference It is hardly possible to overrate the value of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar it is indispensable [for human beings] to be perpetually comparing their own notions and customs with the experience and example of persons in different circumstances from themselves. John Stuart Mill (1911, 351) It takes two to speak the truth, one to speak, and another to hear. Henry David Thoreau (1873, 283) Whether in Cairo, Egypt, or here in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois, modern society is markedly heterogeneous. Diversity, as Wolin (1996) makes clear, is simply an inescapable consequence of modern liberty and equality. Nevertheless, members of politically diverse groupssay, ballet dancers and high school students in Cairo, or Occupiers and Tea Party Members in BloomingtonNormalinevitably must share common resources and spaces. Young (1996, 126) says that this facticity of people being thrown together, finding themselves in geographical proximity and economic interdependence is the driving force of politics. Divergent groups must somehow come to agreement on the questions that their community facesbut how? One prominent democratic model, deliberative democracy, has citizens reconcile these differences through meaningful communication across lines of difference. Deliberative theorists are not satisfied with simply leaving the decision making process up to 15

16 | JUST LIKE ME a majoritarian tally; they find that only by means of communication and exchange can legitimately democratic decisions be made. Discourse is the principal method of integrating politically divergent interests in this modelmost importantly because it entails the possibility of transformation of citizens perspectives and preferences. While most deliberative theorists agree both that difference is an inevitableand, indeed, desirablecondition of modern society, and that the possibility of transformation is a fundamental component of democracy, few speak directly to the importance of a personal experience of difference. Though no democratic theorist would doubt the right of, say, Occupiers in Bloomington-Normal or ballet dancers in Cairo to assemble and articulate their concerns, many fewer address at length the responsibility these citizens might have to be open to personally encounternot to mention listen totheir political opponents. In this thesis, I concentrate on this element of personal encounter with difference, and demonstrate that it is an essential ingredient in a transformational, deliberative democracy. Furthermore, I venture that, in our environments in online social networking sites, we fail to personally encounter difference to the degree that is required in democratic society. Before evaluating the prevalence of personal encounter onlinea task I take up in chapter threeI want to first definitively establish that personal encounter with difference is an essential component of the deliberative model of democracy. To that end, in this chapter, I take five steps toward demonstrating the vital role that personal encounter with difference plays in the deliberative democratic model. The first section of this chapter reviews the development of deliberative theory as a model which, in contradistinction to aggregative politics, emphasizes the need for citizens to be able to transform their views and preferences. The following section recounts the earliest formulation of this theory in Habermas Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 17

The third section discusses the integral roles the three conditions of rationality, reciprocity, and inclusion play in all deliberative models, and shows how each of these relate to the transformational objective of deliberative democracy. In the fourth section, I show how personal encounter with difference underpins each of these three components. Finally, I conclude that personal encounter with difference is an essential component of a deliberative system. Deliberative Democratic Theory: Toward Transformation One prevalent understanding of democracy, often referred to as aggregative politics, conceives of politics as a market of competing arguments. In such a system, individuals and groups make claims about how to decide on political matters, and the arguments receiving the most support prevail. Some theorists refer to this conception as aggregative politics, because it legitimates decisions that result from the aggregation of citizens preferences through a plebiscite. Jon Elster (1997, 3) explains that such a politics aims at the optimal compromise between given, and irreducibly opposed, private interests. Schumpeter's minimalist democracy is paradigmatic of aggregative theory; he writes that democratic politics is that institutional arrangement for arriving at political decisions in which individuals acquire the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for the people's vote (Schumpeter 1950, 282). The aggregative model is therefore analogous to a market theory of politics, in which voters cast their vote for political products. Deliberative theorists, on the other hand, object to this approach, because it decline[s] to endorse norms of either justice or legitimacy (Young 2000, 51). According to Benhabib, Young, and others, mere popularity is much too weak of a rationale for obliging members of minority groups to accept the arguments and interests of the majority. Young (1996, 120), who terms aggregative democracy the interest-based model of democracy,

18 | JUST LIKE ME writes that it presumes that people cannot make claims on others about justice or the public good and defend those claims with reasons. Benhabib (1996b, 72) joins Young as she seeks to restore claims to both justice and legitimacy in a democratic framework, without resorting to the simple conception that legitimacy resides in numbers. To restore norms of justice and legitimacy to a democratic model, several democratic theorists have cultivated a new framework usually referred to as deliberative democracy. In the deliberative approach, the collective and public exercise of power in the major institutions of a society is legitimated as a result of the free and unconstrained deliberation about all matters of common concern (Benhabib 1996b, 68). Through a discursive process, deliberative theorists surmise, members of the national public can indeed arrive at conceptions of the common good, in spite of the heterogeneity that derives from modern liberty and equality. Discourse and exchange allegedly allow individuals to reach beyond their particular situated and interested positions to develop a more shared and just method of decision-making. Young succinctly describes the deliberative model when she writes that it
conceives of democracy as a process that creates a public, citizens coming together to talk about collective problems, goals, ideals, and actions. Democratic processes are oriented around discussing this common good rather than competing for the promotion of the private good of each. through public deliberation citizens transform their preferences according to public-minded ends, and reason together about the nature of those ends and the best means to realize them. In free and open dialogue others test and challenge these assertions and reasons (Young 1996, 121, emphasis added).*

As we shall see below, Young diverges somewhat from the deliberative model when she advocates for a broader margin of acceptable communication. Nevertheless, following Enslin et al. (2001), I situate both Youngs communicative democracy and Benhabibs discursive model within the deliberative framework. I use the more familiar termdeliberative

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 19

Most importantly in Youngs discussion above is her assertion that in the deliberative model, citizens are to transform their preferences according to public-minded ends. This is the deliberative democrats goal in her rejection of aggregative politics: to allow opportunities for transformation beyond the status quo. As Calhoun (1992, 29) points out, communication does not simply mean sharing what people already think or know, but something more substantive: it entails a process of potential transformation in which reason is advanced by debate itself. Others further suggest that imagining the public sphere simply as a platform for sharing what people already think or know is absurd, because we often come to know so much of what we know through mutual sharing. We therefore cant assume that individuals enter into deliberation already bearing a set of coherent preferences, that citizens' caring, their awareness, and the definition of issues, are all settled before the political process starts (Calhoun 1988, 238).* Postman gets at the heart of the issue when he writes that [a]n opinion is not a momentary thing but a process of thinking, shaped by the continuous acquisition of knowledge and the activity of questioning, discussion, and debate we might better say that people do not exactly have opinions but are, rather, involved in opinioning (Postman 1992, 134). Simply expressing our preferences, through a plebiscite or other means, is not enough for deliberative theorists. Individuals must be able to revise their

democracyto signify the greater school of thinkers that agree that communication, not status markers, ought to be the mode of societal integration in a democracy. * In fact, Young suggests that this is not only because citizens do not individually have enough information to devise a set of coherent preferences; it is also because citizens themselves are often not coherent! The notion that each person can understand the other as he or she understands himself or herself, she writes, presupposes that a subject can know himself or herself and express that knowledge accurately and unambiguously to others Because the subject is not a unity, it cannot be present to itself and know itself (Young 1990, 310).

20 | JUST LIKE ME opinions as a result of discussion and communication. For Habermas, similarly, democracy entails evolution. Democracy may be achieved not merely because anyone could in principle announce, with equal opportunity, his personal inclinations, wishes, and convictions. Instead, it can only be realized in the measure that these personal opinions could evolve through the rationalcritical debate of a public into public opinion (Habermas 1989, 219). The Bourgeois Public Sphere What would such integration look like? Has it ever existed? These are questions that Habermas takes up in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. As Calhoun (Calhoun 1992, 1) puts it, in that text, Habermas goal was to investigate when and under what conditions the arguments of mixed companies could become authoritative bases for political action. Through the example of the bourgeois public sphere, Habermas aspired to demonstrate that rational-critical debate about public matters among individuals that relied on the authority of reason, rather than status attributes, could restore substantive legitimacy to the democratic model by opening up spaces for transformation. Instead of simply aggregating arbitrary, isolated opinions, in this approach, individuals would achieve access to truth though the exchange of rational argument. In making claims to rationality, he concluded, such a model would provide a stronger justification for authoritative decision making. Habermas found an ideal example of such discourse emerging in the bourgeois public spherea historical state of affairs which, as discussed in The Structural Transformation, was the result of a particular constellation of a number of social conditions. The feudal era of representative publicityin which

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 21

status attributes,* rather than entrance into a social realm or public sphere, constituted a public personcame to a close as both public and private were redefined and reconceived by members of the bourgeoisie in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Developments, such as the emergence of the intimate sphere of the conjugal family and the proliferation of literary and art criticism, directly contributed to a redefinition of publicity (and, conversely, of privacy). The public role of the art critic (Kunstrichter) also figured centrally in the formation of the public sphere:
in the conflict of judgments he was not to shut his ears to convincing arguments, instead, he had to rid himself of his prejudices. With the removal of the barrier that representative publicity had erected between laymen and initiates, special qualificationswhether inherited or acquired, social or intellectualbecame in principle irrelevant. (Habermas 1989, 259)

The discourse ultimately developed by discussants in the public sphere borrowed from the ethos of the art critic, in that the ultimate authority for arbitrating public discursive arguments was reason itself. Insofar as this public sphere institutionalized the emergent practice of rational-critical discourse on matters pertaining to the public, it provided the basis for a substantive, democratic legitimacy Habermas was looking for. The legitimacy of this ideal speech situation derives specifically from the fact that these decisions ostensibly correspond to an impartial standpoint said to be equally in the interests of all (Benhabib 1996b, 69). The authority of the public sphere lay not in expressions of particularized interests, or in the staging of status attributes like those of the feudal age of representative publicity, or in nondiscursive modes of coordination as money and power; instead,

Among such status attributes, Habermas (1989, 8) includes insignia (badges and arms), dress (clothing and coiffure), demeanor (form of greeting and poise) and rhetoric (form of address and formal discourse in general).

22 | JUST LIKE ME the bourgeois public sphere accepted no authority beside that of the better argument (Habermas 1989, 41). In time, rationalcritical debate found its way into newly established forms of governance, namely parliaments and congressional halls. On the floors of such buildings, representatives of citizens would discuss pressing matters with others, thereby informing themselves, and make decisions accordingly. For Habermas, the very process of accessing truth was thus installed in official institutions. Ultimately, however, Habermas ideal sphere disintegrated as a result of the increasing reappearance of non-discursive means of coordination, most visible in the escalating encroachment of advertising in the early twentieth century press. As product promotion became a major source of revenue for publishersthe very presses whose goods had given rise to the literary public sphere in the first placethe content itself was transformed. Consumption became the paradigmatic public activity. Publicity and privacy were thus conflated in what amounted to a refeudalization, as [c]ompetition between organized private interests invaded the public sphere (Habermas 1989, 179). The social realm of the public sphere, and the discourse it engendered, receded. Politics once again became a non-discursive exchange of interest articulations resembling the aggregative politics that deliberative theorists reject. As the market invaded the public sphere, the possibility for transformation evaporated. Difference and Particularity in Democratic Communication A crucial quality of Habermas bourgeois public sphere, his public sphere par excellence was that it was constituted by a kind of social intercourse that, far from presupposing the equality of status, disregarded status altogether (Habermas 1989, 36). In contradistinction to representative publicity, the emergent public sphere was predicated on a delineation between private and public

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 23

man. Whereas the latter refers to that which was in common, the former comprised especially the particular.* Individuals particular situations are bracketed in the Habermasian model of rationalcritical discourse. Their arguments are to appeal to what is, or ought to be, publicly shared. Benhabib (1996b, 83), therefore, has the very legitimacy of democratic institutions hinge on discursive language that appeals to commonly shared and accepted public reasons. For this reason, in Habermas model, [d]ifference is to be bracketed or tolerated, rather than to be positively thematized (Calhoun 1992, 35). Difference, or the particularYoung (1990) defines it as the irreducible particularity of entitiesdoes not belong in Habermas public sphere. Yet some theorists find this ideal condition insufficient for providing the transformative communication that the deliberative model necessitates. Young and Fraser, for example, observe that difference can never fully be bracketed, because bourgeois norms of rationality often privilege particular kinds of language and syntax. Were [social inequities] really effectively bracketed? asks Fraser (1990, 63). In fact, she contends that the purported bracketing of interests for the sake of rationality unfairly reinforces existing imbalances of power. For Fraser, in the bourgeois public sphere, style and decorum are simply modern replacements for the status attributes of insignia, dress, and demeanor of the feudal era. Even after the extension of the franchise to most citizens, and after formal exclusionsincluding the segregation of races, and the exclusion of women in countless segments of societywere eliminated, there remained powerful informal pressures that marginalize the contributions of members

* Habermas notes that feudalism reversed this meaning; private became what was common. However, for our understanding of the terms, the original etymology suffices. He also reminds us that the conflation of private and particular is represented in today's equation of special interests with private interests (Habermas 1989, 6).

24 | JUST LIKE ME of subordinated groups both in everyday life contexts and in official public spheres (Fraser 1990, 64). Because the language that constitutes public discourse can itself be partial to certain perspectives, purportedly reasoned argument can easily fail to uproot individuals from their interested positions, and instead further entrench them in an inequitable terrain. For precisely this reason, Young advocates the integration of more diverse communicative styles in public discourse, and demonstrates the value of rhetoric, greeting, and storytelling in communicating ideas and reasons between citizens. Storytelling, for example,
reveals the particular experiences of those in social locations, experiences that cannot be shared by those situated differently but that they must understand in order to do justice to the others... [for example,] storytelling provides enough understanding of the situation of the wheelchair-bound by those who can walk for them to understand that they cannot share the experience. Narrative exhibits subjective experience to other subjects. (Young 1996, 131)

In other words, because all communicative practices entail some measure of situatedness, we ought to orient communication toward the goal of mutual understanding, rather than demanding that it adhere to inevitably inequitable discursive formulae. Nevertheless, rationalists like Benhabib point out that the critiques of theorists like Young and Fraser fail to provide a sufficiently objective alternative. Such theories are circular in that they either posit or simply take for granted precisely those moral and political norms of citizens equality, freedom, and democratic legitimacy for the justification of which what are dubbed Foundationalist models were developed in the first place (Benhabib 1996b, 71). The objective of the deliberative model is to transcend aggregative politics. If citizens are unwilling to set aside their situated and interested positions, Benhabib argues, this is not possible. Without some commonly agreed upon framework, a more partial, affective, and situated mode of communication would have the consequence of inducing arbitrariness (Benhabib 1996b, 83). If Young and Fraser insist on reinserting into discussion those

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 25

rhetorics and communicative forms that acknowledge or highlight particular (or, in Habermas etymology, private) situations, their model threatens to revert to the politics as market in which ones situated interests are pitted against anothers. However, Young importantly points out that there is something to be shared even among articulations of particular interests. The conveyance of subjective experience does not preclude the conveyors appeal to shared valuesin fact, Young requires that expressions like storytelling and rhetoric involve such appeals. Her model demands an equal privileging of any forms of communicative interaction where people aim to reach understanding (Young 1996, 125). As in the case of the wheelchair-bound storyteller, the imparting of particular experience from one person to a differently situated other is done to achieve ends that correspond to shared values. Thus, rather than insist on bracketing difference, communicative democracy acknowledges the particular situations of its members, and it attends to social difference, to the way that power sometimes enters speech itself, [and] recognizes the cultural specificity of deliberative practices (Young 1996, 123). This is, for Young, a strength, not a weakness. It more fully achieves the avowed goal of the deliberative democrat: that is, to allow an opportunity for societal cooperation that does not derive from money and power, which suffer from tendencies toward domination and reification (Calhoun 1992, 6). Providing space for particular observations within a framework of cooperation does not require that we believe we have no similarities; instead, it means that
each position is aware that it does not comprehend the perspective of the others differently located, in the sense that it cannot be assimilated into ones own. There is thus something to be learned from the other perspectives as they communicate their meanings and perspectives, precisely because the perspectives are beyond one another and not reducible to a common good. (Young 1996, 127)

After all, says Young, if no particular observations or points of view are permitted in the discussionbased on what all members

26 | JUST LIKE ME of the discussion sharethen what is the end of discussion? There will be no opinion formation, no revisions of personal viewpoints if difference is not represented in some substantive way in discourse.* Just as Young reminds us that there is something shared even among diverse members of a democratic society, there are also a number of commonalities among deliberative theorists. In the following section, I will look at three essential elements of the deliberative model common to both discursive and communicative theorists: reasonableness, reciprocity, and inclusion. Thereafter, I will demonstrate that, as personal encounter with difference underpins each of these fundamental conditions, personal encounter itself is a necessary condition of deliberative democracy. Necessary Conditions of Deliberative Democracy While each of the most influential deliberative theorists offers a unique account of what communication ought to look like, there are a number of characteristics that most deliberative models share. Because this thesis seeks to demonstrate that personal encounter with difference is an essential element of a legitimate democracy, I would like to briefly discuss these generally agreedupon criteria. In the following section, I will illustrate how personal encounter with difference promotes each of the following components. Deliberation Ought to be Reasonable and Informative For Habermas, whose model gave rise to the deliberative model in the first place, the essence of the deliberative process is

Young (1996, 125) puts it this way: If discussion succeeds primarily when it appeals to what the discussants all share, then none need revise their opinions or viewpoints in order to take account of perspectives and experiences beyond them.

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 27

that it is fundamentally a matter of basing judgment on reasons (Calhoun 1992, 2, emphasis added). Argumentsnot status symbolsare to be the currency of exchange. In Habermas model, deliberation should rely not on a previous convergence of settled ethical convictions but from the communicative presuppositions that allow the better arguments to come into play in various forms of deliberation (Habermas 1996, 24). These communicative presuppositionsincluding, for example, an emphasis on rule of law and political rationality (Chen 2008)comprise a kind of procedure of exchange. The procedure of argumentation is the guarantor of the reasonableness, or the rationality, of discourse. The procedural element of deliberation is so critical, in fact, that he contends that the very success of deliberative politics [depends] on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures and conditions of communication (Habermas 1996, 27). While Young deviates from Habermasian theorists insistence on the detached stance of those who engage in deliberation, she agrees that the objective of discourse ought to communally reason. Discussants must share with others by appealing to arguments, rather than non-discursive modes of communication, to justify their standpoints. [T]hey must appeal to others by presenting proposals they claim are just or good and that others ought to accept, writes Young (1996, 125), and their appeals must be publicly speakable, as claims of entitlement or what is right. Young resists the presuppositions that Habermas seeks to install as a prerequisite to deliberation, but she nonetheless affirms the notion that reason and argument must be the lifeblood of legitimate democracy. Benhabib (1996b, 87) endorses this view when she agrees that deliberative processes are essential insofar as they lead to the formation of conclusions that can be challenged publicly for good reasons. Our ability to do so, however, is constrained by the amount of information we possess or have access to. The communicative process itself also facilitates continued discussion by providing individuals with information. Benhabib (1996b, 71)

28 | JUST LIKE ME puts it succinctly: [d]eliberation is a procedure for being informed. As discussants convey arguments, they also provide essential information to their counterparts. In Youngs communicative democracy, listeners can learn about how their own position, actions, and values appear to others from the stories they tell (Young 1996, 132). The aforementioned example of the wheelchair-bound citizen communicating to different others illustrates the importance, in Youngs model, of imparting information. These kinds of details enhance a discussants capacity to develop and express reasoned arguments. Deliberation Ought to be Reciprocal and Respectful Even those who do not advocate a pure proceduralism, as does Habermas, suggest that some measure of reciprocity, or civility, is necessary in a deliberative system. Gutmann and Thompson (1996, 55), for example, suggest that a seminal principle of deliberative democracy is reciprocity, which aims to regulate public reason, the terms in which citizens justify to one another their claims regarding all other goods. The deliberative model, on their conception, requires citizens mutual willingness to participate in the task of reasoning together. Cohen (1997, 72), similarly, has written that members of a deliberative democracy must share a commitment to co-ordinating their activities within institutions that make deliberation possible and according to norms that they arrive at through their deliberation. Though these analyses diverge on the ultimate goal of deliberation Gutmann and Thompson stress the importance of accepting disagreement, while Cohen controversially contends that deliberation must aim at consensusthey both acknowledge that it is absolutely mandatory that individuals agree to participate in communicative exchange by speaking and listening together. Members of a democratic community must therefore be mutually respectful. Constituents cannot participate if they fail to recognize that their opponents are also reasonable and have

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 29

concerns that are worthy of consideration. Young (1996, 126) suggests exactly this when she writes that the members of a communicative democracy must have a commitment to equal respect for one another, in the simple formal sense of willingness to say that all have a right to express their opinions and points of view, and all ought to listen. Here she shares Barbers emphasis on the necessity of listening. In what he calls strong democracy, Barber (2004, 175) writes that the citizen must be willing to listen, not simply to scan [an] adversarys position for weaknesses and potential trade-offs, nor even... [to] tolerantly permit him to say whatever he chooses, but to empathize and understand. Too few theorists, Young asserts, discuss listening. A willingness to listen is central to the reciprocity necessary in a deliberative system. In fact, Young (2000, 107) goes further and demands that that claims directed at a public with the aim of persuading members of that public that injustices occur must be given a hearing, and require criticism of those who refuse to listen. Notwithstanding a few detractors, * reciprocity is a widely accepted requisite for a deliberative politics. Deliberation Ought to be Inclusive and Equal As we saw above, in the bourgeois public sphere that Habermas describes in The Structural Transformation, discussants

Mansbridge (1999, 223), however, does consider the intermittent value of incivility; in her article on everyday talk, she notes that because their claims are systemically ignored, subordinates sometimes need the battering ram of rage. Further, within the smaller and more tight knit communities that often constitute everyday talk, less gracious language can be articulated and later rephrased in terms more appropriate for formal deliberation. Thus, she suggests that deliberative theorists ought not require that every interaction in the system exhibit mutual respect, consistency, acknowledgment, openmindedness, and moral economy, but that the larger system reflect those goals (Mansbridge 1999, 224).

30 | JUST LIKE ME engaged in discourse in which the better argument was to prevail. Discussants were to participate solely in their capacity as human beings, and as such were to speak for the greater community of humans, including those unrepresented in the discussions. The bourgeois public, Calhoun (1992, 13) writes, established itself as inclusive in principle. However, many groups rejected this concept of by proxy inclusion. For them, the as if clause in the principle that discussants were to converse as if they were social and economic peers rang hollow. Without representation, these groups argued, the injustices they suffered would go unaddressed. Women, blacks, and the disabled fought tirelessly to achieve the same rights that had been afforded other citizensincluding, notably, the right to vote and to represent their fellow citizens in officeby convening in public and generating national discussion and political pressure. Fraser and Young (along with Habermas and his supporters) justly criticize the ideal Habermas finds in the bourgeois public sphere for its failure to directly address this inequality. They stress the importance of including all individuals in discussion who will be constrained by the results of the deliberation. After all, as Manin (1987, 352) puts it, a legitimate decision is one that results from the deliberation of all. Without substantive inclusion, legitimacy will not obtain. The condition of inclusion does not simply imply the inclusion of various populations, but also of different modes of speech. Knight and Johnson (1997, 295) speak to this when they write that not only ought equal access to the forum be provided, but also equal opportunity to influence others. Similarly, individuals ability to enter into the discussion does not suffice for communicative theorists like Young. Rather, as discussed, she considers inclusive only those deliberative systems that also integrate a plurality of forms of communication. Young calls this particular dimension internal inclusion, and contrasts it with external inclusion. The latter names the kind of inclusion deficient in Habermas bourgeois public sphere; the former refers

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 31

to the eradication of more subtle exclusions, like those that result from the communicative norms Fraser criticizes (Young 2000, 53). Fully inclusive societies must incorporate both forms. Inclusion ought not to mean simply the formal and abstract equality of all members of the polity as citizens, Young maintains. It means explicitly acknowledging social differentiations and divisions and encouraging differently situated groups to give voice to their needs, interests, and perspectives on the society in ways that meet conditions of reasonableness and publicity (Young 2000, 119). Substantive inclusion of both varied groups and modes of speech is especially important to Young because she finds that it is the means for breaking the circle of inequality that plagues many modern democracies. This negative feedback loop enables the powerful to use formally democratic processes to perpetuate injustice or preserve privilege (Young 2000, 17). By widening inclusionboth internal and externaldemocracies can better address the self-reinforcing circle of inequality. Each of the above featuresreasonableness, reciprocity, and inclusionare accepted by many deliberative theorists as requisite in a deliberative democratic system. In the following section, I would like to suggest that encounter with difference underpins each of these features, and is therefore a necessary though not sufficientcondition for deliberative democracy. Personal Encounter with Difference Underpins Essential Conditions As we learned in the earliest sections of this chapter, the inevitable value-pluralism that arises in modern society is the very reality that theorists try to accommodate in their development of democratic frameworks. In the aggregative model, citizens are expected to articulate their diverse preferences in plebiscites, and these articulations are aggregated in a political market. The deliberative model, which responds to aggregative politics, tries to achieve more substantive legitimacy by allowing difference to be

32 | JUST LIKE ME communicated between citizens through argument, allowing for a transformation of citizens preferences. As we saw above, deliberative theorists disagree as to what the role of difference in discussion ought to be. Habermas ideal speech situation has individuals suspend their situated interests for the sake of discussion. Young, Fraser, Mansbridge, and others advocate for some reinsertion of particular positions or interests, so long as individuals nevertheless appeal to others by presenting proposals they claim are just or good and that others ought to accept, based on arguments. All of these thinkers, however, acknowledge the inextricable presence of difference in democratic societies, and attempt to devise models which allow diverse citizens to aim at a common understanding. For his part, Habermas makes explicit that it is essential that the bourgeois public sphere was at least inclusive in principle, and fully acknowledges its inadequacy, insofar as populations were excluded from discussion. Though particularities are to be bracketed in the public sphere, if different classes or groups of citizens are unrepresented in discourse, the sphere is not sufficiently inclusive. Thus, even for Habermas, the presence of difference is an essential component of deliberation. Encounter with Difference Facilitates Communal Reasoning and Informs Where the deliberative model requires that individuals engage in reasonable discussion, political theorists and scientists observe that encounter with difference enhances that discussion. Encounter with difference performs two functions in enhancing discourse: it encourages individuals to appeal to others across lines of difference according to shared reasons, and provides the information that citizens need to make decisions about those arguments. First, Young and Benhabib both agree that reasoned discussion is enhanced by encounter with difference. Young (1996, 28), for instance, suggests that [c]onfrontation with different

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 33

perspectives [of others who have] the right to challenge my claims and arguments, forces me to transform my expressions of selfinterest and desire into appeals to justice. As they encounter others of different worldviews, individuals must revise their preferences to make them publicly speakable, as claims of entitlement or what is right (Young 1996, 125). Benhabib (1996b, 87) suggests that encounter with different viewpoints allows the expression of arguments in the light of which opinions and beliefs need to be revised. In an oft-cited passage, Arendt gives credence to the idea that encounter with other viewpoints enables collective reasoning, and the transformation that results from it. Only with an enlarged mentality can we better judge the arguments that take place in the public sphere:
The more people's standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion. (It is this capacity for an enlarged mentality that enables men to judge) the only condition for this exertion of the imagination is disinterestedness, the liberation from one's own private interests. (Arendt 1968, 241)

Second, encounter with difference provides essential information to which discussants would otherwise not have access. In large internally diverse societies, Calhoun (1988, 236) has written, no one's immediate (lifeworld) experience prepares them adequately for political participation. Instead, the kind of public discourse that protects citizens from being parochial and vulnerable to manipulation requires that they create meaningful discourse across lines of difference (Calhoun 1988, 220). Manin has suggested that the cornerstone of the deliberative models claim to legitimacy derives from the fact that deliberation offers opportunities to receive new information. Because no one individual can possess all the information necessary for making decisions that are pertinent to all, deliberation among those of

34 | JUST LIKE ME different experiences, interests, and worldviews allows information to be shared. Good deliberation, Mansbridge (1996, 47) argues, allows participants to come to understand their interests, including their conflicting interests, better than before deliberationinsofar as they are exposed to others of different experiences, interests, and worldviews. Young (1996, 128) confirms that [e]xpressing, questioning, and challenging differently situated knowledge adds to the social knowledge of all the participants. Mutz (2006) demonstrates empirically, using telephone surveys, that encounter with difference enhances citizens understanding of other arguments and familiarity with supporting information. Her data demonstrate that exposure to oppositional viewpoints significantly increases awareness of legitimate rationales for opposing views (Mutz 2006, 74). If broad sources of information and exposure to argument are important for deliberative argument, then personal encounter with difference helps to ensure that participants have that important information. Encounter with Difference Enhances Reciprocity Mutz uses the same empirical data to demonstrate that encounter with those of different worldviews enhances tolerance in citizens. One of her findings from her analysis of national survey results shows that cross-cutting contact improves people's abilities to see issues from the perspectives of others, even when they personally do not agree (Mutz 2006, 66). Even if individuals do not learn about particular rationales and arguments, their mere exposure to those who hold different worldviews enhances their toleration of others. * Her study quantitatively shows that

For a salient example of this, consider Gallups recent finding that individuals personal acquaintance significantly increases the likelihood that they support gay rightseven controlling for political affiliation (Morales 2009)

TRANSFORMATIONAL ENCOUNTER | 35

encounters with others of different worldviews make people less likely to support restrictions on the civil liberties of those with differing views, thus fulfilling the Habermasian requirement of mutual respect and willingness to enter into discussion. Encounter with Difference Enhances Inclusiveness Where Young, as noted above, suggests that one way to break the self-reinforcing circle between economic and political inequalities is to widen democratic inclusion, a component of such inclusion must involve widening individual inclusion of expressions difference. By this I mean to suggest that, where individuals choose to exclude difference from their own personal daily experience, they may practice the kinds of informal exclusion that Young warns sustain that reinforcing circle. It is only in public exposure and opposition, Young (2000, 176-7) writes, that relatively powerless people sometimes gain a degree of political accountability that contributes to social or economic change. Public exposure in general, however, is not meaningful enough if too few individuals personally experience that opposition. To that end, Phillips echoes Frasers skepticism about the capacity of discussants to truly deliberate as if they were equals, without substantive inclusion. She argues that political presence is essential in ensuring a wider inclusion of individuals. She contrasts the politics of ideas with the politics of presence, and suggests that presence is necessary to ensure substantive political inclusion:
when the politics of ideas is taken in isolation from what I will call the politics of presence, it does not deal adequately with the experiences of those social groups who by virtue of their race or ethnicity or religion or gender have felt themselves excluded from the democratic process. Political exclusion is increasinglyI believe rightlyviewed in terms that can be met only by political presence. (Phillips 1996, 141)

We can certainly interpret Phillips idea of presence broadly that is, in terms of general presence in a larger public spherebut I suggest that we consider her politics of presence in terms of the

36 | JUST LIKE ME presence of difference in individuals daily world experiencesin the form of personal encounter with difference. Personal Encounter with Difference a Necessary, but not Sufficient, Condition The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate that reasonableness, and reciprocity, inclusion are each important conditions in a transformative, deliberative system, and that personal encounter with difference relates directly to each of these conditions. By no means do I suggest that encounter with difference is a sufficient condition for a democracy. Instead, as many theorists reasonably argue, other conditions may also be necessarysuch as, for example, substantive equality (as Fraser argues), or a common aspiration toward consensus (as Cohen suggests). Nevertheless, insofar as encounter with difference underpins the three features reviewed in this chapter, it is a necessary condition for transformative, deliberative democracy. The suggestion that the presence of difference is important in a deliberative system is by no means original. Nevertheless, I contend that framing it in terms of those individual choices that open up opportunities for personal encounter with difference will yield new insights about the potential of deliberative or communicative democracy in contemporary society. As I will discuss in the chapters that follow, I suggest that looking at the deliberative democratic framework in terms of personal encounter with difference is particularly productive in the context of contemporary trends of self-selected, networked communities. Insofar as personal encounter with difference is an essential dimension of democracy, I would next like to explore how we might be able to evaluate the degree to which people personally encounter difference. To those ends, in the next chapter, I endeavor to develop a kind of theoretical methodology for assessing personal encounter with difference.

3
Democratic Networks (and Networks of Networks) Never send down roots, or plant them, however difficult it may be to avoid reverting to the old procedures. Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant! Don't sow, grow offshoots! Don't be one or multiple, be multiplicities! Run lines, never plot a point! Speed turns the point into a line! Be quick, even when standing still! Deleuze and Guattari (1988, 23) similarity begets friendship. Plato (1920, 245) In chapter one, I argued that personal encounter with difference is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a successful communicative democratic system. This chapter seeks to formulate a theoretical approach that will help us better understand where and how personal encounter with difference occurs in various systemssuch as social networking sitesand to what result. As discussed in the previous chapter, in this thesis, I take difference to name a divergence of perspective or worldview between individuals. In his formulation of the concept of the public sphere, Habermas (1996, 29) wrote that the communicative structures of the public sphere comprise a far-flung network of sensors that react to social problems and cultivate public opinion. The public sphere is constituted, in his conception, by the associations between members of the public, in and through various media. Only through that network may a deliberative politics constituted of bargaining processes and various forms of argumentation, including pragmatic, ethical, and moral 37

38 | JUST LIKE ME discoursesarise (Habermas 1996, 25). Benhabib (1996b, 73), echoing Habermas, reminded us that it is in the interlocking net of these multiple forms of associations, networks, and organizations that an anonymous public conversation results. The structure of the network or interlocking net to which these theorists refer deserves further scrutiny. Furthermore, I suspect that more careful study of the very composition of the networks that constitute democratic societysay, on social networking siteswill allow us to better evaluate the prevalence of personal encounter with difference within those networks. The framework I develop in this chapter will allow us, in chapter three, to better gauge the hypothesized absence of personal encounter with difference online. To provide a more thorough appreciation of the role of encounter with difference in a successful communicative system, therefore, I focus on the configuration of the network itself. Because I seek to explore personal encounter with difference, I concentrate on the interpersonal relationships that facilitate encounters across lines of difference. As discussed in previous chapters, I take difference to signify a divergence of perspective or worldview between individuals. I borrow from Mutz (2006, 11), who writes that she is concerned strictly with political differencethat is, how people come to express and listen to oppositional political views. I seek to explore personal experiences of encounter between two or more individuals holding different (or even opposing) perspectives. My focus on the assemblage of personal relationships represents a critical departure from existing theory. Many of the greatest recent contributions to theories of deliberative democracy concentrate on systemic injusticessuch as the incisive observation that Young (2001) offers regarding the ways norms of rational communication can unfairly disadvantage the underprivileged. In this analysis, system-wide contours of inclusion

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and exclusion are held up for critique.* Other theorists examine individual praxis, as Lisa Wedeen (2007) does in her reconception of the Habermasian model using the example of Qat chews in Yemen. In a reformulation of Habermas theory, Wedeen argues that, regardless of whether or not they produce a democratic regime in the nation, most Yemenis perform democratic practices deserving of attention. These important discussions, however, provide little opportunity to reflect on the prevalence of personal encounter with difference within the system. They also provide too little space for examining the role of personal agency in creating and sustaining opportunities for personal encounter with difference. Therefore, rather than focusing on broad contours of inclusion/exclusion within a political system, or examining the kind of procedures individuals in the system practice, I turn to the networks of relationships within which citizens are located. Admittedly, these conceptions are not so cleanly separable. Rather, I acknowledge that the composition of networks of relationships influences, and is influenced by, systemic inequality and individual praxis. Nevertheless, where previous theory has sometimes neglected closer consideration of the arrangement of personal relationships that promote those essential encounters across lines of difference, I strive to turn our attention to those structures. The structures of those networks themselves will constitute our unit of analysisthat is to say, in the following discussion, I will show that the very constellations of relationships in a network can betray their democratic or undemocratic nature. As I argue below, the concentration of relationships around a handful of prominent nodes and a lack of integration across

* Recall, from chapter one, that Youngs discussion of internal and external inclusion critiques boundaries that reach across the system. She does not discuss at length the ways individuals personally reproduce those boundaries by avoiding opportunities to personally encounter difference. This is part of the shift I propose.

40 | JUST LIKE ME clusters both indicate a relative absence of personal encounter with difference. The degree to which these tendencies exist in social networking sites, which I explore in chapter three, indicates their failure to facilitate personal encounter with difference, to the detriment of democratic society. The conceptual move that I seek to makethat is, positing democratic networks, rather than systems or individuals, as the unit of analysisis a challenging one. It demands a new vocabulary and theoretical approach. To facilitate this significant shift, I will borrow terminology and concepts employed by researchers in network theory, a burgeoning field of analysis with applications in both social and natural sciences. As we shall see, recent discoveries in network science reflect and inspire this project; they indicate the emergence of highly concentrated communities online and offline, but especially on social networking sites. I then synthesize these discussions with those of one of the few political theorists to think in terms of networks, William Connolly. The two types of networks that Connolly compares in his work dovetail to some degree with two models contrasted in network theory; to complete the synthesis, I posit a third network model. Connollys comparison informs the third section of this chapter, in which I explore the value of condensed clusters of relationships in democratic networks. I find that Connollys conception of a democratic network resembles precisely the kind of assemblage that network theorists suggest is receding. Finally, I venture a few hypotheses about the extent to which nascent network structures promote encounter with difference, and to what result. Network Theory and the Discovery of Scale-Free Networks At the close of the 1990s, the young Hungarian physicist Albert-Lszl Barabsi began to suspect that there might be some important lessons to be learned in analyzing the structures of networks. Barabsi (2002), trained in chaos theory and theoretical

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 41

physics, had suspected for a number of years that there might be some scientific lessons to be learned from thinking networks looking at the organization of nodes in a constellation of relationships. Fortunately, an emerging technology was just then ripe for examination: the burgeoning network of computers we know as the Internet was exponentially growing in significance (and data points). Barabsi decided to work with a handful of his graduate students to analyze the webs structure, hoping to glean some larger lesson from its formation. They devised a virtual robot to crawl through links on the University of Notre Dames domain, hoping it would yield some information about the structure of that network. As Barabsi and Albert investigated the relationships between links on their universitys intranet, they discovered a structure quite dissimilar from what they had expected. Rather than yielding a decentralized complex of interlinks, their investigation produced a network that was highly concentrated around a number of principal URLs. Most sites like Barabsiswere not integrated into the system at all.* This finding, to some degree, debunked what had been the chief optimism about the new technologythat it was open, egalitarian, and democratic. Barabsi (2002, 57-8) reports in Linked, his 2002 text detailing his teams discoveries, that
*

You can be sure that Barabasi receives much more links and more traffic nowafter publishing at length about these critical findings! Perhaps it was in this vein that John Perry Barlow Barlow (1996) infamously declared that We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. In contradistinction to that Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Barabsi observes that things arent nearly as naturally independent of the tyrannies of physical space. He writes that the most intriguing result of our Web-mapping project was the complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values on the Web. We learned that the topology of the Web prevents us from seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there. In Barabsi, Albert-Lszl. 2002. Linked, The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus. 56.

42 | JUST LIKE ME
[t]he map returned by our robot offered evidence of a high degree of unevenness in the Web's topology. Of the 325,000 pages on the University of Notre Dame's domain we investigated, 270,000, or 82 percent of all pages, had three or fewer incoming links. However, a small minority, about 42 pages, had been referenced by over a thousand other pages and had more than 1,000 incoming links!

This phenomenon, wherein a small minority of hubs connects a vast majority of unconnected nodes, did not end with the Web. Barabsi (2002, 68-9) continued to find areas in which such a relationshipsometimes called the 80/20 rule, or Paretos Lawgoverned the network. Channeling the chucklesome Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, he found a similar relationship between Hollywood celebrities. Then, he traced the same phenomenon in networks of sexual partnersat the height of the AIDS epidemic (Barabsi 2002, 123-4). The dynamic, Barabsi discovered, is not limited to online and offline social networks, but is also evident in biological networks, including the network of proteins interactions in a cell (Barabsi 2002, 117-8). Airline networks proved an epitomic example of the network model Barabsi and his team revealed. His comparison between an airline route map and a U.S. roadmap is particularly instructive (Barabsi 2002, 69-72). While in a U.S. roadmap, most cities have an equitable distribution of linkages with other cities, an airline route map depicts a few cities providing a large majority of connections, and most cities linking to only a couple of others (see Figure 2).This airline-route type of network Barabsi called scalefree, because there is no intrinsic scale and no characteristic node (Barabsi 2002, 70). That is, there is no average, typical nodeor, in other words, there is no typical airport. Instead, there are a few large, dominant airports (hubs) and many, many more airports that are much less significant. Because there is no characteristic node, Barabsi (2002, 56) writes that a scale-free structure is characterized by a complete absence of democracy, fairness, and egalitarian values (emphasis in the original).

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 43

Figure 2. Barabsis illustration comparing random and scale-free networks. From Barabsi, Albert-Lszl. 2002. Linked, The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus. 71.

Why would such a network emerge in the first place? Why are these networks characterized by such a unique structure? Many in the late nineties had conceived of the Internet as being a fairly diverse, egalitarian medium; Barabsi (2002, 57) himself observed that [c]onsidering the billion plus nodes from which we can choose, we might expect the resulting linking pattern to look fairly random. In other words, though they had expected their webcrawler to generate a U.S. road map kind of network, they found a network resembling an airline route map. Why? In their analysis of a number of scale-free networks, Barabsi and his team discovered two dynamics that largely influenced the kinds of connections that developed. One was preferential attachment: that is, the way individuals unconsciously add links at a higher rate to those nodes that are already heavily linked (Barabsi 2002, 86). We prefer making connections to older, more well-connected nodesin the same way a budding young actor would rather co-star with, say, Tom Hanks than with

44 | JUST LIKE ME another relatively unknown colleague. However, because a number of examples of new kids on the block confounded that model including Google, for oneBarabsi and his team turned their attention to another dynamic they termed fitness. Fitness names the extent to which the intrinsic character of the node attracts connections (Barabsi 2002, 95). For this reason, a particularly talented young actor would likely become more connected more quickly than would one with less talent; thereafter, she would also benefit from preferential attachment. Fitness is not always universal, however. Some nodes may be more or less intrinsically fit for a certain class of other nodes, based on one or another characteristic or dimension. Eight out of the top ten most prolific actors on Barabsis Hollywood Network list, for example, are not particularly well known to most people. This is because they are not particularly fit for most films, but are quite fit for a small subcategory of roles: they are porn stars (Barabsi 2002, 61). Barabsi describes the trend insightfully:
Despite the record number of movies porn stars make, they fail to be anywhere near the center of Hollywood. As networks are clustered, nodes that are linked only to nodes in their cluster could have a central role in that subculture or genre. Without links connecting them to the outside world, they can be quite far from nodes in other clusters. Thus it is rather difficult to connect an actor who has played only in porn movies and has links only to porn stars to the cast of a Martin Scorsese or Andrey Tarkovsky movie. They simply move in very different worlds. The truly central position in networks is reserved for those nodes that are simultaneously part of many large clusters. (Barabsi 2002, 61)

These highly-connected nodes therefore serve as connectors only in the sense that they connect with many other nodes. This does not necessarily mean that they meaningfully integrate nodes across lines of difference; they could simply be at the center of a highly concentrated cluster, like that of porn stars. To differentiate between those that are simply highly-connected and those that are truly central, Barabsi borrows a measure

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 45

called centrality, which indicates how connected a hub is to a larger system. Centrality represents a calculation of the average distance between one hub and every other node in the system. Using this measure, Barabsis team predictably discovered Rod Steiger (2.53 handshakes away from every other Hollywood actor), Donald Pleasence (2.54), and Martin Sheen and Charlton Heston (2.57) in a list of most central Hollywood actors (Barabsi 2002, 62). These truly central actors reach and connect across genres, integrating the industry. Especially because personal encounter with difference is a necessary condition of a democracy, as I demonstrated in chapter one, this kind of integration is imperative. Another pertinent measure for my study is borrowed from Steven Strogatz and Duncan Watts, who were also closely studying network relationships as Barabsi was developing his scale-free model. Strogatz and Watts formulated a measurement which quantifies the extent to which a community of nodes is clustered or closed, and called it the clustering coefficient (Barabsi 2002, 46). The quantity is calculated by dividing the number of actual relationships in a cluster by the total number of possible relationships in a cluster. For example, if Zoe has three friends

clustering coefficient = 3/3 or 1.0

clustering coefficient = 1/3 or .33

Figure 3. An illustration of the clustering coefficient. In the left illustration, Zoes friends Anne, Ben, and Charlie all know each other, yielding a clustering coefficient of 3/3 or 1.0. In the right illustration, only Anne and Ben know each other, yielding a clustering coefficient of 1/3, or .33.

46 | JUST LIKE ME lets name them Anne, Ben, and Charlieand all of those friends are friends with each other, the clustering coefficient of that group is three over three, or 1.0. If only Anne and Ben are friends, but Ben and Charlie and Anne and Charlie dont know each other, then the clustering coefficient is one over three, or .33. The higher the clustering coefficient, the more tightly knit the group. (For obvious reasons, we would expect the clustering coefficient of most porn stars to be higher than average.) Barabsis pioneering conception of the scale-free network, illuminated by careful consideration of these measures and the data he collected with his team, has revolutionized many areas of social and natural sciences. His theories have influenced the work of computer scientists as they toil to prevent cyber attacks, of virologists and epidemiologists preparing for widespread pandemics, and even of cancer researchers, who hope to exploit the vulnerability of protein hubs in a cell to attack cancerous cells. Needless to say, his scale-free model pertains to studies of linking on the Internet and online social networks. However, no one (to my knowledge) has yet applied Barabsis pathbreaking discovery of the scale-free network to democratic theory. Nevertheless, I find that the terminology and concepts Barabsi develops can significantly facilitate our understanding of encounter with difference. His important observation that connections and relationships are not equally distributed in many networks reminds us to rethink our assumptions about the egalitarianism of those networks. His theorizations of preferential attachment and fitness offer us ideas about why such imbalances can occur. Finally, his formulation of centrality and Strogatz and Watts clustering coefficient both significantly provide ways to measure the degree to which nodes

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 47

fail to move in different worlds. * We must consider these different characteristics in the countless connections between nodes in a networkthat is, the relationships between subjects in a democratic system. What might result from a system in which citizens move in different worldsin which they fail to encounter perspectives and information different from their own? Arborescent and Rhizomatic Networks There are, however, a handful of democratic theorists who draw on the image of the network in their discussions of successful democratic systems. Most notably, William Connolly borrows Deleuze and Guattaris vision of the rhizomatic network in his argument for an ethos of pluralization, to which I now turn. Several years before Barabsis team examined the sites on Notre Dames domain, William Connolly was working on a volume that would, in some measure, invoke a few of the concepts Barabsi was to uncover. In Ethos of Pluralization, Connolly argues that the inescapable existence of differenceBenhabibs inevitable value-pluralismwas not something for democratic subjects to overcome (as Rawls and Habermas had suggested in their consensus-oriented frameworks) or to soberly endure. Instead, Connolly challenges us to aspire to difference and contestation. However, Connolly (1995) makes a crucial distinction between pluralismwhich, in his model, denotes a static, already existing diversityand what he calls pluralization, a dynamic and ever-unfolding process by which new identities and possibilities of being emerge. Where pluralism signifies the realized presence of difference in modern societysomething which is often presented as an achievement to be protectedin

I will use the measures of centrality and the clustering coefficient in chapter three to examine clustering and integration, as it relates to the prevalence of personal encounter with difference online.

48 | JUST LIKE ME pluralization, new, positive identities can be forged out of old differences, injuries, and energies (Connolly 1995, xiv). However, because, as Connolly argues in his earlier Identity\Difference, identity requires difference in order to be, initiatives of pluralization can be markedly disturbing for those whose own personhood is challenged by new claims to identity. This is why those campaigns so often encounter resistance from fragile identities shaken by movement in those differences that give them meaning (Connolly 2002, 64). Resistant responses to the disturbance of new claims to identity thus often incite fundamentalism, a term which Connolly defines as the refusal to acknowledge the contestability of your own fundaments or to resist violences in the exclusionary logics of identity in which you are implicated (Connolly 1995, xxviii). Fundamentalists, he explains, instead appeal to morality and a vocabulary of normalization to recharacterize difference as transgression, and attribute societal strife to the other. This, Connolly observes, is dangerous. In a democratic society, open space for such new identifications must be protected. This can only be achieved when we bear in mind that no culturally constituted constellation of identities ever deserves to define itself simply as natural, complete, or inclusive (Connolly 1995, 188). Appreciating this fact will allow us to practice an ethos of critical responsiveness, in which we resist the drive to translate all of those remainders into modes of otherness (Connolly 1995, 89). This drive is nearly inescapable, because it is part of the selfidentification process. Indeed, even those who subscribe to the culture of pluralism, as Connolly (1995, xiv) calls it, are not immune to the challenge. In fact, too often, it is the proud pluralists who end up mistakenly regarding the congealed results of past struggles as if they constituted the essential standard of reasonableness or justice itself (Connolly 1995, xv). This challenge highlights the significance of his conception of democracy as ethos. Rather than revealing itself to be the

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fundamental principle to which all other traditions must comply, an ethos of critical responsiveness is predicated on an acknowledgement of the contingent nature of ones own identities and worldviews. In conceiving of the approach as an ethos, rather than as a principle, Connolly resists the fundamentalization of his own theory. The thin line separating these two demonstrates how risky and uncertain Connollys ethos of critical responsiveness is just as is pluralization itself.* Above all, an ethos of critical responsiveness is a relational process: it propels us to accommodate difference encountered in others, and to come to terms with the relational character and element of contingency in our own identity (Connolly 1995, 188). As one reader has observed, Connollys conceptualization of ethos prioritizes the kinds of relationships individuals have over intrinsic characteristics they may possess as individuals, and holds that the common good is enacted through relationships of difference (Blasius 1997, 717). Connollys ethos indeed places a high value on relationships between democratic subjects. In fact, it is at the site of these relationshipsespecially across lines of differencewhere Connolly locates the cornerstone of his democratic theory: agonistic respect. The twin of critical responsiveness, Connolly defines agonistic respect as a civic virtue that allows people to honor different final sources, to cultivate reciprocal respect across difference, and to negotiate larger assemblages to set general policies (Connolly 2002, xxvi). Agonistic respect, he says, is particularly desirable in contemporary society, where people are increasingly interdependent. The interdependence that both facilitates and necessitates agonistic respectattributable, as Connolly (2002, xxviii) notes, to the contemporary conditions of speed, mobility, and pluralityevokes the language and imagery ofwhat else?networks. After all, while the building blocks of

Connolly (1995, xvii) writes that there is unavoidable risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity in the cultivation of critical responsiveness.

50 | JUST LIKE ME Connollys theory are relationships of difference, a network is, essentially, an aggregation of those relationships. Thus it is fitting when, in Ethos of Pluralization, he writes that critical responsiveness must grow together with complex networks of interconnection (Connolly 1995, 197). Meaningful integration across lines of difference both requires and augments individuals acknowledgement of their contingent identities. But what kind of network of relationships? Arent there many varieties, as we learned from Barabsis research? Connolly is explicit. In an expanded edition of Identity\Differencereleased in 2002, the same year that Barabsis Linked was published Connolly (2002, xxvii) writes that [a]gonistic respect, as a relation of connection across difference, does not entail the consolidation of a majority identity around which a set of minorities is tolerated as satellites. It is more compatible with a network model of pluralism (emphasis added). He is referring to an illustration of a network model of pluralism he laid out seven years earlier in Ethos of Pluralization. To better convey what an ethos of pluralization might look like in practice, Connolly had borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari a comparison between the image of a tree and that of a rhizome. Both are forms of plant life. However, whereas a tree is primarily distinguished by its apical dominance (that is, its trunk), a rhizome is characterized by a system of decentralized roots. Ginger, iris, bamboo, and asparagus are all rhizomes; they grow in networks. Connolly applies the contrast to better illuminate the difference between a conventional pluralism and his pluralization. Arboreal pluraliststhat is, political tree-enthusiastssuch as Tocqueville and Hegel and many Anglo-American pluralists, appreciate diversity as limbs branching out from a common trunk, fed by a taproot (Connolly 1995, 93). But a rhizomatic network is one in which the arrangement of relationships is decentralized and diffuse. Rhizomes are not oriented to one particular axis, but instead are always being redefined and realigned. There are no foci in a

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 51

rhizomeand there are also no boundaries delimiting where the plant ends, so to speak. Further, as Deleuze and Guattari (1988, 7) put it, while a tree plots a point, fixes an order, in a rhizome, any point can be connected to anything other, and must be. The connections between nodes in a rhizome are multiple, reticular, and ever-evolving: communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, 17, emphasis added)..Recalling Barabsis work in network theory, we might say that rhizomatic networks should evince a low clustering coefficient, and little or no difference in fitness between nodes. Otherwise, communication could not easily run from any neighbor to any othernodal preferences and clustering would prohibit such relationships. Because this project investigates and evaluates personal encounter with difference, I seek to consider the ways individuals are imbricated in a variety of different networks of relationships, and especially those relationships that take place on online social networking sites. The rhizomatic model is no less pertinent in that discussion. When individuals engage online on sites like Facebook and Twitter, we might ask, does communication run from any neighbor to any other? Can any user be connected to any other? Do they, in fact, choose to integrate in that manner? Problematizing Plantlife: the Stoloniferous Network Reflecting on Connollys contrast between the rhizomatic and arborescent models, however, I observe that he may have effected a dichotomization he elsewhere resists. Barabasis work and indeed, Deleuze and Guattarisspeaks to the multifarious forms of networks that may exist, depending on a number of characteristics of the network and the nodes comprising the network. In fact, in A Thousand Plateaus, rhizomes and trees are observed coexisting in a single system:
There are knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots. Moreover, there are despotic formations of immanence and

52 | JUST LIKE ME
channelization specific to rhizomes, just as there are anarchic deformations in the transcendent system of trees, aerial roots, and subterranean stems. The important point is that the root-tree and canal-rhizome are not two opposed models (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, 20)

Especially in light of Barabsis discoveries, I seek to complicate Connollys rhizomatic-arboreal dyad. I find a third alternative in the plant life metaphor, embodied by the stolon. Stoloniferous plants are similar to rhizomesthey are undelimited, decentralized networks (Figure 4). They do not branch out from a singular taproot, but instead grow in a network of several concentrated offshoots, connected by long, superficial internodes. Strawberries and ammophila, a grass-like plant common to coastal sand dunes, are both stoloniferous. Though all plants in a stoloniferous network are ostensibly connected to all

Figure 4. A contrast between a stoloniferous plant and a rhizomatic one. The left image represents a stoloniferous plant. The internode that connects the plant clusters in that illustration is what is called a stolon. The right illustration, on the other hand, represents a rhizome, exhibiting (literally) profound interconnection between plant clusters.

others, and though the organism continues to grow by reaching out into new areas and developing new satellite plants, most of the root clusters are generally separate from one another, with few internodes connecting each cluster. Those internodes are superficial in a literal way: one of the defining characteristics of the stoloniferous plant is that the linkages between each plant are

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 53

aboveground. There are no subterraneous root-links in a stoloniferous plant. The clusters, in effect, are independent organisms, connected only for the purpose of establishing new roots. Each root mass might be said, therefore, to have a high clustering coefficient. In Connollys account, arboreal imaginaries entail a pluralism in which an array of human constituencies diverge from a unifying center, and more rhizomatic models involve a less centralized, deeply interconnected network of individuals in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other. The stoloniferous conception I conjure here does not quite split the difference, but suggests a unique intermix of the two. In a stolon, there are many tree-like, concentrated sub-networks that nevertheless link to a larger organism through a number of superficial internodes. However, too few and too shallow connections integrate the stolons plurality of entrenched clusters. This stoloniferous arrangement resembles a third model discussed by Paul Baran, an early network theorist whose work provided a foundation for some of Barabsis theory.* In 1959, Baran observed that there are three general types of networks: the centralized (or, for Connolly, arboreal) and distributed (rhizomatic) models, and a third, intermediate model, which Baran called the decentralized model (Figure 5). The latter resembles a stoloniferous network. Unlike the starlike centralized networkthe arboreal model, constituted of one central node connecting to countless others on the peripherythe decentralized network is composed of a hierarchical structure of a set of stars connected in the form of a larger star (Barabsi 2002, 144). In this intermediary structure, like in a stoloniferous plant, several clusters are connected by a handful of internodes to the larger network. In Connollys

Baran was an early employee of the RAND Corporation, and in 1959, he was tasked with conceiving of an effective network system that would prevent any kind of attack on the then-not-yet-completed network we know as the Internet.

54 | JUST LIKE ME framework, these would represent clusters of human constituencies that link up to a larger community of nodes by way of a number of interlinks. Communication does not flow from each node to each other in this configuration; instead, it is filtered and channeled through clusters and internodes. Few nodes reach other peripheral nodes, and instead leave the connecting to the greater network up to more integrated hubs.

Figure 5. Paul Barans representation of three types of networks. (Barabsi 2002, 145)

Of course, many different configurations could constitute a decentralized, or stoloniferous, network. Barabsis work illustrates that, given different measures of centrality and clustering, a network could fall anywhere on a broad spectrum of configurations, ordered by arborescence. For example: a network of three hundred nodes could have, say, six clusters of fifty nodes each, tangentially integrated, or it could instead be comprised of fifty clusters of six nodes each,

DEMOCRATIC NETWORKS (AND NETWORKS OF NETWORKS) | 55 Table 1. Types of Networks and Characteristics Arboreal Barabasis term Barabasis example Barans term Representative theorist Botanical equivalent Root system Centralized Tocqueville, Habermas Trees Apically dominantthat is, having a central trunk or stem None; all nodes are connected to central hub Highly integrated across the network by means of one central node Filtered through one procedure, forum, or medium One principal (Habermasian) public Stoloniferous Scale-free Airline route map Decentralized Beachgrass; strawberries isolated clusters of roots, integrated by weak, superficial internodes Power-law distribution Efficiently integrated across the network by means of several crucial hubs Clustered, integrated by a small number of representatives Several homogeneous publics Rhizomatic Random Highway map Distributed Deleuze, Connolly Ginger; asparagus; irises Deeply integrated, horizontal root system Standard distribution Integrated across the network in high levels of connection across clusters Characterized by high levels of encounter with difference High levels of interface between publics

Graphic shape of distribution of connections Centrality

Nature of communication

Role of publics

less democratic

spectrum of arborescence

56 | JUST LIKE ME incorporated more completely.* The degree to which a network exhibits high levels of clusteringas measured by the networks clustering coefficient and the average centrality of the networks nodesplaces that network on what we might call the spectrum of arborescence (see table 1). Certainly, no existing network can be located at either extreme, as no existing network is entirely arboreal or rhizomatic. As Deleuze and Guattari (1988, 20) reminded us, there are often knots of arborescence in rhizomes, and rhizomatic offshoots in roots. Nevertheless, democratic networks would be expected to exhibit characteristics of rhizomatic networks. As we place a networksuch as, say, a user network of a social networking site like Facebook, or the network of communication exchange about a particular trending topic on Twitteron this scale, we may begin to ask questions about the causes of clustering and integration. What phenomena induce clustering? What phenomena drive us to sink deep, exclusionary roots (Connolly 1995, 95)? Finally, even if we can discern the causes of exclusionary roots, is there something we can or ought to do to curb this drive? Similarity Breeds Connection: Homophily and Network Patterns As we might recall, Barabsi suggests that two dynamics govern the evolution of scale-free networks. These networks are shaped by both preferential attachment, which names the way nodes prefer to link to existing, highly connected hubs, and fitness, a term Barabsi (2002, 95) defines as a quantitative measure of a nodes

This is, of course, a gross simplification. It would be appropriate here to remind the reader that one of the reasons network theory is so new is that the complexity of such networks can be so extraordinary that we have not until recently had the computing power to fully analyze the complex structure of network relationships.

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ability to stay in front of the competition. To these phenomena, some social network theorists posit a third factor in human network formation called homophily, a concept popularized by sociology researchers Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook in their 2001 study. Homophily, the sociologists write, is the principle that contact between similar people occurs at a higher rate than among dissimilar people. (McPherson et al. 2001, 416). Most of us are familiar with homophily in the guise of the old maxim that birds of a feather flock together. This is the same tendency Barabsi observes in the highly interconnected cluster of porn stars in Hollywood. Indubitably, that trend shapes the formation of human networks, and the ways communication moves across those networks. McPherson et al. (2001, 416) observe that the pervasive fact of homophily means that cultural, behavioral, genetic, or material information that flows through networks will tend to be localized. The more homophilous a network, the less likely it will be for communication to run from any neighbor to any other. Though the dynamic was first identified by Lazarsfeld and Merton (1954), empirical research on the phenomenon began as early as the twenties and thirties, when social scientists started to observe that young school children initiated friendships more often with those of similar demographic backgrounds (Wellman 1929). McPherson, Smith-Lovin, and Cooks study compiles research that reveals homophily in a broad range of social interactions. As their extensive research demonstrates, like attracts like in various social dimensionsincluding ascribed or inherited attributes such as race and ethnicity, gender, age, and religion, and in elective groupings, such as education and class, attitudes, beliefs and aspirations, and behavior. The principle of homophily structures network ties of every type, including marriage, friendship, work, advice, support, information transfer, exchange, co-membership, and other types of relationship (McPherson et al. 2001, 415). Like preferential attachment, homophily privileges certain nodes in the formation of a network, linking certain nodes

58 | JUST LIKE ME more rapidly than others as new connections are formed. However, unlike preferential attachment, homophily is not governed by an objective measureas, in the case of preferential attachment, the age of the node. Instead, homophily predisposes certain nodes connect to certain other nodes on the basis of shared qualities. Echoing Plato, McPherson et al. (2001, 415) write that similarity breeds connection. Because it unites those of like characteristics, we can say homophily is therefore what we might call a centripetal forcethat is, a force which concentrates similar nodes. Rather than lend to the development of a singular, integral hub, homophily drives the emergence of a plurality of no less deep, exclusionary roots. In his account of homophily in modern-day residential selection, entitled The Big Sort, journalist Bill Bishop illustrates how large numbers of American counties, cities, and neighborhoods are undergoing a process of homogenization today. The volume came out of a project in which Bishop (2008, 9) observed a rise in landslide countiescounties with presidential electoral margins larger than 20 percentbetween 1976 and 2004. As he traced the conditions of this phenomenon, he discovered an emerging trend: people had, since about the mid-1970s, started sorting. Today, he writes, we seek our own kind in like-minded churches, like-minded neighborhoods, and like-minded sources of news and entertainment (Bishop 2008, 39). Diana Mutz (2006) observes similar trends in her Hearing the Other Side, an exploration of the value of personal encounter with difference.* In extensive empirical research, Mutz investigates correlations between encounter with otherness and political behavior. One immediately evident trend in the data, however, was the fact that, in general, those individuals with the most control over their

As discussed in chapter one, Mutz calls it cross-cutting exposure; I prefer the term personal encounter with difference because it entails more agency on the part of individuals.

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environments had much lower levels of encounter with difference. Mutz writes that
[t]he same characteristics that give people more control over their lives in general also give them more control over with whom they associate. To the extent that people see their lives as easier or more comfortable if they are surrounded by like-minded others, high socio-economic status allows some people to achieve that end more than others. (Mutz 2006, 30-1)

As people gain control of their surroundings, they tend to self-segregate into clusters. However, we might be reminded that such control is not only enabled for the upper classes in the guise of material wealthtechnologies also facilitate sorting. Bishop (2008, 160) finds that especially [w]hen new technologies give people fresh ways to meet and form communities, they seek out people like themselves. In the realm of residential segregation, most prominent among choice-augmenting technologies is the automobile, which enabled individuals to self-organize into various neighborhoods according to, say, race or class.* However, cars also facilitate sorting when they are adorned with political bumper stickers. Bishop (2008) observes that these political proclamations also serve as indicators of the political character of a community for prospective residents. As todays house hunters explore potential neighborhoods, they take careful note of the lifestyle and demeanor of the vicinity, and tend to ultimately select a neighborhood that reflects their interests and worldviews. Further, as likeminded people concenter on one neighborhood, they also leave an area from which they may have been atypical, which Mutz (2006, 36) observes ensures ongoing homogeneity; this leads to

See also Gilroy (2001) for a discussion of African-American car cultures. For Gilroy, cars and their cultures provided a cue to reorder and reorganize social relationships even those constituted through and around the deadly divisions of race and its hierarchies (82).

60 | JUST LIKE ME what (Bishop 2008, 6) calls a self-perpetuating, self-reinforcing social division. McPherson et al. (2001, 415) observe that homophily limits peoples social worlds in a way that has powerful implications for the information they receive, the attitudes they form, and the interactions they experience. As a result of such behavior, Bishop (2008, 39) observes, we now live in a giant feedback loop, hearing our own thoughts about what's right and wrong bounced back to us by the television shows we watch, the newspapers and books we read, the blogs we visit online, the sermons we hear, and the neighborhoods we live in. One might even say that we move in different worlds. Virtuous Enclaves? Homophily seems, therefore, to foster the sinking of deep, exclusionary roots that (Connolly 1995, 95) warns may imperil possibilities for the formation of democratic assemblages. After all, it seems quite difficult to acknowledge the contingency present in your own identity once ensconced in an environment with those who share the same characteristics. However, a number of democratic theorists offer a compelling vindication of the clustering that homophily often engenders. Mansbridge (1996, 57) insists that we ought to recognize the value to democracy of deliberative enclaves in which the relatively like-minded can consult easily with one another. After all, when homogeneous groupsespecially dominated groupsconvene, they are enabled to develop arguments and to learn to articulate concerns. For example, Mansbridge (1996, 57) points out that both the black colleges that began the sit-ins of the southern civil rights movement in the United States [and] the early women's consciousness-raising groups and women's centers harbored and still harbor relatively safe spaces in which the like-minded can make their own sense of what they see. It was, as Fraser (1990, 67) reiterates, only the conversations fostered in the fairly gender-

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homogeneous enclaves of the womens centers that gave expression to the concept of sexual harassment. Mutz (2006, 133) reaches back further, noting that, were it not for regular interactions among those of like mind, it is difficult to imagine social movements such as abolitionism. The antislavery movement, according to Mutz, is just one example of a like-minded network that produced extremely valuable forms of political action. In this vein, she contends that homogeneous groups do offer a democratic system value, insofar as they facilitate political action. Sometimes, the equivocation that often results from personal encounter with difference and reflection on political issues may stifle democratic action. Mutz finds that, though heterogeneous interactions indeed encourage tolerance and augment citizens capacity to appreciate rationales for opposing viewpoints, they do not encourage political activism. Instead, those with high levels of cross-cutting exposure in their personal networks put off political decisions as long as possible or indefinitely, thus making their political participation particularly unlikely (Mutz 2006, 91). Because like-minded people can build networks of support and encouragement in a homogeneous group setting, homophily might in fact help to generate the political engagement that many lament is lacking today.* We can observe, then, that these knots of arborescence can serve dual purposes. First, clustered individuals may be able to develop lexes that express and communicate their unique experiences. Second, homogeneous groups can foster interpersonal support that lends to political activism. Nevertheless, we can surmise that neither of these purposes is particularly productive if the network is too stoloniferousthat is, if there are few internodes connecting people within the cluster to the rest of the

For further discussion on varied forms of publics that provide platforms for action and articulation, including enclave, counterpublic, and satellite publics, see Squires (2002).

62 | JUST LIKE ME larger system. If there are no means by which clustered individuals can communicate their unique experiences to others outside of the cluster, the development of such expressions is unproductive. If there are no channels for political action that appeals to a larger public, then the action itself is in vain. Therefore, another thing that deserves our attention in our assessment of a democratic network is the degree to which its clusters effectively interface with one other. In that vein, Fraser (1990, 66) directs us to consider what she calls interpublic relationsor the character of interactions among different publics. Fraser suggests that the presence of many subaltern counterpublics do two things to enhance the democratic quality of the multi-public sphere. Not only can they function as spaces of withdrawal and regroupment, as we observed above, but they can also function as bases and training grounds for agitational activities directed toward wider publics (Fraser 1990, 68). In fact, they must appeal to the broader community if they are to serve as publicsby definition, publics are to be open and accessible to all. Mansbridge (1996, 58) similarly proposes a kind of division of labor to achieve this goal, in which some individuals immerse themselves in enclave life and thought while others span the spectrum between the enclave and the outside world. However, in no uncertain terms Mansbridge asserts that the danger comes when large numbers live only in their conceptual enclaves, reinforcing one another in their mutual folie. This is the danger that escalating homophily poses. The challenge Mutz presentsthat we struggle to find a balance between the benefits of active, somewhat myopic, clustered activists on the one hand, and deliberative, receptive citizens on the otheris difficult to negotiate. Mutz (2006, 125) laments that the kind of network that encourages an open and tolerant society is not necessarily the same kind that produces an enthusiastically participative citizenry. Deliberation and participation are two contesting values; we may end up promoting one at the cost of the other. Nevertheless, I find her prescription insightful, and

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consonant with the lessons uncovered here. Given a forced choice between promoting like-minded networks and political activism, or heterogeneous networks and tolerance, she writes, I would come down on the side of promoting greater heterogeneity. She reasons that
whereas neither deliberation nor participation may be a natural act, the tendency to gravitate toward like-minded others appears to be fairly universal Homogeneous networks occur regularly, probably because they offer their own, nonpolitical rewards. It is intrinsically reassuring and rewarding for people to see that others share their perspectives. For this reason, like-minded interactions are unlikely to need much encouragement. (Mutz 2006, 148)

If we strive to cultivate democratic networks, then we must take steps to nurture those arrangements that do not always arise naturallythat is, those relationships that facilitate personal encounter with difference. Cultivating Democratic Networks In this chapter, I have developed a framework through which we might be able to examine networks of relationships,and appraise the degree to which their conditions enable or encourage encounter with difference. Using terminology borrowed from prominent network theorists, I endeavored to bring to light a number of the most revealing characteristics of networks including the extent to which they are clustered and integrated. The assessment of clustering and integration that I provide in the next chapter enables us to evaluate the prevalence of encounter with difference in social networking sites. A deeper appreciation of clustering and integration across networks, I have argued, can inform our understanding of what Connolly conceived of as rhizomatic and arboreal networks. The recent discoveries in Network Theory discussed here remind us that, even barring the centralized taproot that Connolly resists, multiple isolated clusters may nevertheless emerge and impede the

64 | JUST LIKE ME ethos of pluralization he promotes. We also know that a number of phenomena serve to privilege some nodes over others, prohibiting the kind of loose, democratic connection-building Connolly advocates. Among these phenomena is homophily, which serves as a centripetal force, concentrating like nodes in clusters. Though there may be some benefits of the homogeneous enclaves the trend produces, it seems wiser to ensure that valuable, heterogeneous interactions occur than to reinforce an already existent dynamic. As we consider the networks in which we are enmeshed as I have argued we ought in this chapterwe should expect truly democratic networks to exhibit the rhizomatic characteristics both Deleuze and Connolly appeal to. That is, they should demonstrate the conditions that foster a generalized respect for multifarious ways of being that can develop in a network where any point can be connected with any other. In my continued research, I intend to explore whether or not we do that in our networks of memberships and communication exchange on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

4
Encountering Difference Online: Self-Organization, Social Media, and Democratic Communities [D]istance and time have been so changed to our imaginations, that the globe has practically reduced in magnitude, and there can be no doubt that our conception of its dimensions is entirely different to that held by our forefathers. Josiah Latimer Clark (1875, 2) Our community is defined as never before by our age and our interests, not by our physical location. Bill Machrone (1996, 85) [W]hen people find themselves unable to control the world, they simply shrink the world to the size of their community. Manuel Castells (1983, 331) Encountering Difference, Democracy, and Thinking Networks In the previous two chapters, I have developed a foundation for the analysis presented below. Before I turn to some of the data that bear out these claims, I would like to briefly revisit the two foundational assumptions discussed in chapters one and two. Firstly, the investigation below builds on my demonstration in chapter one that personal encounter with difference is an integral component of democratic society. Though many have conceived of difference as a kind of divergence across lines of race, gender, or some other ascribed characteristic 65

66 | JUST LIKE ME (Benhabib 1996a; Calhoun 1992), I am particularly interested in difference as divergence across lines of worldview or perspective.* Where democratic theorists have generally agreed that legitimate democracy depends on citizens that are reasonable and informed, reciprocal, inclusive, and transformative, I find that encounter with difference enhances all of those fundamental features. Second, to better understand the prevalence and role of encounter with difference in democratic society, we must, as I suggested in chapter two, think networks. That is, we need to look not at the systemic or the individual level to yield fruitful analysis, but instead at the composition of the web of relationships that make up our society. Because encounter itself implicates interpersonal relation, the analysis I perform must concentrate on relationships, not on static features or practices at the systemic or individual level. Therefore, as I conduct the analysis presented below, I do so with an eye to the assemblage of relations that constitutes democratic society. This is what I mean when I say

I will make no pretense of suggesting that these lines do not correspond in many or most cases. However, the distinction is significant. Because I focus in this chapter on the kind of self-selection that results from individuals efforts to avoid cognitive dissonance, I concentrate on encounter with difference insofar as it challenges ones ideas, beliefs, and values. Many of these may correspond to perceptions associated with attributed characteristics, but I identify these as simply a subset of a larger spectrum of worldviews. As I noted earlier, there are many commendable studies that focus on either end of what I see as a sort of agent-structure problem. Iris Marion Youngs work, for example, resolutely demonstrates the structural imbalance of power in Jurgen Habermas conception of deliberative democracy, produced by cultural differences in respected forms of communication. Lisa Wedeens discussion of Qat chews in Yemen, on the other hand, focuses on individually rehearsed practiceschewing Qatthat also compel democratic theorists to rethink Habermas conception. Though both of these perspectives entail attention to relationshipsbetween, say, white male speakers and minority female speakers in Youngs case, or between co-chewers in Wedeensthey do not go so far as to engage in network thinking. I seek to take that particular step, relying on the ground such thinkers have already broken.

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that I seek, as network theorist Barabsi (2002, 7) has implored his readers, to think networks. As we think in these termsconsidering, as Barabsi says, how networks emerge, what they look like, and how they evolveI propose we try to bear in mind some ideas about what democratic networks might look like. Borrowing insights from a handful of pioneering, contributive theorists, in chapter two, I established an archetypal model by which to evaluate the democratic nature of a network. William Connollys conception of a democratic network (which he, in turn, borrowed from Deleuze and Guattari) informs this archetypal model. As we saw in chapter two, Connolly (1995, 94-7) writes that a more democratic network should be like a rhizomethat is, a plant less like a centralized tree and more like an acentered shrub. Deleuze and Guattari (1988, 17) describe such a network as one in which communication runs from any neighbor to any other, the stems or channels do not preexist, and all individuals are interchangeable, defined only by their state at a given moment. A more democratic assemblage of relationships, then, ought to exhibit low levels of centralization and isolation, and high levels of horizontal integration. Nevertheless, as we saw in chapter two, such democratic networks are jeopardized as a result of the human tendency to selfsegregate into like groups, often identified by the aphorism that birds of a feather flock together. Sociologists call this phenomenon homophily, and have observed it in schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods; one study even discovers a tendency to self-segregate between wearers and non-wearers of eyeglasses (Mackinnon et al. 2011)! As a result, more concentrated, stoloniferous networks emerge. In this chapter, I review a number of depictions of various networks illustrating the ways technologies facilitate the selfsegregation that gives rise to homophily. Then, I look specifically at behavior on online social networking sites to demonstrate how the phenomenon of homophily materializes on those media. I

68 | JUST LIKE ME review a handful of recent data that exhibit the extent to which users of social networking sites do or do not choose to encounter difference online. Included in the data are both quantitative and qualitative evidence; both tell the story of emergent online homophily. If homophily is markedly evident online, and homophily compromises the democratic nature of networks as I surmised in chapter two, social networking sites may be more of a hazard for democratic communities than has often been acknowledged. Self-Organization and Scale-Free Networks In chapter two, I reviewed some of the most significant contributions of Barabsi, the network theorist who tirelessly encourages his readers to think networks. His theoretical methodologyin which assemblages like cells and communities are to be considered as networks and in terms of the relations between nodes in those networkshas informed myriad areas of scientific research. * However, Barabsis observation that a particular kind of network, which he calls a scale-free network, emerges as disorder gives way to order constitutes his most notable scholarly contribution. A scale-free network, he explains, displays a couple of patent characteristics. Rather than being loosely and equitably integrated, connections between nodes in a scale-free network are usually concentrated in a number of hubs. The distribution of connections in a scale-free network system thus usually resembles a power law distributionthat is, a distribution where a handful of nodes comprise the lions share of the connections, while most others bear many fewer connections. Barabasis most instructive example of the distinction between scale-free networks and other more distributed networks, as

Barabasi is a theoretical physicist, but his work is being used by scientists in a wide array of fields including biology, chemistry, epidemiology, and sociology.

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discussed in chapter two, refers to a comparison between an airline route map and a highway map. Whereas all cities have a fairly evenly distributed number of highways crossing through town, just a handful of cities have an astronomical number of flights going in and out of their airports, while most other cities have a much smaller number of flights integrating their local airport to the larger network of airports. The most significant part of Barabsis discovery of the scale-free network stems from his observation that such networks consistently emerge at the precise moment that, somehow, order emerges out of chaos. Nature normally hates power laws, he maintains (Barabsi 2002, 77). We can recognize, for example, that the distribution of human heights are not distributed according to a power lawelse there would be a handful of several-hundred-feet-tall humans wandering the Earth, while the rest of us stood at about four feet! Of course, this is not the case; most things naturally occur in standard distributions. Scale-free networks, however, diverge from the natural order. Scale-free networks occur at the site of self-organization. As Barabsi writes:
In ordinary systems all quantities follow bell curves, and correlations decay rapidly, obeying exponential laws. But all that changes power laws emergenature's unmistakable sign that chaos is departing in favor of order. the road from disorder to order is maintained by the powerful forces of self-organization and is paved by power laws. It told us that power laws are not just another way of characterizing a system's behavior. They are the patent signatures of self-organization in complex systems. (Barabsi 2002, 77, emphasis added)

Self-organization is then a driving force in the emergence of clustered, stoloniferous, scale-free networks. It can take many forms. Some forms of self-organization, like natural selection, arise from mechanical, biological processesBarabsi (2002, 117-8) notes that one early form of biological self-organization is evident in the primeval development of relationships between proteins in a cell! Others, like homophily, are the result of the decisions of sentient beings. Airline route maps expose a modern form of

70 | JUST LIKE ME conscious self-organization that derives from the unprecedented capacity, heralded by the development of flight, for people to traverse expansive distances at incredible speeds. Why drive through, say, Bloomington-Normal and Tulsa on the way to Dallas from Chicago, when one can just fly directly from OHare to Fort Worth on any of the eighty-five flights that make the route daily? Technologies like the airplane, which annihilate space and time, facilitate self-organization, and scale-free, stoloniferous networks emerge as a result (Prescott 1860, 5). In the following section, Id like to consider a few more examples of such technologically-facilitated self-organization, before appraising the nature of self-organization on social networking sites. Historical Self-Organization and Technological Innovation Though the vocabulary describing scale-free networks is new, the phenomenon is not. While Barabsis example of the flight route map borrows from a momentous historical example of technological innovation, it is but one in a series of technologies that have ordered and reordered societal relations. The steamboat, railroad, trolleycar, and automobile each transformed society in unique ways, but all provided opportunities for self-sorting. Consider, for example, the discernible effect of the omnibus and other early forms of transportation on the geography of Philadelphia (Figure 6). As Goldfield and Brownell (1990, 122) observe, transportation technology, downtown crowding, and personal preference increasingly separated work place and residence for those who could afford to live in outlying residential districts. Figure 6 demonstrates how significantly the advent of transportation technologies allowed individuals not only to disperse across the city, but also to concentrate their merchant storefronts in one central location. The resultant map closely resembles a scale-free, airport route map: while the pastoral grounds of Spring Garden and Northern Liberties pull wealthier

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Figure 6. A comparison between the commutes of Philadelphia merchants in 1829 and 1862. Note that, in the right (1862) figure, not only do merchants relocate their residences outside of the downtown area, but they also organize their storefronts in one central business district. From Jackson, Kenneth T. 1975. Urban Deconcentration in the Nineteenth Century: A Statistical Inquiry. In The New Urban History: Quantitative Explorations by American Historians, ed. Leo F. Schnore. Princeton: Princeton University.

merchants outside of the downtown area, one concentrated central business district draws those first suburbanites back into the city. These developments do not only comprise advances in transportation. Networks that facilitate the transmission of information increasingly rapidly across vast distances also allow for the kind of self-sorting that drives scale-free networks, and result in particular social phenomena. Gleick (2011, 170) observes that the three great waves of electrical communicationtelegraphy, telephony, and radiochanged societal topology in that they ripped the social fabric and reconnected it, added gateways and junctions where there had only been blank distance. In 1880, an article from Scientific American bore witness to the changing social topology wherein formed little clusters of telephonic communicants:

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Soon it will be the rule and not the exception for business houses, indeed for the dwellings of well-to-do people as well, to be interlocked by means of telephone exchange, not merely in our cities, but in all outlying regions. The result can be nothing less than a new organization of societya state of things in which every individual, however secluded, will have at call every other individual in the community, to the saving of no end of social and business complications The time is close at hand when the scattered members of civilized communities will be as closely united, so far as instant telephonic communication is concerned, as the various members of the body now are by the nervous system. (The Future of the Telephone 1880, 16, emphasis added)

As the telegraphic network grew, a centralized network similar to the arrangement of merchants in nineteenth-century Philadelphiamaterialized. Before the telegraph, information was transmitted via object or letter; it could be physically relayed across the Atlantic from any location to any other. With the advent of the transatlantic cable, messages were brought to specific urban locations and sent through those centralized networks to other urban locations before being delivered to their ultimate destination. There are a number of efficiencies that result from (and induce) the scale-free network arrangement in the myriad forms in which it has emerged. Barabsi (2002, 111) himself has conducted extensive research exploring the attractive robustness of scalefree networks that drives their formation in both electric grids and terrorist networks. In the scale-free model, a large number of nodal failures are possible without necessitating the total disintegration of the network, as long as most of the hubs remain. For example, if airports in Bloomington-Normal, Peoria, Champaign, Springfield, and Decatur all go down simultaneously, there might not be particularly burdensome consequences as a resultat least, nothing near what would follow such a breakdown at OHare. The model, in this way, is more efficient, in that maintenance is prioritized at the hub airports, rather than at the regional airports. Similarly, the economic incentive of efficiency contributed both to the concentration of merchant storefronts in downtown Philadelphia in the 1860s and the streamlining of message

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transmission with the development of telegraph lines in the late nineteenth century. After all, its simply cheaper to have with just one or a few transatlantic cablesrather than laying down countless cables to connect every telegraph office on either side of the ocean with every other, so that communication runs from any [node] to any other (in Deleuzes terms). Another kind of efficiency drives scale-free selforganization: the efficiency of cognitive consistency. Individuals inclination to avoid cognitive dissonance is the foremost contributive factor of homophily. People are disinclined to cultivate relationships with people unlike them, or to access information that does not support their own perspectives, because it may too poignantly challenge the beliefs and views they have already come to share. To the extent that technology and material wealth facilitates movement today, people are even more enabled to choose to self-select into small enclaves. Bishop (2008, 36) writes that, increasingly, Americans segregate themselves into their own political worlds, blocking out discordant voices and surrounding themselves with, reassuring news and companions. Where modern technologies like the car and telephone also facilitated physical and economic mobility, individuals have taken advantage of the facility with which they can move, and have chosen to live with like-minded people. His most salient evidence of this trend is found in his mapping of politically partisan counties in the American presidential elections of 1976 and 2004. Where in 1976, much of the country is ideologically balanced, by 2004, the reverse is true. By the time of the Bush-Kerry election of 2004, a good portion of the country was organized into homogeneous ideological enclaves. Especially with the advent of technologies that facilitate movement, scale-free clustering seems inexorable. In the same way that Philadelphia merchants were lured to idyllic suburban residences, today, Americans are drawn to neighborhoods with those who share their values and interests. It's the way we live today, Bishop writes. In the welter of choices provided by our

74 | JUST LIKE ME postmaterialist culture, people are choosing the comfort of agreement. When new technologies give people fresh ways to meet and form communities, they seek out people like themselves (Bishop 2008, 159). Few technologies facilitate the transcendence of distance with more facility than the social networking site. If Americans are choosing, say, where to buy a homequite a financially demanding and time-intensive undertakingbased on the values shared by their prospective neighbors, then what might they be doing online, where the costs of relocation are reduced to almost zero? In the following section, I turn to evidence of similar self-sorting online. Self-Organization Online In 1996, Bill Machrone wrote a brief, one-page editorial for PC Magazine, in which he conveyed that he was worried that the advent of personalized technology would signify the end of common experience. After all, by that year, an average TV viewer could receive over fifty channels on their cable television! Rather than watch[ing] the first 15 minutes of Carson before we hit the sack so we can laugh together at work the next day, Americans were self-organizing into groups by interest and worldview (Machrone 1996, 85). [T]he good news is that people with specific interests can find lots of similar-minded people with whom to interact, wrote Machrone. The bad news is that people whose behavior already tends toward the antisocial will likely find increased support for their tendencies, unmoderated by interaction with the rest of the world (Machrone 1996, 85). To the extent that individuals form specialized virtual communities, they could lose their sense of tolerance and understanding of other perspectives. Most presciently, Machrone wrote that the nascent Internet would only exacerbate these problems of selforganizationregardless of whether or not we all used a common

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search engine like Yahoo.* Even wide usage of a Web page is no guarantee of common experience, he told his readers. Database publishing, user profiles, and sophisticated programming can make each users view of the page unique (Machrone 1996, 85). Today, Machrones vision has been realized. Whether or not we all use a common site like Facebook, this does not ensure that we encounter shared information or ideas. Instead, a distinct form of self-organization exists on social networking sites. Users seeking the same cognitive efficiencies driving the homogenization of communities that Bishop documentseffect the same self-sorting that engenders scale-free networks online by making connections and exchanging information with like-minded others. Self-organization drives the emergence of two distinct levels of scale-free networks. One scale-free network online is manifested in the structures of social networks. Another scale-free network is constituted by the actual exchange of content. This is to say: we can see characteristics of scale-free networks both in the relationships between, say, tweeters and their followers and in the hashtagged discussions that transpire on Twitter. In what follows, we will consider both. Self-Organization in the Structures of Social Networking Site Memberships The structures of memberships and friendships on social networking sites are largely governed by the laws of scale-free networks. Indeed, there are clearly perceptible trends of concentration and self-organization in the structure of
* Google was barely online at the time of the articles publicationthe first version of the site was only released on the Stanford website only two months before Machrones piece appeared in PC Magazine. In fact, the dominance of such sites is guaranteed only insofar as they offer personalizing tools! For discussion, see chapter four.

76 | JUST LIKE ME memberships. These can be premised on myriad different dimensionsgeography, language, and, of course, worldview. However, as Bishop points out in his work, these dimensions are often self-reinforcing: we choose to go to a university or new town based on a conception of shared values, and the encounter we experience as a result again fortifies those values. In Figure 7, for example, we can observe in my own personal network of friends, a manifest concentration of groups. By no means can we say that communication runs from any neighbor to any other, or that the stems or channels do not preexist (Deleuze and Guattari 1988, 17). Instead, the kind of geographical clustering that has given rise to the structure of friendships in my network is reinforced by the network itself. That is to say, the circles of friends I develop at my university, or as part of a fellowship, or travel, have no capacity to interface. They are only connected by tangential internodeslike in a stoloniferous plantif they are integrated at all. To what extent, however, are those kinds of networks determined Figure 7. A visualization of the authors by political interest? personal network of friends on Facebook. In March 2012, the Note the concentration of clusters. Pew Internet & American Life Project found that at least 18 percent of users had blocked or unfriended other users specifically because of their political posts (Rainie and Smith 2012, 2, 5-6). In other words, nearly one out of every five users surveyed openly admitted to

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explicitly extricating political difference from their online environments. Moreover, 16 percent of users, or one out of every six, surveyed admitted to friending or following someone solely on the basis of their political views (Rainie and Smith 2012, 3, 7) Most strikingly, the most ideological userswho are often the most politically activeencounter difference even less on social networking sites. Over half of the very liberal users surveyed said they agree always or most of the time with the political opinions of all of their friends online (Rainie and Smith 2012, 10). Furthermore, 15 percent of very conservative users say they never disagree with the political posts their friends share on social networking sites (Rainie and Smith 2012, 11). Unfortunately, it is difficult to access more objective information about dynamics on Facebook, because of the increased use of privacy controls on that network. As a result, I can only explore what network theorists call the ego networkthe network through the perspective of the first person (as represented in Figure 7). However, the exchange of tweets on Twitter supplies researchers plenty of data for examination. One infographic produced by Kovas Baguta demonstrates the more pernicious side of the clustering evident in my own network. In the diagram in Figure 8, we can see the Figure 8. Kovas Bagutas representation of concentration of the Twitter following of five influential Twitter connections of accounts in Iran in 2009. (Baguta 2009)

78 | JUST LIKE ME numberless Twitter users in Iran in 2009during that countrys Green Revolutionto just a handful of influential hubs. Only a few followers were integrated with all five hubs; otherwise, the network was fairly segregated. According to Baguta (2009), one of the contributing factors to the failure of the Green Revolution was rooted in the emergence on Twitter not of a community but of an elite group of information-sharers, with too little integration between the members that followed them. Here, the integration across information clusters is patently inadequate. We can gauge the integration of members of a network quantitatively, as well as qualitatively. In his work, Barabsi establishes a handful of measures to evaluate the composition of relations in a network. Two particular indices will help us conceptualize and appraise the extent of encounter with difference in a democratic society. The first of these is called the clustering coefficient, which was explained in chapter two. This measure, which examines the degree to which nodes in a network cluster, indicates the magnitude of encounter with difference in a network. It is important to note that this measure can be quantified at both local and global levels; that is, we can assess the degree of clustering for a small group of members of a network, or for the network as a whole. If social networking sites foster democratic networks, and if democratic networks ought to exhibit high levels of integration across difference (as Connolly suggests), we ought to expect low clustering coefficients on such sites at the global level. While the clustering coefficient quantifies the degree to which nodes form cliques and enclaves, the measure known as centrality enables researchers to compute the average distance from one node to any another in the system. In chapter two, we saw the significance of this measure in the example of Hollywood actors. It was not the most prolific actors that had the biggest impact on Hollywood, but the most central. Again, we can do this locally by computing the average distance from one particular node to all of the other nodes, as in the case of analyzing the connectedness of

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one or another actor to all other actorsor globallyby measuring the average distance from any node to any other. Because encounter with difference is so essential in democratic systems, it is important that networks that are democratic exhibit high levels of integration between nodes. Centrality can show us how integrated nodes are with one another. The shorter the average distance between nodes, the more a network resembles Connollys rhizomatic, democratic network. Memberships and relationships on social networks have been repeatedly found to exhibit characteristics resembling a scalefree, stoloniferous network, rather than a more democratic, rhizomatic one (Table 2) (Mislove et al. 2007). Social networks such as Orkut and Facebook demonstrate clustering coefficients as high as .211 (Wilson et al. 2009)incredibly high for such networks. This statistic means that, on average, 21% of all members friends know each other directly. In Europe, clustering coefficients on Twitter are particularly high at a staggering .54 (Java et al. 2007)meaning over half of every users followers all follow each other! Table 2 Facebook Networks in Global Cities (Wilson et al. 2009) Network Users Crawled Global Clustering Location (% of network) Centrality Coefficient London 1,241,000 (50.8) 5.09 .170 Australia 1,215,000 (61.3) 5.13 .175 Turkey 1,030,000 (55.5) 5.10 .133 France 728,000 (59.3) 5.21 .172 Toronto 483,000 (41.9) 4.53 .158 Sweden 575,000 (68.3) 4.55 .157 New York 378,000 (45.0) 4.80 .146 Colombia 565,000 (71.7) 4.94 .136 Manchester 395,000 (55.5) 4.79 .195 Vancouver 314,000 (45.1) 4.71 .170

80 | JUST LIKE ME Unfortunately, these data are extremely preliminary. The constantly evolving nature of these networks makes reliable, contemporary data difficult to come by, and the increased use of privacy tools limits the amount of data that can be accessed by researchers. Nevertheless, I would expect that continued quantitative research would uncover more of these rich dynamics. Self-Organization in the Exchange of Information While connections between nodesthe relationships of friends or followersthat structure the network visibly comprise scale free networks, the content exchanged often demonstrates the characteristics of a scale-free network as well. Of course, these are not neatly delimited categories, and so a degree of congruence between the two makes sense. After all, the structures of connections across a network are the very channels by which information is shared. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that even on sites with very public membershipsuch as Twitterinformation exchange happens in a system resembling a scale-free network, with a number of centralized hubs and little integration across the network otherwise. We can visualize this exchange with powerful analytical tools and glean from these representations a clear understanding of the scale-free quality of the exchange of information on that particular social network. In one such representation, displayed in Figure 9, clustering among Twitter users is particularly evident. This particular diagram depicts the exchange of information about Occupy Wall Street on November 15, 2011, the night of the New York campaigns eviction from their headquarters at Zucotti Park. Ideological concentrations are especially vivid in this representation. In one corner of the map, the NYCLU is the central hub of a flurry of retweets. In another section, conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart drives the discussion, while at the center of the cluster in the lower left corner is Michael Moore. Each cluster of information exchange has a visibly entrenched root

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Figure 9. A visualization of the exchange of information and opinions about #OccupyWallStreet from November 15, 2011. (Smith 2011)

82 | JUST LIKE ME structure, with a few brave souls performing the role of internode by passing on ideologically varied updates. As I discussed in chapter two, there are particular motivations to such self-organized information exchange. The phenomenon of homophily, which observes that like attracts likethat birds of a feather flock togetherdrives the centralization of communication as well as the concentration of homogeneous communities. If I agree with his politics, I follow Andrew Breitbartand our shared worldview is reinforced by the concentrated exchange of information that occurs as a result. Self-Organization and Democratic Society Where the new technologies of social networking sites have allowed for the diffusion of information that has led to democratic protest and subsequent political action, these deserve our esteem. In some ways, they rehearse a long tradition of social change achieved as a result of technological innovationLuther himself owed much to the printing press in spreading his revolutionary ideas (Standage 2011). However, where democracy is to be sustaining, personal encounter with difference must be present in citizens interactions with each other. If we want to evaluate the prevalence of personal encounter with difference, we ought to look at the networks in which citizens move and communicate with one another. Historically, information has increasingly flowed in more scale-free networks, where a handful of nodes receive the most linkages, and most remain less integrated into the system. This, as Barabsi observes, is hardly democratic. In the preceding examples, the scale-free nature of the structures of the networks and the content exchanged there has been demonstrated. Undoubtedly, more research must be done to further examine the presence of this phenomenon in social networking sites. With better tools for evaluation, we might be able to go deeper into figuring out what kinds and degrees of homophily motivate the concentration of

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membership and content exchange. The data presented here, however, offers a preliminary insight into clustering on online networks, and demonstrates how important it is that continued research be carried out on the subject. The above description of growing homophily online is just one part of the story, however. Economic incentives today also impel social network site developers to build utilities that reinforce the development of centralized, scale-free like networks online. Because the owners of social networking sites are cognizant of the tendency for individuals to seek out like-minded others, and because they seek to keep users on their sites, they are inclined to introduce mechanisms that intensify the concentration of connections and information exchange. In the following chapter, I discuss and explore the ways that the corporations that provide social networking sites exacerbate homophilic tendencies online.

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5
The Structural Transformation of the Cybersphere Every click signal you create is a commodity, and every move of your mouse can be auctioned off within microseconds to the highest commercial bidder. Eli Pariser (2011, 7) Digital network architectures naturally incubate monopolies. Jaron Lanier (2010, 16) The argument presented in this thesis derives from the conception that interpersonal communication between people of different perspectives is the underlying lifeblood of democracy. This conception is by no means original. I have borrowed the theory of deliberative democracy from a handful of democratic theorists who, in turn, drew upon Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in their formulations. In his foundational text, Habermas traces the development of a series of institutions and practices that led to the rise of what we now understand to be the public sphere. According to Habermas, the salons, coffeehouses, and Tischgesellschaften (table societies) provided a platform for rational-critical discourse. Critical discursive exchange about, say, works of art and literature, could be abstracted to discourse about the public and the public good. What is essential is that the exchange in that bourgeois public sphere was discursive, in stark contrast to the exercise of state power or the exchange of money in market economies, which are non-discursive modes of coordination, and which suffer from tendencies toward domination and reification (Calhoun 1992, 6). 85

86 | JUST LIKE ME However, a problem arose when the distinction between market economies and discursive exchange was confounded. In a later section of his text, Habermas gives an account of that very development coming to pass in early twentieth century media. To the extent that the press became commercialized, he writes, the threshold between the circulation of a commodity and the exchange of communications among the members of a public was leveled (Habermas 1989, 181). As a result, within the private domain the clear line separating the public sphere from the private became blurred. As market forces encroached upon discursive arenas, the discourse lost its critical quality. Instead, public interactions increasingly took the form of acts of private consumption. In this chapter, I perform a similar tracing. In my account, however, the discourse that Habermas suggests took place in coffeehouses and Tischgesellschaften is observed on listservs and sites like Lycos and Geocities. Where Habermas finds that the disintegration of the public sphere is attributable to the maneuvers of consolidative media firms, in this present-day narrative, online communication deteriorates as a result of the encroachment of commodity exchanges on online sites. The advertising mechanisms instituted by Google and Facebook invade online exchange, and hasten the disintegration of the threshold between private and public. This does not simply have an effect on the quality of discourse that transpires online. The encroachment of the market on public fora also specifically influences the shape of online networksand by extension, the prevalence of personal encounter with difference online. To the degree that consumption, rather than communication, is the activity that integrates members of a community, personal encounter with difference is diminished. Following a more in-depth review of Habermas account, I examine a number of profitable mechanisms that contribute to this degenerative process. Among these are: the dynamics of dividuation, or the atomization of persons into fragments and

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data points; the fabrication and proliferation of inherently broadly appealing content generated by devices such as the Like button; and the effects of lock-in, whereby users of a utility are so attached that there is little incentive to opt out. Each of these is fundamentally interconnected with the dynamics of online advertising, which corresponds to the kinds of advertising described by Habermas in many ways, but also bears a few particular idiosyncrasies. Finally, I explore what might be done to curb the effects of this turn and restore the possibilities of personal encounter with difference offered by the early Internet. Habermas and the Degeneration of the Public Sphere In chapter one, I briefly introduced The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which provided the foundation for deliberative theory and its derivatives. There, we saw Habermas describe the factors that contributed to the development of the bourgeois public sphere. These included, among others, the privacy derived from the intimate sphere of the conjugal family, the public use of reason derived from literary and art criticism, and the audience-oriented subjectivity derived from the novel and letter. Individuals began to envision a divide between their roles as economic actors and reasoning human beings just as they began to discuss in semi-public institutions such as the London coffeehouses and Parisian salons. The discussion that came to pass at these sites was predicated on norms of reasoned discourse in which arguments, not statuses or traditions, were to be decisive (Calhoun 1992, 2). These norms were institutionalized within and without parliamentary complexes. The public opinion that flowed out of this public sphere became a foundational link between state and society. However, in time, the demarcation between private and public, between economic agency and critical-rational exchange, began to disintegrateand with it, the public sphere. This was no mere happenstance; particular, moneyed interests played an active

88 | JUST LIKE ME role in the degenerative process. Habermas (1989, 161) writes that the laws of the market governing the sphere of commodity exchange and of social labor pervaded the sphere reserved for private people as a public, and as a result, rational-critical debate had a tendency to be replaced by consumption, and the web of public communication unraveled into acts of individual reception, however uniform in mode. Mass media, financed by advertising, began even to reshape the content to appeal to the broader public, making it consumption-ready (Habermas 1989, 166). Discourse about art and literatureespecially within nascent media like television and radiotransformed into the soft compulsion of constant consumption training (Habermas 1989, 192). With the encroachment of market forces, the public sphere, both literally and figuratively, disappears. With the loss of a notion of general interest and the rise of a consumption orientation, Calhoun (1992, 25) summarizes, the members of the public sphere lose their common ground. The consumption orientation of mass culture produces a proliferation of products designed to please various tastes. The common ground to which Calhoun refers entails not only the basis for discussionthe conception of public manbut also the very spaces in which conversations transpired. Public spaces themselves vanish, and are replaced with sites for consumption. As the public sphere gives way to the private sphere, opportunities to encounter new ideas and peoplethat is, opportunities to experience personal encounter with differenceevaporate. Before long, even the state has no choice but to participate in this consumptive cycle. Habermas calls this a refeudalization of the public sphere. Because private enterprises evoke in their customers the idea that in their consumption decisions they act in their capacity as citizens, Habermas (1989, 211) observes, the state has to address its citizens like consumers. Where the divide between public and private has dissolved, representatives are no longer able to confer with their citizens qua citizens. Today, this is visible both in the electoral process (when political advertising

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assumes identical forms to product advertising) and during political leaders tenure (when political leaders decisions are evaluated by their approval rating, like a car or business service). So long as the citizen is conflated with the consumer, this state of affairs is bound to sustain. While Habermas account reveals the development of a particular public sphere in the nineteenth and twentieth century, we can see evidence of a similar trajectory in more recent years online. In the next sections, I would like to offer a history of a handful of online platforms, and trace the effect of the emergence of advertising on those platforms. As we shall see, not only does the quality of discourse suffer as a result of the proliferation of online advertising schemes, but online advertising also contributes to the decline of online personal encounter with difference. Online Discourse on USENET and the Eternal September Unlike contemporary methods of communication on social networking websites, in which users post and exchange messages on standardized platforms, the earliest discussions on the Internet did not transpire on websites. In fact, online discourse predates the World Wide Web and internet browsers by several years. One of the earliest and most important networks for discussion, called USENET, was developed by students at Duke University in 1979, over a decade before Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web.* The USENET network, linked in part to ARPANET , was comprised of a number of different newsgroups. Each of these newsgroups related to a general topic of interestscience fiction (FA.sf-lovers), recipes (NET.cooks), computer games (NET.games), music (NET.music), or the space

In fact, Berners-Lee (1991) shared the first details about his invention on USENET. The Department of Defense project from which the Internet as we know it originated.

90 | JUST LIKE ME program (NET.space). The function and format for discussion was itself developed in an array of newsgroup posts, suggesting a fairly democratic procedure of self-regulation. Michael Horton, one of the founding developers, offered this general policy on one USENET board:
USENET is a public access network. Any User is allowed to post to any newsgroup (unless abuses start to be a problem). All users are to be given access to all newsgroups except that private newsgroups can be created which are protected The USENET map is also public at all times, and so any site which is on USENET is expected to make public the fact that they are on USENET (Hauben and Hauben 1998)

Horton also recommended that all USENET articles be held to a high standard of quality and be signed. He proscribed distasteful or offensive articles, and insisted that those who failed to follow the policy be removed from the network. However, these high standards did not necessitate strict supervision; instead, early USENET users shared in a general esprit de corps of mutual respect and courtesy. As Hauben and Hauben (1998) explain, the earliest newsgroups were all unmoderated. Everyone had the right to participate and contribute their views. What emerged from this discussion was a rich and interesting content that surprised even the participants. Another poster, Carl Zeigler (1981), observes:
All these people seem to have one thing in commonthe willingness to discuss any idea, whether it is related to war, peace, politics, science, technology, philosophy (ethics!), science fiction, literature, etc. While there is a lot of flame, the discussion usually consists of well thought out replies to meaningful questions much of the discussion can be seen as examples of man's need for *meaningful* conversation.

The atmosphere didnt last long. In 1993 came the September that never ended, as phrased by Dave Fischer, a USENET user. He was referring to the September phenomenonthat yearly period when college students would flood the network and, as USENET moderator Tom Seidenberg

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wrote, they would start to post stupid questions, repost MAKE MONEY FAST, break rules of netiquette, and just generally make life on Usenet more difficult than at other times of the year (Grossman 1997, 10). Usually, these new users would gradually adapt to USENET decorumso-called netiquettebut, with the onset of services like America Online and CompuServe, USENET saw the influx of tens of thousands of users. The USENET esprit de corps evaporated. September 1993, Fischer wrote, will go down in net.history as the September that never ended (Fischer 1994). Seidenberg was even more unenthusiastic: Unfortunately, it has been September since 1993. With the growing sensationalism surrounding the InformationSuperhighway in the United States, the current September is likely to last into the next century (Grossman 1997, 10). This development closely aligns with Habermas account of the degraded public sphere. One of the sources of the degeneration of the public sphere, paradoxically, is the expansion of the publics access to it. As Calhoun (1992, 23) outlines, in the expansion of access, the form of participation was fatally altered. When meaningful communication ceases to be the objective of political or social discourse, the resulting discourseif it can be called that at alldisintegrates. Thus, while tools that open access to the public sphereincluding the book, the newspaper, and perhaps the personal computerare worthy of praise, Calhoun (1992, 23) asserts, alongside these there has been a psychological facilitation of access by lowering the threshold capacity required for appreciation or participation. CompuServe and AOL, like the ever-cheaper book and magazine, broadened access to the medium. However, as the barriers to entry are lowered, as Habermas saw, there can be a breakdown in the discursive sphere. The greatest loss that results from this disintegration, however, is the loss of the willingness to discuss any idea that Zeigler observed was the shared goal of early users of the Internet. Rather than participating in discussion directed toward the goal of common understanding through *meaningful* communication, after the endless

92 | JUST LIKE ME September, new users focused on their own stupid questions and get-rich-quick schemes, to the detriment of personal encounter with new or different perspectives. Though the influx of users in the early nineties may have degraded the quality of exchange on USENET, it was the evacuation of the lions share of users that ultimately led to the networks effective demise. This decline came around the turn of the millennium, when flashier graphics and user interfaces attracted most users away from USENET. Columnist Sascha Segan (2008) writes that, [a]s the '90s went on, the eye candy of the Web and the marketing dollars of Web site owners helped push people over to profit-making sites. Usenet's slightly arcane access methods and text-only protocols have nothing on the glitz and glamour of MySpace. Now, most of those that remain on USENET are pirates and pornographers. This is compatible with the observation Habermas (1989, 165) makes that mass media, in the twentieth century, adapt[ed] to the need for relaxation and entertainment on the part of consumer strata with relatively little education. Internet startups equivalently recognized the profitability of glitz and glamour, and built websites that would attract throngs of users; they were, as Segans lament suggests, quite successful. Early Self-Representation Online on Personal Websites Though I have memories of my enterprising father using the discussion groups on USENET to do historical and genealogical research, I was too young to have personally experienced the discursive environment on the early USENET firsthand. The glory days of the medium had passed by the time I became old enough to appreciate such discussion. However, I did experience a different dimension of the Internet before social networking sites: early on, my tech-savvy father inculcated me with an interest in website design. By the time I was twelve, I had a

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modest website online with photos, a family history, an autobiography, and links to my schools website (Figure 10). Then, in August 2002about a year before the pioneering MySpace.com was launchedI took a course in web design at my high school. As one might guess, one of the assigned tasks for all students in the class was to build and manage a website. Of course, this was before the development in earnest of Web 2.0, so we relied Figure 10. The authors website in 1999. on hand coding, CSS2, and early editions of Macromedia Dreamweaver to develop our humble websites. Each student had an account with Tripod, a service developed by college students before it was bought by Lycos in 1998 (Peline 1998). Even in 2002barely early enough to be fairly placed in the period of the early Internetour websites were markedly unformulaic, especially in comparison to current profiles on social networking sites. Our sites were diverse and distinctive. Some of us included favorite quotes, journal entries, or photos (Figure 11). I shared miscellaneous poems I had written in my teen (read: embarrassing) years. A handful of students, presaging Mark Zuckerbergs lucrative enterprise in Facebook, even had the ingenious idea of linking to each others sites! Nevertheless, aside from fulfilling our course requisites, there were few recurrent patterns across my classmates designs. Our choices about how to represent ourselves in cyberspace were themselves, in a way, part of our selfrepresentation. This is visible in the difference between my two

94 | JUST LIKE ME early websites. In 1998, as a gawky preteen, I had lived in The Wacky World of Mary G!, but my site in 2002 betrayed my assay at sophistication with the greeting, Welkommen! Furthermore, each of the amateur designers in my class chose not only which pictures (or poorly-written poems) Figure 11. The authors website in 2002. to sharebut we also elected whether or not to share them in the first place. Perhaps even more significant, we actively determined how we would interlace each of those sections to one another, drawing maps of ourselves, revealing our perceptions of how we situated our thoughts and our very selves in relation to one another.* Just as in Habermas account of the budding bourgeois public sphere, this early stage of online representation and discourse was not untouched by the private sphere of commodity exchange. In the same way that publishers sold books for a profit in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries because there was a demand for such products, online startups had a clear financial motivation to provide free platforms for sharing images and essays (and, of course, embarrassingly bad poetry). Advertisers were eager to make use of the extremely low-cost promotional space, and to
*

Because, as Young (1990, 310) reminds us, the subject is not a unity, it cannot be present to itself and know itself, an important component of this early mode of self-representation was that it was prone to change. Not only was there diversity across my classmates personal sites, but each students site also changed over time.

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reach the ever-increasing number of people using the Internet. By 2000, online advertising revenues had reached over two billion dollarsup from just $30 million four years earlier (IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report 2001). Of course, our diverse, unique websites depended on these advertising revenues to subsidize the costs of webhosting. All of the students in my class took the free account Tripod offered, adding a pop-up window or a banner somewhere on our page. By the time that we were developing our sites, however, online advertising startups had suffered a major slump in revenues, a major component of the dot-com bust of 2000-2002 (Raine 2005). Companies that had been eager to sponsor ads on websites like mine and those of my classmates had become skeptical of the efficacy of online advertising. What was the value of reaching the few readers of my unsophisticated website? What could even be advertised to them? Personalized Advertising and Dividualization Amidst the downturn, however, there was another development on the horizon. In the late nineties, two computer scientists at Stanford had developed a new algorithm for searching the web, resulting in a search engine that before long became wildly popular: Google. By 2000, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page began to monetize the site by placing conspicuous, but simple text-based advertising within search results themselves. Early on, it was fairly straightforward: companies (such as, say, a shoe manufacturer) could pay to have ads placed in the results of certain searches (for instance, among other results for sneakers, or stilettos). Google has always insisted on their commitment to providing useful and relevant informationas CEO Eric Schmidt has declared, [t]he primary mission of Google is to get you what you want, rather than what someone thinks you want (Kawamoto 2003)and in keeping with this policy, the company made sure that sponsored advertisements were patently so. They identified

96 | JUST LIKE ME each ad with a separator or shaded background and the disclaimer Sponsored Links. This emphasis on text-based, contextual advertising set Google apart from many other advertising schemes. It was early in 2002, however, that Google really distinguished itself from the competition. Whereas similar mechanismslike that of advertising rival Overturedisplayed ads in order of the price paid for them, Google began to integrate an ads clickthrough rate in the algorithm that determined which ad would be displayed. The clickthrough rate served as a measure of the relevancy of the ad for other searchers, and relevancy, we recall, is Googles doggedly avowed objective. John Battelle describes it as follows:
Imagine that three accounting firms are competing for the right to target their ads to the keyword accounting services. And assume further that Accountant One is willing to pay $1.00 per click, Accountant Two $1.25, and Accountant Three $1.50. On Overture's service, Accountant Three would be listed first, followed by Accountant Two, and so on. The same would be true on Google's service, but only until the service has enough time to monitor clickthrough rates for all three ads. If Accountant One, who paid $1.00 per click, was drawing more clickthroughs than Accountant Three, then Accountant One would graduate to the top spot, despite his lower bid. (Battelle 2005, 142)

Of course, it didnt hurt that, because Google had instituted a pay-per-click payment scheme, increasing clickthrough rates also directly increased revenue. Not only would Accountant Ones ad be more relevant for usersfulfilling Googles goal of providing useful, relevant informationbut it also made the company more money. This was markedly visible in Googles yearly profit reports; in 2002, Googles advertising revenues had shot to $411 million from $66 million in 2001. The next year, Google reported $1.4 billion in advertising revenue (2003 Financial Tables 2003).

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The key, then, was relevancy. How could Google find out what would be most relevant for its searchers? Certainly, it had extensive data about users search histories.* Around this time, Google began to appreciate the real value of personal data. The collection of search histories was the first move in the development of contextual advertising and ad personalization. But why stop at the gold mine of data they were sitting on when the company could do even better? On April Fools Day, 2004, Google introduced what was to become one of their most popular, free services: Gmail (Markoff 2004). If Googles database of search histories was a gold mine, Gmail was El Dorado. Eli Pariser points out that, though it was the sidebar of ads that would be displayed on Gmail that was most discussed in press reports about the launch,
its unlikely that those ads were the sole motive for launching the service. By getting people to log in, Google got its hands on an enormous pile of datathe hundreds of millions of e-mails Gmail users send and receive each day. And it could cross-reference each users e-mail and behavior on the site with the links he or she clicked in the Google search engine. (Pariser 2011, 33)

By April 2004, however, Google was already a step behindthough they didnt yet know it. The company had a lockdown on personal information about search queries and related advertisement clickthroughs, but it had overlooked another, equally large data bank. Atop a mother lode of interpersonal relationship data stood Mark Zuckerberg, who, in February of 2004, had introduced an appealing, exclusive network for college kids. Inasmuch as his new platform enabled and encouraged members to link to each other, to interact and share photos and messages, all of those exchanges could be compiled in a powerful
Google nearly sold much of this data to the advertising service DoubleClick. This was Googles fallback plan, according to founder Brin, if their monetizing mechanism fell through (Battelle 2005, 124). Ironically, the tables were turned in late 2007, when DoubleClick itself was acquired by Google.
*

98 | JUST LIKE ME database of data points about users. If he ever was unaware of the power these data wielded, Zuckerberg would not remain so for very long. His company has unremittingly highlighted the potential for personalization in their materials for prospective clientsthat is, for advertisers. The mechanism by which Facebook acquires personal information, however, is different than Googles in many ways. Whereas, early on, Google utilized their database of search queries to track users behavior, Facebooks data set derives from the selfrepresentations of users. As Pariser (2011, 114) notices, theres a big difference between you are what you click and you are what you share. The structures of the sites evidence this. When a prospective member signs up for a Facebook account, she is directed through a series of forms to complete with details about her past employment, her Figure 12. Facebooks appeal to favorite movies, and even her businesses. sexual orientation. As a result, she no longer can introduce people to the Wacky World of Mary G, but instead she plays a more passive role in her self-representation. Rather than actively making every choice about her selfrepresentation from a blank slate, she merely chooses whether and how to fill in the fields in Facebooks standardized form. The self is refracted by Facebooks templateit is represented by an aggregation of interests, shared media, and friendships. For their part, social networking sites encourage users to utilize these selftemplates not simply because that makes them easier to manage, but because they generate mountains of extremely valuable user data.

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This process is the quintessence of what Deleuze would have called dividualization. Today, he observes, people increasingly lose their status as individualsthat is, entities that are not dividual, but instead indivisible. The process of personalizing via profile exemplifies Deleuzes observation that individuals have become dividuals, and masses, samples, data, markets, or banks (Deleuze 1992, 6). Instead of being an indivisible whole, the entity of the self is constituted merely by the sum of ones favorite movies and employment history. I am no Figure 13. A targeting mechanism for longer me. Instead, I advertisers on Facebook. become the constellation of my connection to other users in the network I call my friends, and the aggregation of photos tagged with me in them. I am the things that I Like. Lanier (2010, 47) laments that online tools serve up fragments instead of considered whole expressions or arguments or entities. In the very breaking up of ideas (or people) into bitesized portions, he says, we forsake the most valuable elements of those things:
We know a little about what Aztec or Inca music sounded like, for instance, but the bits that were trimmed to make the music fit into the European idea of church song were the most precious bits. The alien bits are where the flavor is found. They are the portals to strange philosophies. What a loss to not know how New World music would have sounded alien to us! Some melodies and rhythms survived, but the whole is lost. (Lanier 2010, 48)

No online mechanism exhibits a more fragmentary representation of people than Facebooks News Feed, which was

100 | JUST LIKE ME launched in late 2006. An announcement on the Facebook blog explained the new tool. Now, whenever you log in, you'll get the latest headlines generated by the activity of your friends and social groups (Sanghvi 2006). The mechanism serves the most relevant fragments of friends personal information on a users Home page on Facebook, displaying details about the latest break up or a recent favorite song. As Pariser (2011, 37) observes: Its hard to imagine a purer source of relevance. Users immediately organized in an outcry against the News Feed. Zuckerberg himself posted on the Facebook blog, assuaging users that the tool was simply developed to ensure [y]ou don't miss the photo album about your friend's trip to Nepal (Zuckerberg 2006). It wasnt until this spring, though, that Facebook took the step of finally integrating advertising directly into the News Feed, integrating friends photos and Likes into the ads (Cox 2011). These simply augment the kind of work Facebook did with Sponsored Stories, whereby brands and corporations can pay Facebook to privilege status updates and posts related to their products. Dividualization becomes fully and patently privatized. Not only am I constituted by the things Figure 14. A sample Sponsored that I buy, but now corporations can pay to ensure that those Story on Facebook. consumptive self-fragments are disproportionately circulated. Notably, users are not able to opt out of this mechanism (About Sponsored Stories 2012). Google has consistently tried to catch up with Facebooks ever-expanding cache of personal connection data. The companys first foray into social media, Google Buzz, nearly landed them in court. A new network, Google+, seeks to correct the mistakes the company made by providing users with more nuanced privacy tools; in its first few months, it has been fairly successful. Nevertheless, in each area of data collection, the quest is for

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relevancy. The more that ads can be tailored to the user through personalization, Pariser (2011, 6) writes, the more ads they can sell, and the more likely you are to buy the products theyre offering. The use of templates of self-representation and communication facilitates the tailoring of ads to specific users. Dividualizationthe fragmenting of individuals into data banks of, say, interests and search historiesis intimately related to personalization. The former directly facilitates the latter. In the eyes of business firms, as weve seen, the personalization this information powers has a distinct advantage over public advertisingwhether that happens on a billboard or on a banner ad on Tripod. Personalized messages are much more effective than those that target general demographics. Personalization allows the message to be tailored to be relevant for the viewer of the advertisement. Making messages relevant through personalization, however, implies the extrication of the kind of personal encounters with difference that might call the user to consider the common concern. As Calhoun (1988, 234) presciently wrote in 1989, there has been a
substantial resegmentation of communication fostered by many uses of computer technology. Computer-assisted direct mail campaigns, for example, may be a means for a politician to subvert public discourse by tailoring messages to different mailing lists, thus effectively saying different things to different groups of voters or potential donors.

The result of the invasion of competition between private interests in the public sphere, according to Habermas, is the loss of its communal basis. Consequently, individuals fail to get a comprehensive view. Even ostensibly public communication becomes private. As we saw above, when the rules of the market are grafted onto the rules of the public fora, discourse is replaced by consumption, and the web of public communication [is] unraveled into acts of individual reception, however uniform in mode (Habermas 1989, 161, emphasis added). Economic incentives drive personalizationand the dividualization that underpins personalizationand personal encounter with difference and the

102 | JUST LIKE ME resultant public communication suffers as a result. It is hard to imagine a purer platform for individual reception than the News Feed. Habermas later quotes Bahrdt, who laments that citygoers no longer receive an overview of the ever more complicated life of the city as a whole in such a fashion that it is really public for him. The more the city as a whole is transformed into a barely penetrable jungle, the more he withdraws into his sphere of privacy which in turn is extended ever further (Habermas 1989, 158). When the advertising and information that we receive is so fully personalized, our prospects of discussing public mattersas well as our opportunities to personally encounter differencediminish. However, one of the most insidious consequences of the personalization process is not simply the segmentation of reality, but the development of information ecologies that tend to distort reality altogether. This is epitomized in the development of Facebooks Like button. Like +1 In the presses of the mid-twentieth century, Habermas (1989, 170) wrote that there emerged a pleasant and at the same time convenient subject for entertainment that, instead of doing justice to reality, has a tendency to present a substitute more palatable for consumption and more likely to give rise to an impersonal indulgence in stimulating relaxation than to a public use of reason. Similarly to the ways the monetization of the presses in the twentieth century affected the content of the books, we can discern a parallel development in the springing from the establishment of the Like button. Launched in 2009, the Like button is a small icon users can press to express a fondness or appreciation for some piece of dataa photo, a status update, or even a product. According to the Facebook team, Like is a way to give positive feedback or to connect with things you care about on Facebook (What is the Like feature? 2012). As a data gathering tool, the Like button

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might be the data point par excellencea binary switch denoting a positive connection between any two pieces of other data. It figures prominently in Facebooks new advertising scheme, whereby friends Likes can be sponsored by corporations and displayed as ads. The name of the device is not insignificant. For a time, the company had considered calling it the Awesome! button, but thought wiser of it and changed it to Like (Bergen 2010). Pariser (2011, 149) perceptively suggests that the choice of the word Like is a small design decision with far-reaching consequences: The stories that get the most attention on Facebook are the stories that get the most Likes, and the stories that get the most Likes are, well, more likable. Why not, instead of Awesome! or Like, might the company allocate space for an Important! button? Simply put, the companys objective is to keep people using the site, and to continue to make connections between people and their data. This is facilitated by the exchange of pleasant, not important, contentor, as Habermas noted, content that is more palatable for consumption, rather than content that challenges readers. Social media is all about building networks, being accepted, being liked, sharing informationpositive things, affirms blogger Paul Sawers (2010). Facebook wants to generate as many clicks on links as possible, and it knows full well that people are immensely more likely to follow links to posts others have Liked, rather than media that are Important! Like has another advantage: as a transitive verb, it performs the essential connecting function even more effectively. As well as Liking news stories and notes, users can be persuaded to Like Coca-Cola much more than to call it Awesome! This transitive function has also contributed to the integration of Facebook with virtually every other large site on the World Wide Web. As of September 2011, 905,000 websites had incorporated the Like button somewhere on their site (Richmond 2011). Google, of course, followed suit. With the launch of Google+ in 2011, the company offered a +1 button, which

104 | JUST LIKE ME performs largely the same function, albeit with more impersonal language. These buttons, along with Twitters tweet button, and many other share buttonsfrom Tumblr, Digg, and Redditare present on virtually every corporately owned website, and countless personal blogs. They allow information to be passed on and integrated with data stores on each of those respective social networks. Because people want to generate content that will be Liked and shared (or +1d, or tweeted), the very information that is generated and published in the first place privileges a certain, particularly rosy outlook. The laws of the market have already penetrated into the substance of the works themselves, Habermas (1989, 165) laments, and have become inherent in them as formative laws. The insight undoubtedly translates; it is perhaps the most significant reason that Facebook chose not to incorporate the Dislike button that was clamored for by millions of users. Like is a social lubricant; it encourages connection. Dislike, on the other hand, is socially corrosive. Because Facebook is cognizant of this, the Figure 15. Like and other buttons on dislike button will assuredly a third-party website. never be instituted. The content of communication, as a result, is fundamentally alteredit is sanitized. After all, many fewer people feel comfortable Liking something such as a news article detailing human rights abuses, or a recent natural disaster, rather than Liking more positive reports. However, the problems with Like lie not only in the collective sharing of information, but also on the personal level. The algorithms used by Facebook (and Google+) are developed to give us information that we might also be prone to Like. The mechanism doesnt simply facilitate the creation of content that is generally likeable; it also provides us with information and opinions

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that are personally likeable as well. Consequently, we personally encounter less unfamiliar or uncomfortable information. As a graduate student in politics, I may be served a platter of status updates and photos about the latest health care debate, or a recent piece of newswhich I would quite likely Likerather than tidbits about, say, the latest sports game. Pariser (2011, 12) thus sardonically exalts the personalizing technologies for their capacity to make us feel good. Were never bored. Were never annoyed. Our media is a perfect reflection of our interests and desires Its a cozy place, populated by our favorite people and things and ideas. Nothing has ever been able to facilitate such personal customization as the personal computer. Perhaps this is why Neil Postman (1992, 116) surmised that, [i]f the press was, as David Riesman called it, the gunpowder of the mind, the computer, in its capacity to smooth over unsatisfactory institutions and ideas, is the talcum powder of the mind. In being offered things we might like by the networks algorithms, we are often given things that are familiar to us; after all, as we know, personal encounter with difference can often be uncomfortable. People who are uncomfortable might have the inclination to log offthat is, unless they are too entrenched in the network, due to what some technologists call network lock-in. Network Lock-in One of the essential steps in the process of networking and data aggregation is so-called lock-in. Lock-in is the phenomenon by which a particular network or service is so entrenched in society that its users are invested in it to the point at which they refuse to switch to other, better networks or services. It would simply be too arduous to do so. (Pariser 2011, 40) encourages us to conjure the idea of making the switch:
If youre a Facebook member, think about what itd take to get you to switch to another social networking siteeven if the site had vastly greater features. Itd probably take a lotre-creating your whole

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profile, uploading all of those pictures, and laboriously entering your friends names would be extremely tedious.

Herein lies Zuckerbergs stroke of genius. Once Facebook succeeded in getting college students to buy in to the network, and consequently establishing membership an ostensible social necessity, the network became able to glean countless data from its users with little disturbance. In spite of what the network does say, require users to relinquish all ownership of any data posted on the site, as they did in February 2009 (Stelter 2009; Stone and Stelter 2009)the cost may be too high for users to switch to a competing service. The phenomenon is also known as Metcalfes Law, which surmises that the value of a network increases exponentially with every additional user. Seth Godin (2010) borrowed a popular illustration of the law when he rearticulated iy thus: the more people who have a fax machine, the more fax machines are worth. Facebook, just like fax machine, is useless to a single person. Its value derives from the connections it comprises. The more connections hosted on the servicea number that increases exponentially as the number of users increasesthe more value to each user. In those terms, its not Facebooks 845 million users that make the network valuableits 100 billion friendships the company reports are incorporated in the service (Mac 2012). Furthermore, the site has become firmly embedded in our online ecologies. Few visit sites that are not sponsored by significantly large corporations or institutions (Hindman 2009, 51) and most of these significant sites have business deals with Facebook that facilitate the exchange of information between the social network and the site via mechanisms like the Like button.*

Many of those whose sites are not either on Facebook proper or connected to it by means of cookies or a Like button utilize Googles AdSense to generate revenue to support the site.

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The presence of network lock-in has led sociologist danah boyd to suggest that we begin to think of Facebook as a utility. The conception is certainly not unfoundedZuckerberg himself has used the language.* But boyd (2010) suggests that Facebooks status as utility suggests a future the company might resist: Utilities get regulated. Restoring Democratic Possibilities Habermas was not optimistic about the possibility of reversing the conflation of public and private. The domination of moneyed interests in the distorted shadow of the public sphere does not provide much opportunity for a restoration of the disinterested, democratic discourse that first appeared in those early coffeehouses. Instead, it propagates the status quo:
Were one to compress into one sentence what the ideology of mass culture actually amounts to, one would have to present it as a parody of the statement, Become what you are: as a glorifying reduplication and justification of the state of affairs that exists anyway, while foregoing all transcendence and critique. (Habermas 1989, 216)

To some degree, we can see similar developments over the last few decades in the emergence of the advertising industry online. Pariser called this the You Loopthe cycle whereby users, who control their media via clickstreams and personal data, are then reinforced by that personalized media. If I Like an NPR story I see on my News Feed, Ill get more of them. My interest in NPR is amplifiedpossibly, to the detriment of my exposure to, say, Fox News stories. In a sense, as Habermas wrote, I become who I am.

We think of ourselves as a utility, he once told Viacom CEO Tom Freston (Kirkpatrick 2010, 160). It was not the first time he had compared Facebook to a utility (Kirkpatrick 2010, 144).

108 | JUST LIKE ME The encroachment of markets upon this medium feeds this feedback loop. The reason that personalization is so widespread today is not simply because it is what users want, but because it generates revenue for online corporations like Google and Facebook. Insofar as those companies are motivated to provide us with information and advertising we are prone to click on, personalization exacerbates the homophilic tendencies facilitated on the Internet and on social media. Targeting, advertising, and data collection all aggravate the already problematic dynamic we observed in Chapter 3, to the detriment of personal encounter with difference online. Nevertheless, Habermas (1989, 228) offers one prescription: freedom of assembly and association, he insists, needs a guarantee of active promotion. Corporations are so monolithic and so publicistically effective that they need present and active alternatives to challenge their solidified position in the market, and in the public in general. The activities that were encouraged and safeguarded in salons and in novel and journal readership must be actively redeveloped. This involves not only challenging the corporations themselves, but also challenging the homophilic tendencies they exploit in their pursuit of revenues. We can recall Mutzs suggestion, discussed in Chapter 2, that because [h]omogeneous networks occur regularly, we must put a priority on promoting greater heterogeneity (Mutz 2006, 148). This may involve demanding that the algorithms that are used to curate the information we are exposed to are transparent. It also requires that we, as users, demand personalization that does not broadly extricate difference from our media ecologies. We must also, as Calhoun (1988, 227) wrote, nurture a public discourse in which these various groups and individuals may consider their respective and collective wants and possibly modify them. This entails our commitment to reaching beyond simple consumption and individual reception, into a more public arena. We ought, as Young encourages, to aspire to communicate across lines of

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difference with the purpose of cultivating mutual understanding as did the earliest users of USENET. To those ends, perhaps we ought to join boyds call for the regulation of social utilities as they increasingly demonstrate the characteristics of more traditional utilities. Until then, change can come about only to the degree that users demand for it within the networks.

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