541505

research-article2014
MIL0010.1177/0305829814541505Millennium: Journal of International StudiesSchwarz

MILLENNIUM Journal of International Studies

Article

Millennium: Journal of

@hannah_arendt: An
International Studies
2014, Vol. 43(1) 165­–186
© The Author(s) 2014
Arendtian Critique of Reprints and permissions:
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Online Social Networks DOI: 10.1177/0305829814541505
mil.sagepub.com

Elke Schwarz
London School of Economics, UK

Abstract
New technologies in communications and networking have shaped the way political movements
can be mobilised and coordinated in important ways. Recent uprisings have shown dramatically
how a people can communicate its cause effectively beyond borders, through online social
networking channels and mobile phone technologies. Hannah Arendt, as an eminent scholar of
power and politics in the modern era, offers a relevant lens with which to theoretically examine
the implications and uses of online social networks and their impact on politics as praxis. This
article creates an account of how Arendt might have evaluated virtual social networks in the
context of their potency to create power, spaces and possibilities for political action. With an
Arendtian lens the article examines whether these virtual means of ‘shared appearances’ facilitate
or frustrate efforts in the formation of political power and the creation of new beginnings. Based
on a contemporary reading of her writings, the article concludes that Arendt’s own assessment of
online social networks, as spheres for political action, would likely have been very critical.

Keywords
Hannah Arendt, online social networks, power, politics, plurality, global sphere

The potency of online social networking sites, as channels of communication and a

medium for people from all corners of the world to convene in a virtual realm and engage
with shared ideas – political or otherwise – has increasingly become manifest in recent
years. Not least since the protests in Moldova in 2009, the Green Revolution following
the elections in Iran in the same year, and the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, where the
mobilisation of bodies and voices to partake in various acts of revolt and revolution in

Corresponding author:
Elke Schwarz, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: [email protected]
166 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Libya was communicated through networks such as Twitter
and Facebook, have people realised the potential for a transnational coming-together in
a shared cause. Such online social networks have been hailed as the new conduits for
political change and revolutions, empowering the oppressed and threatening oppressive
regimes worldwide. They allow us to connect ‘without our voices, faces and bodies’1 and
overcome spatial and temporal limitations. Twitter and Facebook thus appear to serve as
a global public realm within a virtual space, transcending geographic limitations and
boundaries, thereby broadening the scope of possible political impacts considerably. Yet
in terms of their capacity to actually bring about political change, online social networks
have thus far not conclusively been proved to lead to lasting results.2
Online social networks are still fairly novel and somewhat ambiguous in their impact
on politics and society. Some scholars argue that Web 2.0 platforms, including Facebook
and Twitter, present ‘unprecedented democratic possibilities for individual engagement
and empowerment’,3 others suggest that Web 2.0 is far from being democratic and caters,
rather, to a business structure of commoditisation and state control.4 While studies on the
subject proliferate, they can barely keep up with the many new uses and developments of
and within these virtual spaces in all aspects of life. To date, research on the political
effects and effectiveness of online social networks focuses predominantly on case- or
country-specific empirical studies, often resulting in unhelpful ‘dueling anecdotes’,5 or
rely on algorithmic and statistical analyses. The outcomes are as manifold as the cases
studied. Another challenge poses the temptation to consider political activities and
behaviours in the online social environment as inherently new without taking into con-
sideration established social patterns in the analyses.6 Furthermore, thus far, scholarly
inquests into this area are primarily conducted within the disciplines of computer and
media studies or sociology. A welcome exception to this is technology scholar Evgeny
Morozov’s The Net Delusion, which seeks to dispel some of the myths about the political
potency of social networks specifically, and the Internet as a political tool more

   1. Michael D. Ayers and Martha McCaughey, Cyberactivism: Online Activism in Theory and
Practice (New York: Routledge, 2003).
   2. For a thorough engagement with (in)effectiveness and consequences of social media as a tool
for political change see Evgeny Morozov’s The Net Delusion: How Not to Liberate the World
(London: Penguin Books, 2011). See also Evgeny Morozov, ‘Facebook and Twitter Are Just
Places Revolutionaries Go’, Guardian, 7 March 2011; available at http://www.guardian.
co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/07/facebook-twitter-revolutionaries-cyber-utopians.
   3. Veronica Barassi and Emiliano Trere, ‘Does Web 3.0 Come after Web 2.0? Deconstructing
Theoretical Assumptions through Practice’, New Media & Society 14, no. 8 (2012): 1269–
85, 1272.
  4. Ibid.
   5. Clay Shirky, ‘The Political Power of Social Media – Technology, the Public Sphere and
Political Change’, Foreign Affairs 90, no. 1 (2011): 28–41, 29.
   6. Nils Gustaffson, ‘The Subtle Nature of Facebook Politics: Swedish Social Network Site
Users and Political Participation’, New Media & Society 14, no. 7 (2012): 1111–27, 1112;
David Campbell, ‘Social Networks and Political Participation’, Annual Review of Political
Science 16, no. 10 (2013): 33–48.
Schwarz 167

generally. While sociological studies and media studies have made strong forays into
analyses of online activism in terms of community building and identity shaping,7 stud-
ies in political theory have remained sparse, and engagement with online social networks
at the conceptual and theoretical level, as relevant for an (international) political theory
context, is still somewhat underexplored. Nonetheless, and despite the ambivalences in
research outcomes, online social media platforms have become crucial tools for ‘nearly
all of the world’s political movements’8 and, with existing lenses offered by scholars of
politics, we can observe and examine these rapidly and perpetually newly developing
means of coming-together, and aim to make sense of the possibility of online social net-
works as tools for political power, in theory and praxis.
This article opens a philosophically grounded investigation into the (im)possibility to
create political power through online social networks, thereby adding a theoretical per-
spective grounded in political theory to an interdisciplinary debate. It is not intended to
serve as a full assessment of the state of online activism and movements initiated through
networks like Twitter and Facebook, but rather posits a theoretical examination to assess
the potential for political power in these virtual global spheres. The work of Hannah
Arendt lends itself well to such a theoretical exploration. Arendt has served as an impor-
tant interlocutor for analyses of power and politics in the international context in recent
years, positioning her at the centre of discussions on human rights, political theory and
within the broader bounds of conceptions of power, politics and freedom in a global
context. Her astute analysis of the human within her worldly setting as significant for
politics is crucial here. For Arendt, it is the public sphere that facilitates the possibility of
politics. With new platforms and tools available in an increasingly interconnected global
arena, the virtual sphere becomes expanded and relevant for extending Arendt’s analysis.
Furthermore, it is Arendt’s sharp insights into the ‘individual as political agent’, with the
capacity for ‘unpredictable and surprising acts of great political significance’9 and her
equally astute analysis of the mundane limitations for politics in modernity that render
her such a useful lens for this discussion at the theoretical level. Arendt, in her relentless
quest to understand the world, and her chief concern for the possibility of politics, would
likely have been interested in the theoretical, if not practical dimensions of these new
means for communication, mobilisation and organisation, specifically in a political con-
text and through her we find an opening to consider anew the distinction between the
social and the political as relevant for global politics. Her work on politics proper and the
creation of power lends itself for the investigation of the (im)possibility for political
action, and thus political change. It is her specific understanding of what politics is, her
differentiation between action and behaviour, her notion of the public sphere and her dif-
ferentiation between the social and the political in the modern public sphere in particular

   7. See, for example, Manuel Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in
the Internet Age (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012); Paulo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets:
Social Media and Contemporary Activism (London: Pluto Press, 2012).
   8. Shirky, ‘The Political Power of Social Media’, 30.
   9. Anthony F. Lang and John Williams, Hannah Arendt and International Relations: Reading
Across the Line (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 2.
168 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

that offers a useful way to conceptually engage with the notion of online social networks
for the purpose of politics. Where Morozov highlights the misconceptions of online
social media networks as a political tool, it is with Arendt, that we can attempt to illumi-
nate why this perhaps might be the case.10 As such, I will first engage with the relevant
concepts in Arendt’s work in the context of this exploration: politics, power and plurality.
The second section considers the character and some of the contemporary perceptions of
online social networks, in as far as we can assess them – specifically, Twitter and
Facebook. The third and final section contextualises the effectiveness and implications
of using social networks in the pursuit of political power and action with Arendt’s theo-
ries on politics and power and reaches a conclusion as to why Arendt might have had her
reservations toward the use of online social networks for political action.

Politics, Power and Plurality in Arendt’s Political

Philosophy
The work of Hannah Arendt is complex and full of categorisations and distinctions
within which she seeks to comprehend the human as a political being that is situated
within a modern environment. Her work is rich and manifold, covering a multitude of
aspects that concern ‘man’11 as a subject and object of politics and society in modernity.
Specifically her conception of politics proper is useful for considering what political
action means in modernity and why online social networks are perhaps unsuitable as
public spheres to aid in the creation of political action proper and invoke concrete politi-
cal outcomes. In order to clarify this argument, I will primarily draw on her seminal
work, The Human Condition, as well as on her writings on violence and politics in the
1960s, and aim to engage with her perspectives on relevant categories, such as politics,
power, plurality and the public sphere.
The Human Condition presents a complex phenomenological analysis of human
activity, set against the background of a range of historical features, causes and stages.12
It is a dense work, packed with categorisations and distinctions and Arendt herself had
considered it as a critical introduction to a continuing systematic investigation into politi-
cal theory, which never transpired.13 Seeking to distinguish between the different types
of human activity that provide the setting for politics in modernity, Arendt isolates three
strands of the human condition upon which each human life and its unfolding relies:
labour (zoe), the category concerned solely with life processes and necessities; work
(poiesis), the act of fabrication, of making, to provide a common and stable world and

10. Morozov, The Net Delusion, 179–203.

11. Throughout her work, Arendt predominantly refers to ‘the human’ as ‘man’. In keeping
with the Arendtian terminology, I will make use of the word man in the same sense where
appropriate.
12. Maurizio Passerin D’Entreves, Excerpt from ‘Hannah Arendt’s Conception of Modernity’,
in Hannah Arendt – Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. Gareth
Williams (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), 56.
13. Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt – A Reinterpretation of her Political Thought
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xi.
Schwarz 169

physical arena for humans; and, finally, action (praxis), the activity relating to politics
proper as conducted by free and equal men in the public sphere. In like manner, Arendt
draws a distinction with regards to the spatial realms, within which these aspects of life
– converging and separate – fall: the private realm, the social and the public sphere.

Politics Proper and Plurality

Politics, as an intrinsically human action, is a fundamental concept in Arendt’s work and
it is important to note that her understanding of true politics, or politics proper, differs
starkly from contemporary notions of what constitutes politics. Politics proper, for
Arendt, belongs to the public realm. It relies on freedom and is manifested through action
and speech. What many political scholars and analysts of liberal democratic politics
today consider to be dominant forms of politics – and specifically those forms of politics
to which biopolitical analyses often refer – are, for Arendt a form of politics-as-
management, akin to governmental administration and bureaucratic rule. This type of
politics relates to a much greater extent to a professional dimension of politics, namely
the administration, management and government of populations and their resources and
is preoccupied with the distribution of political assets rather than the possibility for polit-
ical engagement. Politics proper, in the Arendtian understanding, is in close keeping with
the Greek understanding of the term: an activity that takes place among a group of free
equals acting in a public sphere, facilitated through speech. Political acts come to pass
through action by unique individuals in a public sphere through consensus building.
Such acts are never entirely predictable in their final outcomes and consequences. It is in
the capacity for political action, that humans distinguish themselves from both ‘beast and
god’, and as such is the ‘exclusive prerogative of man’.14 Politics among humans is reli-
ant on plurality, freedom and the existence of difference in a public sphere that provides
the space for political action to unfold. In its lack of certain outcomes, political action is
inherently and entirely contingent.15 In other words, in political action, the outcome can
be aimed at but never be certain. This uncertainty, the contingent, is immanent to politics
proper for Arendt, as it relies on action by humans and among humans, which is con-
stantly in flux. ‘Concrete realisations’ in politics ‘are constantly changing because we are
dealing with other people who also have goals’.16 Such politics relies on a fundamental
condition without which it could not transpire: plurality. And it is here that Arendt’s dif-
ferentiation of the social and political realm, and her lament of the conflation of the two
in modernity, becomes salient. For Arendt, the social realm and the political realm have
distinct attributes. The social occupies the nexus between the private and the public
sphere and is an inherently modern phenomenon.17 It is a normalising realm that is

14. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 22.
15. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics (New York: Random House/Schocken Books,
2005), 193.
16. Ibid.
17. Arendt, The Human Condition, 28; Hanna Fenichel-Pitkin, Attack of the Blob (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998), 14.
170 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

characterised by homogenisation and assortativity – like seeks like and is free to do so.
But this homogenising nature of the social has consequences for the nature of interac-
tions. Through processes of ‘levelling people into uniformity’18 differences are miti-
gated; the potential for spontaneous action becomes limited and is subsumed by
behaviour, which is controlled and controllable.19 The problematic tension in the public
sphere, that comprises both the social and the political, arises precisely if either the
capacity for action is compromised or the condition of plurality is jeopardised.
In Arendt’s conception, politics ‘deals with the coexistence and association of differ-
ent men’.20 The notion of difference is essential to the possibility of true politics in
Arendt. As such, plurality is a key concept and serves as the ‘basic condition for both
action and speech’.21 Plurality refers to the very uniqueness of each human being, not
merely in physical difference but in each human’s unique narrative, experiences and
initiatives. It is a duality of equality and distinction that characterises plurality. In
Arendt’s words: ‘If men were not distinct, each human being distinguished from any
other who is, was or will ever be, they would need neither speech nor action to make
themselves understood’.22 Only in a context of different persons coming together to
organise themselves by finding commonalities among an indeterminable plurality of
unique aspects can political consensus emerge and the basis for political action be
granted. And it is in this condition of a plurality of difference that equality is granted as
the result of human organisation. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow
related to the possibility of politics proper, plurality is the sine qua non condition and
speech is the medium that allows men to interact and appear in their distinctiveness. And
it is only in this coming together in difference, expressed and revealed through speech,
that new formations, political or otherwise, can be brought about and new beginnings can
emerge. In human togetherness within the public sphere, this disclosure through speech
is key for Arendt, as each newcomer to the public sphere must primordially face the
question: ‘who are you?’23 It is through speech that the ‘who’ is revealed.
Speech and plurality are related; if there were no difference, the need for speech
would be less pressing. Through speech, commonalities and differences can be mediated
and moderated and it is speech that allows us to ‘converse together rather than sound in
chorus like sheep’.24 Political man is thus essentially constituted by speech.25 Disclosing
nature of speech is not entirely unproblematic. It can come to light only when humans are
with one another – not for or against one another. It is in the latter use of speech that aims
toward a specific end, rather than a goal,26 that speech can become ‘mere talk’ as

18. Fenichel-Pitkin, Attack of the Blob, 14.

19. Arendt, The Human Condition, 40–1.
20. Arendt, The Promise of Politics, 94.
21. Arendt, The Human Condition, 175.
22. Ibid., 175–6.
23. Ibid., 178.
24. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 131.
25. Ibid., 3.
26. Arendt makes a strong distinction between the terms ‘end’ and ‘goal’, whereby the former denotes
a specific and defined teleological outcome, or end-state, while the latter refers to an aim.
Schwarz 171

instruments of propaganda, manipulation and political persuasion.27 Here, speech

becomes untethered from action per se and gains relevance within a much broader spec-
trum than action. As Margaret Canovan highlights: ‘Speech is presumably the wider
category, since we do a great deal of talking that could not be regarded as action – social
chat for instance’.28 Not all speech is concerned with disclosure, some also addresses
issues of the worldly and tangible ‘in-between’ people as well as of the web of relation-
ships, as Arendt calls the intangible ‘in-between’ that emerges in the interaction of men.29
Butler, in her insightful work on the performativity of speech, highlights this performa-
tive aspect of speech as having both, a political or a social dimension. Its various dimen-
sions, whether that be in critique, in description, in advocacy or defence, may take on a
political or a social dimension. Speech, in this sense, can take on many dimensions and
in this, is playful, unpredictable and never fixed.30 But where speech engages with an
interest for the wider public and within a public sphere, the politically performative
dimension crystallises. This is closely related to the speech/action relationship in Arendt’s
work. Crucial here is that the outcome of speech, like the outcome of action, is always
and inherently contingent. Where speech and action part ways, however, speech loses its
disclosing (and thus politically constitutive) character and becomes performative in an
instrumental dimension outside of politics proper. While critics have noted that Arendt
leaves her readers somewhat wanting with the exposition of how speech might be under-
stood outside of politics, and how it can be conceptualised more accurately,31 for the
purpose of this article we can depart from the assertion that speech can and ought to
constitute a performative and thus a political act – even in Arendt’s complex account. For
speech to transpire, the public realm as a sphere where humans gather is significant, as
the next section will discuss.

The Public Sphere as a Web of Relations

Underlying the categories indicated above is Arendt’s articulation of man as inhabiting
not merely a given world of natural elements but also a shared, human-made world of
artefacts that corresponds to the act of fabrication, a key aspect of the human condition
in Arendt’s assessment. The function and role of a common and shared world that lends
permanence to human life is of significance here. For her, the world is a product of the
human aspect of work, it is created not solely for immediacy or consumption but for a
temporal structure that exceeds the biological life cycle of one generation only. The
world, as a tangible stage upon which human history unfolds through events, connects
the plurality of men, while simultaneously holding space to ensure the freedom of men
to engage in political action. In contrast to the contingent and changing nature of politics

27. Arendt, The Human Condition, 180.

28. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 131.
29. Arendt, The Human Condition, 182.
30. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge,
1997).
31. George Kateb, Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience and Evil (Totowa, NJ: Rowman &
Allanheld 1984), 14.
172 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

proper, this manmade shared world, and with it the public sphere, relies on a certain level
of permanence. For Arendt, ‘without the world into which men are born and from which
they die, there would be nothing but changeless eternal recurrences, the deathless ever-
lastingness of the human as of all other animal species’.32 Only through the existence of
a shared artificial world do aspects of the human condition achieve meaning, life can
gain a narrative and events can unfold. It is in such a narrative-providing structure that
humans can choose to reveal themselves and engage with others in the perpetual creation
of new beginnings in a public sphere, actualise power and engage in politics proper.
Just as with plurality, the public sphere is of key significance for Arendt. For her,
public means ‘everything that appears in public can be seen and heard by everyone and
has the widest possible publicity’.33 Appearance in this public realm constitutes reality.
‘Public’ signifies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of us and distinguished
from our privately owned place in it, in a coming together of human plurality, where
people meet in a common ground, coming from different locations, from different posi-
tions.34 It is within and through this public sphere that the web of human relationships is
created and perpetuated. It constitutes that which is literally in-between people and with
which most action and speech is concerned.35 The web of human relations is thus consti-
tuted by those aspects that exist and transpire in-between (inter-esse) men in the widest
architectural, geographical and theoretical sense: the intangible and subjective but con-
stitutive aspects of action and speech and the physical, worldly in-between of artificial
objects. And it is in this web of relations that a person is revealed not merely as ‘what’
they are but rather of ‘who’ they are in their unique differentiation. Through acting within
this web, humans can introduce ‘into the public realm something which, though intangi-
ble, is perfectly real and has consequences of its own. Every action is a new beginning
and thus unexpected’.36 Given these broad characteristics in theory, at least, this sphere
could potentially stretch as far as the globe, provided that this common world is truly
common as a meeting ground.
This public sphere is preserved by another key aspect in the Arendtian account of
political philosophy: power. In her words:

Power preserves the public realm and the space of appearance, and as such it is the lifeblood of
the human artifice, which, unless it is the scene of action and speech, of the web of human
affairs and relationships and the stories engendered by them, lacks its ultimate raison d’être. 37

It is thus important to have a brief look at what constitutes power in the Arendtian account
to understand this relationship more thoroughly.

32. Arendt, The Human Condition, 97.

33. Ibid., 50.
34. Ibid., 73.
35. Ibid., 182.
36. James Knauer, ‘Motive and Goal in Hannah Arendt’s Concept of Political Action’, in
Hannah Arendt – Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. Gareth
Williams (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), 292.
37. Arendt, The Human Condition, 204.
Schwarz 173

The Political Potential of Power

In attempting to assess the actual potency of social networks on the creation of political
action proper, we must consider Arendt’s exposition of what constitutes power and what
is political action more closely. For Arendt, power and political action are aligned in a
number of aspects. Both can only be actualised in the context of human plurality, and
both have an intrinsic and underlying contingency, whereby outcomes cannot be ascer-
tained fully. Like political action, power depends on three key aspects: plurality,
freedom and a shared space. Arendt’s account of what constitutes power, how power
functions and what its core characteristics are, is by no means uncontested.38 In many
traditional and contemporary accounts of what constitutes power, power is understood in
terms of command and obedience, whereby power often is conflated with strength, force
and violence – specifically in the sovereign context.39 Arendt draws a strict distinction
between these terms in order to properly define what constitutes power.40 For her, power
is posited as the opposite of violence.41 In other words, power, for Arendt, is not power
over humans but rather power of humans. As such, it comprises a number of core attrib-
utes. First, power is a property that functions and is actualised but never contained or
preserved. Power is thus not an instrument of force, strength or violence, by a sovereign
or an individual, and to which individuals are subject, rather, power is generated among
people – like energy – in plurality, and, in its permanent potentiality, can never be con-
served but rather remains perpetually ephemeral – arising and disappearing only with the
gathering and disbanding of people. Secondly, power is also boundless in Arendt’s
account. Its only limits are other people.42 In other words, there is no limitation to the
scope of power other than by the number of interacting humans. Thirdly, for Arendt,
power is entirely relational, taking place between subjects – it can neither be possessed
nor stored. Specifically, power, Arendt asserts, ‘corresponds to the human ability not to
just act, but act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a
group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together’.43 In other
words, power is always possible as a potentiality as long as people are able to band
together in the formation of a group with a common or shared interest. Power can thus
only exist for as long as this collectivity of power-generating subjects remains an active
collective. A disbandment of the collective lets power vanish.
The Arendtian concept of power is perhaps more closely related to a process of fric-
tion, by which power is generated but the level of this generation of power cannot be

38. Canovan, Hannah Arendt; Paul Riceur, ‘Power and Violence’, in Hannah Arendt – Critical
Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, ed. Gareth Williams (Abingdon: Routledge,
2006).
39. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace, 1969), 40–7; Canovan, Hannah
Arendt, 209–10; Kateb, Hannah Arendt, 18.
40. Arendt, On Violence, 56; Patricia Owens, Between Wars and Politics – International
Relations and the Thought of Hannah Arendt (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007),
16–19; Canovan, Hannah Arendt.
41. Arendt, On Violence, 56.
42. Arendt, The Human Condition, 201.
43. Arendt, On Violence, 44.
174 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

institutionalised permanently. In other words, power can only ever be ‘actualised’, but
never fully ‘materialised’,44 and it always relies on the very plurality and differentiation
of men. This means that power, for Arendt, can be generated at different locales and be
maintained wherever people come together in a shared interest, including in the resist-
ance to other locales of power. Here again we can distinguish Arendt’s understanding of
power as acknowledging the agency of subjects as able to change structures, to bring
about something that is new and unknown – for better or for worse, locally and globally
– in a cooperative dynamism.45 It is here, in this dynamic coming together to actualise
power that Arendt sees the greatest potential for revolution. It is her assertion that the
most lasting effects of a revolution can never be brought about through violence but are
closely related to a shift of power. It is only when power (of a ruling or governing entity)
has splintered and deteriorated that revolutions are possible (but not necessary). For
Arendt, however, revolutions are never ‘made’46 indicating that a contest of arms against
arms does not constitute a revolution unless power (as the opposite of violence) plays an
instrumental part in bringing about fundamental changes. In her words: ‘Everything
depends on the power behind the violence’ (emphasis added).47
How then can we contextualise this Arendtian account of politics and power with the
online social media networks that were hailed as fundamental in bringing about revolu-
tions in Egypt and other Arab countries? And how would she assess such virtual net-
works in light of politics proper? In order to answer these questions, a brief look at
contemporary perceptions of the nature and effectiveness of online social media for the
creation of political action is in order.

Twitter Bombs and Facebook Fads

Network platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube reach an online community of
millions and have been growing at an exponential rate. Twitter, with its micro-blogging
format, has shot up to become one of the fastest growing Internet sites since its inception
in 2006. Users can broadcast thoughts, ideas, texts, photos and can connect with other,
likeminded individuals within the limits of 140 characters. As of 2012, the number of
Twitter users just exceeded 500 million, with as many tweets being posted each week.48
Similarly Facebook, available in 70 languages, aims to connect friends worldwide and
boasts over 1.19 billion active users as of September 2013.49 The majority of Facebook
users are located in the United States, followed by Asia, Europe, Africa and Oceania. Both

44. Arendt, The Human Condition, 200.

45. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 214.
46. Arendt, On Violence, 48.
47. Ibid., 49.
48. Ingrid Lunden, ‘Twitter Passed 500m Users in June 2012, 140m of Them in US; Jakarta,
“Biggest Tweeting” City’, TechCrunch, 30 July 2012. Available at: http://techcrunch.
com/2012/07/30/analyst-twitter-passed-500m-users-in-june-2012-140m-of-them-in-us-
jakarta-biggest-tweeting-city/
49. Facebook Newsroom, Key Facts (2013), available at: http://newsroom.fb.com/content/
default.aspx?NewsAreaId=22.
Schwarz 175

sites are among the most frequently visited Internet platforms on a daily basis worldwide
– the possibilities for global connections and mobilisation seem endless and chime some-
what with studies that have shown that an increased use of the Internet facilitates civic
participation, not least, as Manuel Castells notes, through the raised communicative power
it may generate.50 Specifically in the contemporary context, where a decline in political
engagement among young people has been diagnosed and much documented51 the poten-
tial of social networks to reignite shared social and political interests seems potent. Indeed,
as Baumgartner and Morris acknowledge, ‘[t]he Internet has been touted as a channel
through which youth may become mobilized into politics and public affairs’.52
Current research on the impact of online social networks on offline activity shows
that interactions on some social media platforms not only reflect but also have the
capacity to shape aspects of offline social networks.53 There is thus evidence to sug-
gest that the online and offline realm should not solely be considered as separate enti-
ties but rather as areas of interaction that share intersections and characteristics.
Nonetheless, research on this topic is still young 54 and studies into this subject have
yielded mixed evidence and results. To date, opinions are divided as to whether the
Internet has a positive effect on social participation and/or political participation or
not.55 While some consider the mobilising capacity of Facebook and Twitter an

50. Dhavan Shah, Nojin Kwak and R. Lance Holbert, ‘ “Connecting” and “Disconnecting”
with Civic Life: Patterns of Internet Use and the Production of Social Capital’, Political
Communication 18, no. 2 (2001): 141–62; Manuel Castells, ‘Communication, Power and
Counter-power in the Network Society’, International Journal of Communication 1 (2007):
238–66, 257.
51. Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan Morris, ‘My FaceTube Politics – Social Networking
Websites and Political Engagement of Young Adults’, Social Science Computer Review 28,
no. (2010): 24–44, 25.
52. Ibid.; Gustaffson, ‘The Subtle Nature of Facebook Politics’.
53. S.M. Reich, K. Subrahmanyam and G. Espinoza, ‘Friending, IMing, and Hanging Out
Face-to-face: Overlap in Adolescents’ Online and Offline Social Networks’, Developmental
Psychology 48, no. 2 (2012): 356–68.
54. Campbell, ‘Social Networks and Political Participation’.
55. For positive accounts of the effect of the Internet on social and political participation
see, for example, Shah et al., ‘ “Connecting” and “Disconnecting”’; John P. Robinson,
Meyer Kestnbaum, Alan Neustadtl and Anthony Alvarez, ‘Mass Media Use and Social
Life among Internet Users’, Social Science Computer Review 18 (2000): 490–501; Erik
P. Bucy and Kimberly S. Gregson, ‘Media Participation: A Legitimizing Mechanism of
Mass Democracy’, New Media & Society 3, no. 3 (2001): 357–80. For evidence indicating
a negative relationship see, for example, Morozov, The Net Delusion; Malcom Gladwell,
‘Small Change’, The New Yorker, 4 October 2010, available at: http://www.newyorker.
com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=1; Norman H. Nie and
Sunshine Hillygus, ‘Education and Democratic Citizenship’, in Making Good Citizens:
Education and Civil Society, eds Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2001); Michael Margolis and David Resnik, Politics as Usual:
The ‘Cyberspace Revolution’ (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000); Robert D.
Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 2000).
176 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

indispensable asset for political action in today’s web-oriented social and political
context, others maintain that it cannot lead to an increase in political action proper as
the consequences of assembling in a virtual realm for a political cause rarely trans-
lates effectively into offline political action. In other words, it is not yet entirely clear
in how far virtual online activism affects the reality that is to be acted upon in an
offline context. For Morozov, it comes down to a statistical probability that some of
the thousands of Facebook groups and causes will have some effect eventually. But it
remains just that: a statistical probability rather than a causal relationship.56 While
mobilisation and group-formation is facilitated by highly connected online networks,
their political efficacy may be somewhat overstated.57
The case of the tumultuous KONY2012 campaign, by the San Diego-based NGO
Invisible Children, illustrates this issue and has most recently given new life to pub-
lic debates over how effective and efficient Internet campaigns can be in terms of
social activism and political action. The 30-minute campaign video – uncharacteris-
tically long for a viral campaign – aired on 5 March 2012 and was primarily aimed
at raising awareness about the horrendous deeds of Ugandan rebel leader Joseph
Kony, who has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, by
‘making Kony famous’. In an impassioned call for solidarity with the children of
Uganda, the KONY2012 campaign called on political leaders, celebrities and citi-
zens of the world to help ‘stop’ the brutal LRA rebel leader Joseph Kony. To do so,
the video asks, people should pass the message on, get the KONY2012 kit (t-shirts,
posters and wristbands) and mobilise on 20 April 2012 to help bring Joseph Kony to
justice for his cruel deeds. The video is laden with dramatic images and music and
rich in emotive content. Within hours of being released, the video exploded onto the
cyber-sphere, quickly becoming the most viral video ever.58 Some 70 million view-
ers had clicked on the campaign video on various online channels by day four. After
only one week, the video had been mentioned in nearly 5 million tweets and an aver-
age of 1.3 million twitter messages about KONY2012 hit the ether per day in the
three days following the release of the video.59 In terms of raising awareness, the
video has been a success, owing the lion’s share of this success to social media net-
works such as Twitter and Facebook. Along with the release of the KONY2012
video, the Internet virtually exploded with critiques of the video and the campaign
itself, posted on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and a multitude of other online channels
– a textbook case of the viral potency to mobilise people in the name of a social and
political activism. Or is it?

56. Morozov, The Net Delusion, 180.

57. Ibid. 187.
58. David Campbell, ‘Kony 2012: Networks, Activism and Community’, available at: http://
www.david-campbell.org/2012/03/16/kony2012-networks-activism-community/ (accessed
on 23 March 2012).
59. Pew Research Centre, ‘The Viral Kony 2012 Video’, Pew Research Center’s Internet and
American Life Project; 2012, available at: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Kony-2012-
Video/Main-report.aspx.
Schwarz 177

What of Revolution 2.0

Critics60 have highlighted that the actual efficacy of such campaigns and the media
through which they are communicated may simply not have the lasting effects a ‘real
world’ activism campaign may have. In his analysis of social activism, Morozov points
here to a disconnect between mobilisation and organisation as he notes: ‘The newly gained
ability to mobilize may distract us from developing a more effective capacity to organ-
ize.’61 Not only is the call to action involving the click of a button questionable as a politi-
cal act, it is in its sentiment also somewhat ephemeral and runs the risk of absolving those
clicking from any further activity and political organisation. Furthermore, as David
Campbell astutely observes, the KONY2012 video went viral ‘because there was a pre-
existing network of activists, built up over years through Invisible Children’s media strat-
egy who used social media to spread it far and wide’,62 highlighting the role community
plays in the dissemination of a message. The question remains: can online social network-
ing campaigns truly create political power and political action or are they mere purveyors
of fads and flashes that fall short of being able to constitute and create anything that could
be considered political action? The lacklustre aftermath of the KONY2012 campaign sug-
gests the latter. The day of 20 April 2012 in which supporters of the KONY2012 cam-
paign were called on to ‘cover the night’ came and went without much visible and lasting
impact. As Rory Carroll observes: ‘The movement’s phenomenal success in mobilizing
young people online … flopped in trying to turn that into real world actions’.63
In the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, online social networks have been attributed
as instrumental factors in the removal and/or overturn of dictatorships and bringing
about democracy in its basic shape – as Morozov sardonically puts it: ‘Tweets were sent.
Dictators were toppled. Internet = Democracy. QED.’64 Indeed, several studies suggest
that ‘social networking now seems to be impacting political and social life across the
globe’, indicating that online social networks as such have affected political elections in
a range of countries, from the US to Iran and China.65 Attia et al. claim that both Facebook
and Twitter have played not only a peripheral but rather indeed a pivotal role in the upris-
ings in the Arab world, aligning their assessment with Wael Ghonim’s claim that the
‘power of the people is greater than the people in power’ in Revolution 2.0.66 Egypt

60. See for example Jack Bratich, ‘The Rise of the Flashpublics – My Little Kony’,
Counterpunch.org available at: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/13/my-little-kony/
(accessed on 23 March 2012); Campbell, ‘Kony 2012’; Max Fisher, ‘The Soft Bigotry
of Kony 2012’, The Atlantic, 8 March 2012, available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/
international/archive/2012/03/the-soft-bigotry-of-kony-2012/254194/
61. Morozov, The Net Delusion, 196.
62. Campbell, ‘Kony 2012’.
63. Rory Caroll, ‘Cover the Night Fails to Move from the Internet to the Streets’, Guardian, 21
April 2012, World News, available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/21/kony-
2012-campaign-uganda-warlord (accessed on 11 September 2012).
64. Morozov, ‘Facebook and Twitter Are Just Places Revolutionaries Go’.
65. Ashraf Attia, Nergis Aziz, Barry Friedman and Mahdi F. Elhusseiny, ‘Commentary: The
Impact of Social Networking Tools on Political Change in Egypt’s “Revolution 2.0”’,
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 10, no. 4 (2011): 369–74.
66. Wael Ghonim, Revolution 2.0 (New York: Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, 2012).
178 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

serves as the case in point. For Attia et al. it was the power of the online social networks
that not only initiated but also facilitated the overthrow of the Mubarak regime in early
2011. In their assessment, the very roots of the revolution stem from demonstrations that
are linked to the use of online social networks, based on the sheer numbers of networked
potential participants. Furthermore, online social networks enabled young Egyptians to
‘freely communicate with each other and form groups to oppose Mubarak’s totalitarian
regime and government’.67
Online social networks, and Facebook here specifically, thus crystallised as a proxy
realm for a free physical public space that had been otherwise occluded in a totalitarian
regime.68 Within this proxy realm of communicative freedom, social network users in
Egypt (and beyond) developed ties and relations with one another in solidarity for a
shared struggle for change.69 This raises the question, how does such a virtual commu-
nity emerge that may hold the potential to impact on social and political life within and
across borders? What are the key features that constitute this proxy realm of freedom and
that make it a potential conduit for the creation of power and political action? Several
studies have shown that the very basis of how these virtual networks function is not
much different than real-world social networks. A key factor here is trust – social, politi-
cal or otherwise.70
When considering the political effectiveness of online tools such as Facebook and
Twitter, however, it is important to keep in mind that they are primarily tools that pro-
mote social interaction and research indicates that social networks are primarily used, as
the name suggests, for social purposes. They are largely built around ‘weak ties’.71 In
other words, group formation is made easier in social networks and does not require
much ‘social glue to begin with’.72 Facebook, specifically, aims to connect people that
have already existing relationships, as peripheral as they might be, and where a distinct
social association is already in place. Twitter, on the other hand, has the capacity to con-
nect hitherto unassociated and unaffiliated people from a much wider spectrum and with-
out the explicit demand of reciprocity. The ties, however, remain largely weak.
Studies indicate that social networks are chiefly used for entertainment and staying
connected with existing affiliations.73 This seems reflected in the statistics on Twitter
use as captured in a representative study conducted by Pear Analytics in 2009. The
study found that the core content of Twitter feeds is somewhat personal comprising

67. Attia et al., ‘Commentary’, 372.

68. Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.; Baumgartner and Morris, ‘My FaceTube Politics’; Weiwu Zhang, Thomas J. Johnson,
Trent Seltzer and Shannon L. Bichard, ‘The Revolution Will Be Networked: The Influence
of Social Networking Sites on Political Attitudes and Behaviour’, Social Science Computer
Review 28, no. 1 (2010): 75–92.
71. Gladwell, ‘Small Change’; Mark Granovetter, ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, American
Journal of Sociology 78, no. 6 (1973): 1360–80.
72. Morozov, The Net Delusion, 187.
73. Baumgartner and Morris, ‘My FaceTube Politics’, 27.
Schwarz 179

either conversational tweets (37.5 per cent) or ‘pointless babble’74 (40 per cent). This
was followed by tweets that pass along information (8.7 per cent), self-promoting
tweets (5.7 per cent) and only 3.6 per cent appeared to relate to news – almost as many
as spam tweets with 3.75 per cent.75 This distribution appears to confirm the preva-
lence of inter-personal relationships in online social networks. Such networks are thus
rooted in personal connections (existing or new) and less likely to be organised by
topic or issue. Baumgartner and Morris quote Danah Boyd in this context as they
confirm:

Over the last decade, the dominant networked publics have shifted from being topically
organized to being structured around personal networks. Most users no longer seek … to
discuss particular topics with strangers. Instead, they are hanging out online with people that
they already know.76

This gravitating toward the known is essentially a feature of trust, as defined in Zhang
et al. as ‘expectations people have of each other, of the organizations and institutions in
which they live and of the natural and moral social orders that set the fundamental under-
standings of their lives’.77 Trust is thus a crucial aspect for engagement within all social
networks. It is primarily through networks of existing affiliations that trust is fostered
and only as such can translate into the formation of politically inclined affiliations and,
potentially action through communications, as Attia et al. state: ‘When people communi-
cate through social networking tools, they are likely to perceive the suggestions of peo-
ple whom they know as credible and trustworthy’.78 Nonetheless, Baumgartner and
Morris maintain that in the use of online social networks, ‘political engagement is at best
an ancillary interest’.79 Zhang et al. suggest that political interest must already be existent
in a network in order to be actualised in a social network and research has shown that
there is a distinct difference between political activity online and political activity offline,
in that the former does not necessarily translate into the latter. In Gladwell’s words:
‘weak ties seldom lead to high-risk activism’.80
Social networking platforms as a source for political action per se might be limited,
however, as sources for political information and political deliberation they appear to
have considerable efficacy as Tumasjan et al. have shown in the context of social

74. Pear Analytics’ use of the term ‘pointless babble’ is somewhat disputed as too superficial
(for more detail see Danah Boyd, ‘Can Social Networking Sites Enable Political Action?’
in Rebooting Democracy, eds A. Fine, M. Sifry, A. Raseij and J. Levi [New York: Personal
Democracy, 2008]) and should perhaps more accurately be considered ‘social grooming’
– both terms, however, are chiefly within a non-political purpose and realm.
75. Pear Analytics, ‘Twitter Study’ (2009), available at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/18548460/
Pear-Analytics-Twitter-Study-August-2009.
76. Baumgartner and Morris, ‘My FaceTube Politics’, 27.
77. Zhang et al., ‘The Revolution Will Be Networked’.
78. Attia et al., ‘Commentary’, 373.
79. Baumgartner and Morris, My FaceTube Politics’, 27.
80. Gladwell, ‘Small Change’.
180 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

networks as indicators for election outcomes.81 Here, the relevance of homogeneity and
heterogeneity of online social networks must be considered. Similar to offline social net-
works, online social networks tend toward homophily.82 In other words, as Eguiluz et al.
and Zhang et al. find in their studies, like tends to associate with like. This, in turn ‘rein-
forces existing political disposition’.83 Furthermore, studies have shown that heterogene-
ity promotes participation in ‘community forums and assorted political activities’.84
It is thus a coming together of likeminded people, typically with already existing
political inclinations, that has the greater potential for political behaviour, and it is
through a more heterogeneously inclined social network that more plural information
flow may transpire. Studies have shown, thus, that there are greater networks among
likeminded individuals, which, however, add little to stimulating debate among differing
views.85 A recent Pew Research Center study has found that frequently networked friends
disagree with friends on political opinion (only 25 per cent indicated that they always
agree with their friends), however 66 per cent of those who disagree frequently will
mostly ignore the views rather than respond. Interestingly, however, the same study has
also found that 38 per cent of online social network users have only through the use of
virtual networks discovered that their views differ from those of their friends.86 In other
words, political information relies on an already existent shared interest in politics for its
dissemination and thus for power and political action to be decided on this virtual com-
munications platform.
Online social networks, as the social space where power is determined, are thus by no
means unproblematic as channels for engaging politically, not merely online but also
offline. Questions remain as to whether they constitute an actual public sphere of politi-
cal freedom or rather a (commercial) platform that has the capacity to influence its users
beyond their notice. It remains obscure whether they thrive on plurality or have a homo-
geneous and homogenising tendency, promoting behaviour, rather than action. In the
context of the possibility for political action through online social networks, these aspects
are crucial and it is here that I am turning again to the work of Hannah Arendt to assess
how far social networks are able to facilitate or frustrate efforts in the formation of politi-
cal power and the creation of new beginnings. The next section will consider this ques-
tion by contextualising some of the key aspects in the formation of political action and
power in Arendt’s work with the nature of online social networks, specifically: plurality
and the existence of a global public sphere.

81. Andranik Tumasjan, Timm O. Sprenger, Philipp G. Sandner and Isabell M. Welpe, ‘Election
Forecasts with Twitter: How 140 Characters Reflect the Political Landscape’, Social Science
Computer Review 29, no. 4 (2011): 402–18.
82. Victor M. Eguiluz, Przemyslaw A. Grabovicz and Jose J. Ramasco, ‘Dynamics in Online
Social Networks’, Eprint arXiv: 12100808 (2012).
83. Zhang et al., ‘The Revolution Will Be Networked’, 79.
84. Ibid.
85. Baumgartner and Morris, ‘My FaceTube Politics’, 33.
86. Pew Research Center, ‘Social Networking Sites and Politics’, Pew Research Center’s
Internet and American Life Project; available at: http://www.pewinternet.org/topics/Social-
Networking.aspx.
Schwarz 181

Arendt in Cyberspace
At first glance there appear to be a considerable number of characteristics constituting
online social networks that naturally seem to fall into the strict categories that Arendt
draws in the context of the human condition: they offer a public sphere within which an
essentially plural (global) humanity can come together in difference, they function pri-
marily through the medium of speech, which is the constitutive character for political
action in the widest Arendtian sense and, in their character as a meeting place, carries the
potential for people to actualise power in a political pursuit. But we would be amiss to
take these congruencies on face value without looking at least a little more closely into
the nuances.

Online Social Networks as Global Public Sphere

On a cursory reading it would seem that online social networks, as a human artifact, are
a natural extension of what Hannah Arendt would approvingly consider as a human-
made world within which all aspects of the human condition can unfold. As discussed
above, this human-made world is important for Arendt, as without it, humans are
unlikely to be fully human unless they live in a duality of human-made worldly facets
and the natural aspects of the earth as an environment. This human-made world of arti-
fice is also of utmost significance to Arendt, as it provides, in quite a literal sense, the
space (as in distance as well as in sphere) for humans to interact, take up different posi-
tions and reflect in plurality upon the common world from varying perspectives. It is
only in this artificial world that men, in their togetherness, can gain a ‘grasp of reality
that nobody can achieve on their own’.87 The artificiality here is crucial as it provides a
structure upon which the human narrative of a shared world can unfold and, unlike the
perpetual cyclicality and circularity of nature and life processes, creates shared meaning
and ties to a common world. In the broadest sense, online social networks such as
Twitter and Facebook, built by and on human-made artifice, do just that. They offer an
artificial structure within which humans can trade different views, perspectives and
experiences and come to constitute new beginnings for a shared world. Just like the
architectural aspects of a city within which men and women can gather, and through
speech and action engage politically, Twitter and Facebook provide the virtual architec-
tural structure within which unique persons can come together and reveal their ‘who’,
rather than their what. It serves as the inter-esse, the in-between, for speech and action
upon which the web of human relationships is built. Furthermore, this virtual realm can
serve as a proxy realm to resort to when the physic public sphere has been tyrannically
restricted, as was the case in Egypt. However, as with most things, it is not as simple as
that.
For Arendt, a shared world of human-made artifice is much more cultural than techno-
logical. She relates the artifice to its original root – art – as a model for human fabrication,
rather than the scientifically rooted constructions of technology. This is not entirely without

87. Canovan, Hannah Arendt, 107.

182 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

controversy. In Canovan’s words: ‘the world she envisages and values […] is more emphati-
cally a world of cultural objects and milieux than of engineering’.88 This stems in part from
a deep skepticism toward an increasingly technocratic modernity that she saw as highly
problematic in a political and social context. Furthermore, as a feature of a human-made
world within which humans can fully unfold, such artifices as social networks don’t meet
one of the key requirements she stipulates for artifacts as constitutive of a shared and com-
mon world: durability of structures and artifacts. The ever-fluctuating and dynamic nature of
online social networks, as they come and go remain essentially intangible as an architectural
space for interaction. Some disappear as quickly as they appear. The rapid demise of
Friendster and MySpace are a case in point. While online social networks, as platforms,
share characteristics, it is uncertain whether they will constitute a meaningful sphere in five
or ten years, as technology might produce yet entirely other spheres. The very novel and
potentially ephemeral nature of Twitter and Facebook as proxy platforms render them
unsuitable to be considered a durable stage on which men can interact in their plural unique-
ness in the Arendtian sense. Arendt has something much more tangible and durable in mind
when she considers this public sphere of human exchange and inter-action and she would
likely be critical of the temporary nature of this realm – it is erected for the here and now, the
speed with which this realm develops, enters and leaves the realities of men makes it non-
transcendent in terms of history, it is planned for the living only. This hinders the potential
for politics. ‘Without this transcendence into a potential earthly immortality, no politics,
strictly speaking, no common world and no public realm is possible’.89
A further aspect might be problematic in this context: the actual scope and ability of
virtual social networks to truly connect diverse people on a larger scale. Studies have
shown that despite carrying unlimited potential for possible connections, both Facebook
and Twitter actually appear to have immanent limitations that relate to our limitations as
humans to connect – this pertains to the nature of these networks as social and takes us
back to the ‘weak-ties’ issue innate to Twitter and Facebook. As Chris Taylor highlights
even online social networks tend toward tribalism. A study conducted by the University
of Indiana has shown that Twitter users can only maintain between 100–200 contacts in
order to not get overwhelmed – despite being theoretically connected to thousands more
users. In other words, Twitter users only converse meaningfully with a maximum of
100–200 of other users before it becomes simply too much.90 Furthermore, as the Pear
Analytics study and other research shows, the number of people contributing within and
to the global public Twittersphere is considerably less than those who consume the
tweets, with 5 per cent of Twitter users contributing 75 per cent of the tweets.91 This

88. Ibid., 109.

89. Arendt, The Human Condition, 75.
90. Bruno Gonçalves, Nicola Perra and Alessandro Vespignani, ‘Modeling Users’ Activity on
Twitter Networks: Validation of Dunbar’s Number’, PLoS ONE 6, no. 8(2011): e22656.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0022656; Chris Taylor, ‘Social Networking Utopia Isn’t Coming’,
CNN Tech, 27 June 2011, available at: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-06-27/tech/limits.social.
networking.taylor_1_twitter-users-facebook-friends-connections?_s=PM:TECH.
91. Lilian Weng, A. Flammini, A. Vespignani and F. Menczer, ‘Competition among Memes in a
World with Limited Attention’, Scientific Reports (2012) doi:10.1038/srep00335, available
at: http://www.nature.com/srep/2012/120329/srep00335/full/srep00335.html#/references;
Pear Analytics, ‘Twitter Study’.
Schwarz 183

raises the question as to how equal, egalitarian and political (in the Arendtian sense) this
sphere can possibly be. It furthermore calls into question the condition of plurality in this
context as the next section will discuss.

Social or Political: The Problem with Virtual Plurality

When considering online social networks as having the potential to create structures that
facilitate political action it is important to remember that they are primarily social plat-
forms, and not political ones. To conflate the two does not do justice to the potential
efficacy (or lack thereof) of social networks as instruments. As we have seen earlier, the
chief use of social networks is for entertainment and to connect with friends and acquaint-
ances. When considering plurality in this context we must keep this distinction in mind.
In society, people gravitate toward association, in a discriminatory (in the most literal
sense of the word) manner, equality is not granted but rather people seek to associate in
a homogenous way – like with like. This is reflected in recent studies on social networks
and politics (see above). For Arendt, it is within this social realm that humans discrimi-
nate. This is based on her understanding of the individual uniqueness of each person as a
comprehensive ‘who’, not merely a ‘what’. This plurality in the public realm is, as I have
outlined, the very cornerstone of politics in the public sphere for Arendt – it is not
required for the social spaces. Only if we are to understand the social realm as a pre-
political condition does her argumentation remain in line with her priority for plurality.
In the social sphere, we tend to gravitate toward sameness, toward homophily. A social
realm dominated by the drive toward association with the homogeneous thus must be
primarily considered as not belonging to the political sphere per se and carries the poten-
tial to become the most treacherous realm in modernity as, in its extreme potential for
conformism, difference is always in danger of becoming diminished, leaving those natu-
ral attributes that cannot be made ‘conform’ an obvious parameter for inclusion / exclu-
sion practices in societies. It is in the conflation, or perhaps the confusion, of the social
with the political that an inherently exaggerated assumption of the political potential of
social network lurks. In other words, when heterogeneity (or plurality) is not observed
and homogeneity dominates, behaviour is substituted for action and true politics can thus
not emerge. Given that, as we have seen earlier, social network users tend to have a more
active exchange among a homogeneous group of people, the efficacy of social networks
for political action remains doubtful. But even if plurality is not entirely ensured in the
social network sphere – what of social networks as a channel to appear and reveal oneself
to others through speech?

Could Tweets Be Considered Speech?

As discussed above, speech is a key aspect of politics and political action in the Arendtian
account. In her writing she frequently refers to speech as essential92 and as action as
constituted in word and deed; however, the content of what constitutes speech as political

92. Canovan, Hannah Arendt; Kateb, Hannah Arendt.

184 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

action remains obscured and we could only guess at what Arendt might think of such
truncated messages as tweets as speech acts. The online social networking sphere as a
disembodied realm for humans to come together in a revelatory capacity would perhaps
be appealing to Arendt, while the restrictive nature of confining oneself to ‘speaking’
within 140 characters would almost certainly have fallen on deaf ears in the Arendtian
account. Given that the majority of tweets relate to personal, conversational or trivial
issues, located entirely in a social sphere, it is likely that Arendt would have considered
such content not to constitute revelatory speech in the political sense at all but rather as
‘idle talk’.93 Facebook as a more homogeneous medium is perhaps even less appropriate
to consider as constituting true political speech acts in the Arentian sense. While ‘speech’
as Canovan and others have highlighted, is a much broader category than action, and
could or may comprise social aspects, Arendt had no time for speech acts as self-expres-
sion 94 as contributing anything to the creation of a shared world. It is precisely this
aspect of self-expression that is central to the use of Facebook and, to a degree, Twitter.
As Hart et al. write: ‘The aspect of representing oneself to other people in a social situa-
tion [is] a key feature within Facebook, which allows its users to express themselves
through the creation of personal profile that can be shared with friends’.95 This suggests
that activities on social networks might largely be introspective and hedonistic endeav-
ours that have little, if nothing to do with establishing a shared and common world. The
focus is no longer a being-with-others, but rather a broadcasting-to-others that defines
such types of one-way communication.

The Problem with Virtual Power

As with the public sphere, there are some obvious matching features of virtual social
networks in light of Arendt’s understanding of what constitutes power. Online social
networks are inherently contingent, exchanges are ephemeral and power created through
and within social networks is actualised and appears to last only momentarily. The seem-
ingly unlimited scope of the social network in cybersphere appears to be boundless, sup-
porting the boundlessness of power as such. Activity generated through such networks
appear to have a basis in potentiality as well. They adhere to dynamics that are in them-
selves contingent and ephemeral. During high profile events, such as sporting events or
a celebrity misfortune, Twitter use skyrockets, causing servers to crash and online ser-
vices to slow down. Twitter use, for example, shot up disproportionately when the news
of Osama Bin Laden’s death broke. Similarly, as we have seen with the KONY2012
campaign, activity can flare up in flurries, raising awareness and perhaps mobilising
people to become engaged and aware in a relatively short period of time, yet dissipating
almost as quickly as the phenomenon occurred.

93. Arendt, The Human Condition, 208.

94. Kateb, Hannah Arendt, 10; Arendt, The Human Condition, 323.
95. Jennefer Hart, Charlene Ridley, Faisal Teher, Corina Sas and Alan Dix, ‘Exploring the
Facebook Experience: A New Approach to Usability’, paper presented at 5th Nordic
Conference on Human-Computer Interaction: Building Bridges, 20–22 October 2008,
ACM, New York, 471–4.
Schwarz 185

The fundamental role of online social networks in the creation of popular power for
political revolutions may not entirely be clear at this stage. It remains questionable
whether online activity in the political context can possibly translate into veritable offline
activity and therein lies the crux and misunderstanding in the use of social networks for
political activity. As Jack Bratich writes in the context of the KONY2012 campaign:

Drawing on the power of social media to mobilize sentiment and bodies (a la the Arab Spring)
K-12 mutates the transnational socially-networked public opinion from a year ago in a few
ways. First, it wants to turn information into action, getting US users not only to share their
outrage and pass along info, but also to get out into the streets.96

What transpires is then essentially not a coming together of equals in a political cause but
rather a flashpublic, whereby the entertainment value and the initial ‘great ecstasy of
fraternity’97 outweigh the actual political act. Bratich explains this phenomenon: ‘The
flash of the flashpublic is a quick mobilization of attention and sharing towards a prede-
fined political objective’.98 This flashpublic relies, to a certain extent on both, homoge-
neity and mimicry, thus occluding the possibility for politics proper as Arendt would
have it. With its call to action, the KONY2012 flashpublic campaign resembles, accord-
ing to Bratich, a ‘funhouse mirror, grotesquely exaggerating the proportions of the body
politic involved’. Why, Bratich asks, ‘Because the mobilization for action is one already
determined as an instrument for someone else’s goals’.99

Conclusion
Despite the ambiguity of the benefit of online social networks for political action, it has
become increasingly clear that such networks and the political campaigns that are run on
social networking platforms can facilitate the information flow related to political events
and help coordinate political mobilisation campaigns. However, they are, and can only
be by their immanent limitations, one aspect, one tool in the efforts to mobilise for poli-
tics. There is a difference between using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook
for planning a revolution and executing a revolution. The former can be facilitated
through such network, the latter proves for many to be a delusion.100 As Morozov argues,
while the Internet broadly is instrumental (in the most literal sense) for bringing about
power and revolutions, it is merely that: an instrument, a tool. Political change, on the
other hand ‘continues to involve many painstaking, longer-term efforts to engage with
political institutions and reform movements’.101 And for that, as Arendt reminds us, it
would require more permanent structures as a public sphere than the virtual realm has to
offer. The regime change in Egypt, for example, was initiated by long-term campaigns of

96. Bratich, ‘The Rise of the Flashpublics’.

97. Arendt, On Violence, 50.
98. Bratich, ‘The Rise of the Flashpublics’.
99. Ibid.
100. Morozov, ‘Facebook and Twitter Are Just Places Revolutionaries Go’.
101. Ibid.
186 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(1)

offline communities that sought to mobilise a heterogeneous civic population by going

door-to-door, village-to-village. Looking at these online structures for the possibility of
politics through an Arendtian lens allows us to engage conceptually with some of the
characteristics of online social networks and how they might affect the possibility for
politics, rather than rely on specific case analyses and anecdotal evidence.
Arendt, having contributed her very critical opinion on technology at a conference on
cyberculture in 1964 might have found an appreciation for the medium as a political
channel to coordinate people in a contemporary context and she would likely have found
some redeeming aspects in online social networks in that they might serve as a proxy
realm in which freedom may come to pass and humans can engage in speech acts for the
exchange of information and appearances, – but within limits. Online social networks
provide primarily a realm that is characterised by homogeneity and homophily by its
very social nature. As a public sphere that binds humans in a shared and common world
and that facilitates politics proper the virtual realm is insufficient. As it relates to the
social aspects of human interaction much more directly than the political realm, such
networks would have held her appreciation and interest only briefly and in the context of
revolutions Arendt would likely have wholeheartedly concurred with Morozov that revo-
lutionaries are not made through online social networks but rather: ‘Facebook and Twitter
are just places revolutionaries go’.102

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Author Biography
Elke Schwarz is Lecturer in International Relations at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge and
a Guest Teacher at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research draws on the work of
Hannah Arendt and is concerned with the politics and ethics of contemporary technologies, with a
specific focus on lethal military technologies.

102. Ibid.