Anthony Maniscalco

Studies of Public Space and the Civic Contests Therein

Is Virtual Space Public?

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January 23, 2016. They say more than 20 inches of snow will fall by day’s end. If my afternoon walk offered any indicators, there’ll be at least that much on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. So, it seems a good day to think about what else is really on the ground.

The New Year did not roll in the way I anticipated. Nuff said on that point. Still, my existential considerations have also led me to think more feverishly about social media and public space—or social media as public space. Fact is, I’ve found myself in virtual space with a stirring, almost alarming, frequency this year. Some of that must be attributed to my weekly excursions to the Capitol in Albany, NY. “All aboard, Amtrak” is a veritable mantra for me these days.

That wondrous ride up and down the Hudson River inspires lots of meditation, particularly along the interstices between New York’s handsome locales. However, I also find myself on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram quite a bit. And I notice myself trying to understand the world and my place in it from the vantage of those apps on my phone. The whole thing seems strange, to be honest—and, perhaps, unwise.

One of the underlying questions in Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution—one of the book’s baselines, really—goes something like this: What is public space? Do we know it when we experience it? Is it planned? Built and pre-programmed? Is it socially constructed? Politically contested? Legally determined?

I’m not sure the question is answerable in any definitive way. Maybe we’re just supposed to practice our perspectives on public space, just as we’re supposed to practice public space and let the chips fall where they may.

Nevertheless, I’m repeatedly excited by insecurity while I’m on my i-Phone. I find myself plagued by the idea that I’m not practicing publicity while I’m scrolling down its screen with my thumbs, looking for the next great news report, photograph, or semblance of community membership. I am aware that I’m doing something public-like—seeing and relating to others, sometimes comparing myself to them and despairing accordingly.

What am I doing when I inhabit those virtual spaces with more abandon these days? Am I engaging in something bigger when I read the news, navel gaze, or admire my friends’ children? Am I really experiencing social or political phenomena from the comfort of the 7:15am “Maple Leaf,” en route to Toronto?

I know I’m doing something tantamount to public space, yes, but something else doesn’t feel right. That is, something doesn’t feel public in those environments. There is, I think, an excess of convenience in the public sphere comprised by our personal/handheld devices. Something, I don’t know, less participatory.

I’m thinking out loud and sharing in a blog post, I know, no less in hopes of reaching other readers and interested parties. I want to connect with people who agree with me, or others who will at least entertain the gravity of the question I’m trying to pose here.

The acknowledgement above goes to one of my primary concerns with virtual space as a model of public space: It seems that social media are too rife with their conveniences and confirmation biases. We can click our way to political participation. We can pick our audiences. We can hide behind the anonymity of our oft-creative handles and taglines. We can treat the medium as the message in our virtual spaces—mistaking communications about things and spaces political for space and politics. I’ve been using the terms “clicktivism” and “slacktivism” quite a bit since I wrote Public Spaces, Marketplaces, and the Constitution. I trust there’s resentment embedded in my use of those terms; there’s surely an expression of distrust in using them, and that much is evident.

We know how vitally important social media such as Twitter and Facebook were to protesters who gathered at Zuccotti Park in New York and sister spaces around the US a few years ago. Similarly, we know that the Arab Spring could not have reached critical mass or sustain its force without those media and their usefulness in alerting young people about what was happening where, or where people were going to assemble. The same sorts of vitalities have been expressed more recently in South America, in many Asian countries. The social media behind them were likewise deployed by Black Lives Matter activists inside the Mall of America, in Bloomington, MN this past Christmas.

That is to say there is undoubtedly a relationship in play. I believe I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge it. In the end, social media and political space may complement each other. I think one question to focus on is how that complementarity will manifest as these media continue to expand and the millennial generation and their successors ascend as the new inhabitants of our public spheres.

As I write, my hope is that the virtual spaces they come to depend on for these inhabitances will accommodate and perhaps expand their mobilizations. At a minimum, I hope they will withstand the politicizations that have traditionally sustained youthfulness.