In his book, originally published in German 2013, “In The Swarm, Digital Prospects,” Byung-Chul Han claims that digital communication and social media represent a cultural and behavioral shift in society larger even than the one recently experienced when electronic media entered into our lives. Where the introduction of power presses, Radio, and TV broadcasting produced a profound shift in practices and expectations from a pre-electronic media era, the current shift in communication is having a much more pervasive and complex change. And yet most people do not realize it. This book is a catalog of the hard to articulate changes that are reprograming us in the digital era.
The first is the loss of respect which presupposes a distance or a deferential consideration. “Respect forms the foundation for the public, or civil, sphere. When the former weakens, the latter collapses. The decline of civil society and a mounting lack of respect are mutually conditioning.” The lacking of distance can be seen in the speed which communication can travel. Han gives an example of the time needed to send an angry letter to the editor versus the time it takes to make an angry tweet and its possibility of going viral. A lack of respect has also come from anonymization. Where respect often comes from a real name with real credentials, achievements, and to “[p]ractices that involve responsibility, trustworthiness, and reliability [which] are also tied to being named; email and twitter handles are anonymous and a dime a dozen.
A shitstorm, that is, a situation marked by violent controversy, “represents an authentic phenomenon of digital communication….They arise in a culture where respect is lacking and indiscretion prevails.... [they] amount to kind of reflux, with all the destructive effects that this entails…. shitstorms flourish where hierarchies have flattened out…. The shitstorm is communicative noise.” Respect prevents shitstorms. Respecting someone usually means respect for their power, authority, or morality. “Respect is constituted by ascriptions of personal and moral value. A general decline in values is making the culture of respect crumble. Today’s role models demonstrate no inner values. External qualities distinguish them, above all.” External qualities that can be seen and photographed such as wealth, health and beauty are what make a “good” role model today.
In our society rage is giving way to outrage. Rage is different from anger it is constructive of action; anger is affect or noise. The rage of Achilles is what the whole Iliad is about. “[R]age can be sung because it carries the story of the poem [the Iliad] as a whole: it structures, inspires, animates, and gives rhythm….This rage is narrative—epic—because it tells of certain actions. Digital outrage cannot be sung. It admits neither action nor narration. Instead it is an affective condition, devoid of the power to act.” It is outrage society that allows shitstorms to develop. An outrage society is one characterized by a love of scandal. Outrage brings attention without distance; without respect. Outrage is fleeting: it wells up quickly and subsides quickly. There is no depth in digital outrage – at least none that makes a difference.
The recent changes in the world from the emergence of digital media (such as loss of respect and change of values, shitstorms, and outrage society) have created a new category of grouping of people: the digital swarm. “The digital swarm does not constitute a mass because no soul—no spirit—dwells within it. The soul gathers and unites. In contrast, the digital swarm comprises isolated individuals. The mass is structured along different lines: its features cannot be traced back to individuals. But now, individuals are melting into a new unit; its members no longer have a profile of their own. For a crowd to emerge, a chance gathering of human beings is not enough. It takes a soul, a common spirit, to fuse people into a crowd. The digital swarm lacks the soul or spirit of the masses. Individuals who come together as a swarm do not develop a we. No harmony prevails—which is what welds the crowd together into an active entity. Unlike the crowd, the swarm demonstrates no internal coherence. It does not speak with a voice. The shitstrom lacks a voice, too. Accordingly, it is perceived as noise.”
It is digital swarms that make things go viral and bring it to the attention of the regular media which then only amplifies the shitstorm until the next swarm forms around some other “news item”. I put the “news item” in quotes because in most cases it would not be a news item if it had not been for the shitstorm the swarm caused. This new phenomenon’s composition and ramifications are worthy of analysis and study.
Han then considers what kind of person enters into or joins a swarm. Han compares his “homo digitalis” with Marshall McLuhan’s “Homo electronicus” who, thanks to broadcast media could be a spectator anywhere in the world from the comfort of their home; quoting McLuhan: “a man whose private identity has been psychically erased by over-involvement.” You are a “nobody” in front of the TV, you are not seeking attention and you do not contribute; you mere receive.
“In contrast, today’s Homo digitalis is anything but ‘nobody.’ He retains his private identity, even when forming part of the swarm. Although he expresses himself anonymously, as a rule he has a profile—and he works ceaselessly at optimizing it. instead of being ‘nobody,’ he is insistently somebody exhibiting himself and vying for attention….Homo digitalis often takes the stage anonymously. He is not a nobody but a somebody—an anonymous somebody….the world of Homo digitalis evinces an entirely different topology. Spaces such as sports arenas and amphitheaters—that is, sites where masses meet—are foreign to this world….they form a gathering without assembly—a crowd without interiority….Above all, they are isolated, scattered hikikomori sitting alone in front of a screen. Electronic media such as radio assemble human beings. In contrast, digital media isolate them.”
Note three points: 1) he seems to contradict himself. Do they or don’t they have a profile? 2) “assemble” has a double meaning in the last paragraph. 3) We often hear that the Internet brings people together in new ways for both good and ill. Han says it isolates us. What do you think?
The digital swarm is analogous to insect swarms found in nature: they are volatile, fleeting, and unstable. Human digital swarms “commonly seem carnivalesque—ludic and nonbinding.” This is the exact opposite of the “classic crowd”: organized labour. A union is nothing like a swarm and it comes with power, resolve, a soul or spirit, and is not fleeting or whimsical. A union has most certainly developed a we, thus making it formidable and able to effect change.
Digital swarms are growing in number and intensity in the world today to the great benefit of the existing world order. “Those subject to the neoliberal economy do not constitute a we that is capable of collective action. The mounting egoization and atomization of society is making the space for collective action shrink. As such, it blocks the formation of a counterpower that might be able to put the capitalist order in question….Contemporary society is not shaped by multitude so much as solitude. The general collapse of the collective and the communal has engulfed it. Solidarity is vanishing. Privatization now reaches into the depths of the soul itself. The erosion of the communal is making all collective efforts more and more unlikely.”