Can new media allow us to encounter the world? — Starting from Arendt's theory of political society

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Li Jing is an associate researcher at the Institute of Journalism, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

This paper is a phased research result of the General Project of the National Social Science Foundation of China "Research on the Construction of subject theory of 'Intangible Labor', Symbolic Practice and Communication Science" (20BXW054).

A Return to Arendt: A New Inquiry into the Publicity of Media Technology

When web 2.0 technology represented by social media such as Facebook and Twitter refreshes our online experience, interactive use achieves a subversive advancement of the 1.0 technology era, optimistic technology determinism is not in the minority, technology makes "unprecedented, individual participation and empowerment of democracy possible" (Barassi & Treré, 2012), the public thinking brought about by new media technologies has become the focus of academic discussion. What is publicity? No matter how different theoretical frameworks are adopted, "publicness" fundamentally means "political participation" of the public. In the case of the theoretician Jürgen Habermas, as we know it, "political participation" was developed into the theory of political negotiation, which is the third way between left and right positions, and the content and means of publicity; rational negotiation underpins interaction in public space and thus makes democratic politics possible. In the existing literature, the publicity of Habermas's theoretical framework to new media technologies can be discussed everywhere. It can be said that when it comes to public issues, it is almost inseparable from Habermas's theoretical system. How technological advances in media work in public space has become an important practical issue, encompassed by Habermas's theoretical vision.

But while acknowledging the importance of Habermas's theory of publicity, we cannot ignore the indiscriminate covetousness of Habermas's theory, Hannah Arendt's theory of political action. If Habermas is the normative construction and development of Arendt's thought, are arelengt's more "broad" approach to politics and people. She repeatedly emphasizes that all human activities, including politics, cannot be understood at the level of inorder to, but rather as self-manifestation of actions themselves as values for the sake. Habermas's theory of political interaction, on the other hand, places too much emphasis on the results of rational negotiations, and it is not yet the real "action" in Arendt's view, that is, the meaning lies not in a result achieved, but in the process of action itself, in which the bravery and dignity of human beings are brewing. Arguably, in arendt, the theory of origins, she calls us back to man in a more authentic and powerful way, thus saving modern politics—politics is not in the sense of administrative power, but in the sense of participatory, truly human action. Arendt repeatedly emphasized that words and actions in the public sphere are inherently meaningful, that people affirm themselves in action and create memories that belong to the "world" in which people are active and transcend the finite, enduring, "our" world of man. Communicative action thus gives "meaning" to the "world" in the category of "means-ends". From this we can say that publicness in Arendt means the real encounter between man and the world: the world acquires meaning by filling the voidness in his words/actions in the public sphere, and man confirms the reality of himself and the world in the space in which he can be publicly appeared.

Although Arendt rarely talks directly about the medium, her theory is actually strongly inclusive of thinking about the media issue. In other words, Arendt's perspective opens up fresh ideas for the question of the publicity of the medium: "publicity" points to a "worldness" activity that is opposed to "worldlessness" behavior, confined to the private sphere that is not seen by others. Therefore, thinking about the publicity of media from the perspective of Arendt's theory can be transformed into the specific question of whether new media technology has "universality". Specifically, it has two dimensions: First, Arendt makes a strict distinction between "social" and political. Those who enter the public space and obtain publicity are "political." Unlike the definition of modern politics, Arendt appealed to the classics to give the fundamental meaning of "politics", which is a field of human freedom that allows people to enter and be publicly manifested. Freedom is the opposite of the purely private, obscure sphere of rejection of "manifestation", whereas in Arendt the "social" sphere is the opposite of the "publicly manifested" political sphere, which in principle accomplishes the "obscuration" of man. How can we understand the interactive spaces underpinned by new media technologies – people entering and starting to communicate? Is such a space of interaction "social" or public/political in Arendt's view? For social media in particular, does communication around the theme of "sociality" mean a direct denial of publicity? To answer these questions, we need to think about: Arendt's social theory gives a strict distinction between the two, how should theory and practice be docked when the practical background has turned to the rapid development of modern technology? This leads us to make further efforts, that is, is it possible to seek a new leap beyond the normative limitations of Arendt's theory of society on the content level?

Second, for Arendt, "publicness" means "public manifestation" of oneself, which requires the continuous presence of others in order to be "heard (appealed to words)" and "seen (to action)". If only superficially compared, today's new media technologies seem to give people ample opportunities for self-expression, and people can easily achieve their desire to speak and express themselves through social media. But can we assert publicity in this regard? Arendt emphasized that only by speaking and acting can people reveal who they are, thus revealing their unique personal identity and revealing themselves in the world. What is important is that this manifestation reveals "who someone is" rather than "what someone is", and the manifestation of "who" cannot be deliberately done, it is contained in one's words and deeds, and cannot be hidden unless there is complete silence and absolute inaction. Thus, the full realization of "manifestation" can only be accomplished in the public sphere (Arendt, 1958/2009: 180). It is in the realization of self-manifestation that people can confirm the reality of themselves and the truth of the world. Man's cosmopolitanity is confirmed only in his true relationship with others, whereas when confined to the private sphere, man "loses the world." So when Arendt leads us to ask questions about the medium, we have to ask: Does the space of communication enabled by the new media technology make human manifestation possible? At the same time, we cannot make the research object a "monolithic" without differentiation, but must distinguish the degree of publicity of different spatial types through key concepts, and the new medium and publicity cannot be directly linked to the simple and crude.

Arendt's intrusive social theory:

The obscurity and light of the network communication space

(i) Understanding intrusive social theory: a clear distinction between public and private

In an interview with journalist Günter Gaus in 1964, Arendt emphasized that he was not a philosopher, nor a political philosopher, but a political theorist. For in Arendt's view, philosophy always stands in the opposite direction of politics to some extent. Philosophy is fundamentally a love of wisdom, an experience of eternity in "wordless" contemplation, and all Arendt has to do is to distance himself from philosophy. She is fully capable of entering into contemplation, but she does not want to stop there, but deliberately withdraws from contemplation and devotes herself to the "world", that is, to devote herself to our "world" in a public human and political posture.

The "active life", which distinguishes itself from the contemplative life, is seen as a whole that adheres only to one principle, which, in Arendt's view, has major problems and is inseparable from the crisis of modern politics. Thus, Arendt painstakingly returned to classical philosophy, making a strictly defined distinction between the source of the practice of man, which has been regarded as a whole since modern times, and unearthing the absolutely insurmountable and clear boundaries hidden in it, namely, the division of labor, work and action. They mean an important distinction between the public and the private, and a strict social and political boundary, which underpins Arendt's theory of political society.

Although since Socrates philosophy has elevated the contemplation of the pursuit of truth above man's mundane activities, in classical Greek philosophy active life is not an internally ambiguous mess. Arendt returns to Aristotle's strict distinction between the public and private spheres, which is based on the division of the three kinds of activity. Labor is the production and consumption of necessary things by a living organism for the sake of self-preservation, in which only the self-existence of life has "no world", and the limited, repetitive production for the purpose of consuming or resisting the erosion of nature makes it impossible to leave anything lasting for the human world beyond the finite individual life of "mortality". Importantly, labor fundamentally does not require the presence of others. It is one-ness, diametrically opposed to "cooperation between people" because it implies the identity of species, i.e. that every member of a species is identical and commutative (Arendt, 1958/2009: 124). Under the surface of cooperation is absolute loneliness, and complete "no cosmopolitanity" is the property of labor.

Production is different from labor, and the main body of this activity is the homo faber . Production is a process of materialization, and what is produced is different from labor, the latter ends in exhaustion, while the former always defends and opposes the process of consumption of what is produced. In other words, durability is its characteristic. It is on top of this persistence that man-made "worlds" are established. This is how the world lies between man and nature, so that while obeying the inexorable laws of nature's empty cycle, man can also have a human world that can "stay", transcend the life of a finite individual, and be preserved and maintained continuously. The process of production is limited to the category of pure "means-ends", i.e., marked by a definite beginning and a foreseeable and precise end, in which the artist is the complete subject of his own actions, whether the artist is producing, repeating, adjusting or destroying, is the means by which the subject achieves the unquestionable end. There is no doubt that production is closely related to "cosmopolitanity", but what is achieved by production is a world at the level of "means-ends", and once the purpose is realized, the stage of production is completely over, as for what the application of the produced things in human life will bring, or change, all of this is completely beyond the "means-end" category and enters the new "meaning" category, and the production is completely incomprehensible and uninteresting.

Understanding the nature of these two types of activity, we can talk about what the "private sphere" is and why Arendt insisted on preventing "society" from entering the "public space."

Arendt revived Aristotle's definition of the private sphere, which laid the foundation for her theory and sowed the seeds of criticism. Aristotle made it clear in Political Science that the private sphere was limited to the family. The family is the existence of the individual around the principle of the inevitability of life, and labor is the content of family life: the working man does not need to be "publicly revealed" because it is fundamentally a complete alienation from the world. "No need to appear publicly" is the essence of the private sphere, and it means "veiled" loneliness—veiled in the inevitability of life or the external power of others, in the silence and silence of unspokenness. Such a private sphere is undoubtedly obscure, and when it is extended as an operating structure to the whole country, violence, coercion, despotism, or barbarism will occur only there, because it is "not seen by others"; at the same time, violence and coercion within private family organizations are considered legitimate, because they are only means of conquering necessity, and Arendt's theoretical understanding of slavery takes place in this sense.

Production-oriented activities, though different from labor animals, do not enter the real public sphere in the strict sense of the word— the political public sphere. Although the work has made our world a success, what the craftsman who is the builder of the world fundamentally has is a life immersed in "ideas", which means that the control of people is quite secondary. Thus, exchanges between trades can really happen, and skilled people can have their own public sphere at this level, but this is a public space that is free of politics, act in concert, and basically exchange markets. Thus, the ancient Greeks had such a derogatory view of sculpture and architecture—the field of art and craftsmanship was "urban"—which seems almost inconceivable to us today, but it was precisely because of the protection and defense of the political public sphere by classical society. "Production" is also largely shrouded in the obscurity of the private sphere.

The boundaries of the private sphere are clear, and life in the ancient city-state unfolds in such a dichotomy in an orderly manner.

But Arendt found that a new form between the public and the private had arisen in modern society—society. Arendt's social theory, which is incompatible with modern theory, is an appeal to classical, intrusive critical social theory and attempts to save modern politics. We know that modern economics dates back to ancient Greece, and the original meaning of "economy" was "housekeeping/housework" (oikia), which is the management of the way the economy is organized within the family. In other words, it deals with the private sphere, labor as its content, the coercive satisfaction of the necessity of life. But matters confined to the private sphere spill over the boundaries of the family and spread to the public sphere/political life, and the organizations and political communities we see are built according to the image of the family, a huge, national domestic administration that takes care of everything people do, and "collective housekeeping" is what we call "society" (Arendt, 1958/2009: 18). What accompanies "society" is a subordination and subordination to laws: the activity of man in the private sphere consists only of labour, the nature of labour which implies that every living organism is subject to necessity, in which man is "unfree", and in this sense he is "homogeneous" and "equal". It does not need and at the same time excludes any action that can prove that an individual is "superior", which can only belong to the public sphere as opposed to the private sphere; the private sphere can only allow behavior, it cannot pursue excellence, but only norms and consistency. When the private sphere intrudes into "society," what society expects is the norms and obedience of its members, which excludes any action and maverick achievements and treats all "heterogeneous behavior" as deviations or fluctuations. Thus "the search for meaning in politics or history becomes a hopeless enterprise" (Arendt, 1958/2009:27), and we may understand Arendt's social theory as a historical echo of the perceptual questions posed by thinkers such as Max Weber about the crisis of European civilization.

The strict boundaries between the private and public spheres made Arendt worried about the intrusion of "society." Social power has invaded the political public sphere, bringing about the decline and crisis of modern politics. Such boundaries are the principles that Arendt has passionately guarded throughout his life, and they are also the key to our view of the publicity of the Internet from Arendt's perspective. So, in Arendt, what does it mean to be "public" in opposition to "private"?

For labor and production, they make life longer and the world more useful and beautiful, but are repeatedly emphasized by areent in obscurity or semi-obscurity, and that "man" is deprived and incomplete if he is trapped in this private darkness and is not allowed or has the courage to walk into the light of the public sphere of "public manifestation" of himself. The so-called "public appearance", that is, the maximum openness guaranteed by others in the place, things come out of the obscured obscurity and enter and show their appearance, and only when we are "heard" and "seen" can we confirm our own reality, and thus confirm the truth of the world. So how can people be "publicly revealed"? Is it possible that by allowing the dazzling light to shine directly into the private sphere, one can go from obscuration to brightness? Of course not. The content of the public sphere consists only of "action", which is the most important human activity distinguished from labor and production, and is Arendt's unique provision for distinguishing modern political/publicness from liberal theory.

Man enters the public sphere to manifest himself—a self that unfolds in the sense of "distinctness": man's "difference" must resort to open self-expression, that is, he must actively express what belongs to his uniqueness in his communication with others. How to express it? It must be through "words" and "deeds"; public manifestation necessarily depends on words, without which action loses its revealing character, and "finding the right words at the right moment is itself action" (Arendt, 1958/2009: 26). Thus, Arendt repeatedly emphasized that true "speech" is never a means of instrumental means such as the transmission of symbolic information, strategic persuasion, or demagogic political propaganda (Arendt, 1958/2009: 181), but a "plural" public speech action laid down by "differences".

Action allows us to cut into the human world in such a way that it is not prescribed by necessity in the sense of labor, nor is it prevaricated by the category of the usefulness of production, it is only stimulated by the presence of others without being swayed by others; for the impetus for action comes only from the possibility of a new "beginning" brought about by the birth of our differences for the world (Arendt, 1958/2009: 177). Here, we can distill a few points: (1) People with differences in the plural. (2) A public environment in which others are present. (3) The meaning of action is in its process rather than its result, because action consists of two indispensable parts, namely, the "beginning" caused by a single person and a certain result achieved by the "completion" of the cause after many people join; therefore, action is not a separate, simple leadership and follow-up, it "does not have a priori provision or uniform subject of volition" (Kreide, 2016), but can only be "concerted action", That is, the actor is always in contact and interaction with other actors, he is both an "actor" and a "sufferer", and the action thus contains unlimited possibilities, and "unpredictability" is the characteristic of action. (4) Action is public, and public action must be led by "a world of things."

Action is the content of the public sphere, which is the essence of action is the courageous pursuit of self-"excellence" by man, which represents the most enthusiastic expression of "difference", because the "normalization" operated by "sameness" in the private sphere is completely ineffective in the public sphere, and "action can only be measured by the yardstick of greatness" (Arendt, 1958/2009: 206). In this sense, action must be political, and the strictest public sphere must be the public sphere of politics, and those who enter the public sphere are voluntary and courageous, they are people who are not willing to stay in obscurity and dare to "sacrifice private preferences" and throw themselves into public life with words and deeds; on the contrary, those who do not enter the public sphere are in the sense of "self-exclusion" except for those who have been deprived of their rights by power, which has no derogatory meaning in Arendt. It's just a "self-choice" of a way of life (Arendt, 1990: 279). Arendt's real concern is not about "self-exclusion" people, but about the serious harm that society's intrusive expansion would do to the public sphere.

(2) The boundary between society and politics: the darkness and light of the network communication space

Network technology updates and iterations are rapid, and the technological breakthrough of web 2.0 has made the cheers of "network democratization" endless, and there is no lack of cautious optimism about it. Looking at this technological "feast" from the perspective of Arendt's intrusive social theory, how will we understand the active and enthusiastic network communication? Do words and actions happen in it? Is the virtual social space the public domain as opposed to the private sphere?

Evgeny Morozov, a scholar of cyberpolitics, points to an important problem, "People always misuse social networks for political places, and Arendt's theory can help us see this" (Morozov, 2011: 179). Arendt appealed to the strict classical distinction between the public and the private to tell the true meaning of politics, which is very different from the usual understanding of modern politics. Arendt reveals to us the original intention of politics, that politics is a way of life, and it is a true human way of life, it is the activity of brave people breaking through the obscurity of private life, speaking and acting in the bright public sphere, so that people can manifest themselves, and can also see and hear others, thus truly encountering this man-made world, giving meaning to the original empty world. From Arendt's perspective, politics is a whole different picture, no longer something far-sighted and far-fetched from the crowds, but a way of life that can reach everyone. So the question arises, how do we define the substance of the public domain? Or rather, what is the object of action that underpins the speech and action of the public sphere? Are the behaviors of people active in cyberspace public?

Arendt's "ancient Greek" view of politics allows "publicness/politics" to return to its original connotation from the alienated social reality, and the public sphere absolutely does not allow private content to penetrate, and it is are Arendt's view of the proliferation of society from the private sphere to the public that determines that the modern public sphere is in decline. But Arendt's strict demarcation of the public-private divide has also raised questions about his theory. Habermas argues that for Arendt's concept of politics to be useful, it must be extended to include socio-economic issues, an indispensable dimension of politics in the modern world (Dana, 2016: 172–173). In today's cyberspace, social issues are the subject of various social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, and web forums, and even on websites with clear political leanings, users' specific discussions are closely related to social issues. If Arendt is determined to guard the "purity" of the public sphere and prevent the content of society from invading the public, is this too harsh? Or, as Habermas put it, such a distinction does not apply to modern times, i.e., that modern public interaction cannot be divorced from social content, is this true? It would be inaccurate to accuse Arendt of guarding publicity by severing the link between the public and the private. The fundamental purpose of Arendt's guardianship of publicness is to call people back to the real politics itself, and what she guards is the health of the public sphere itself, the love of people for the public world. Dana Vera (Villa, 2016: 172) points out that "the problem of content is secondary or subordinate to the spiritual and formal structure of political action." "But despite this, we can't avoid the problem of content, which is a difficult problem that must be faced by today's online publicity research."

For Arendt, the flow of social content into the public domain implies a strong violation. If we understand it in terms of the differences in content, then talking about social and economic topics in public space obviously corrupts its possibility of becoming a public sphere. In this way, we can give an unambiguous negative answer to the publicity of network technology. Such a judgment is obviously arbitrary, which is a simple and crude understanding of Arendt's theory and an irresponsible treatment of the subject of the study. Sociality is the expansion of the private sphere, and the private sphere is the obscurity of the "obscured" opposition to the bright public sphere, "labor" and "production" are of course the contents of the private sphere, but through the understanding of their own characteristics and the important differences between "action" and them, we can say that, beyond the level of content, more important is the meaning as an "indication" (presentation), which is determined by the consumptive, unworldly, purposeful nature of "production". The inherent isolation, and the "plurality" character of the lack of "action," extends: (1) the monotony of consumption, the cyclical self-devouring and hollowness; (2) the instrumental use only at the level of "use-satisfaction"; and (3) the "I" who is "seen" and "heard" in public communication is not really "me", but only fragments or even illusions of "me". (4) In public communication, neither can "I" truly "see" and "hear" others, who are either meaningless others or means of attaining "my" ends. (5) Communication between subjects is carried out only by interest and preference between people with similar positions. They constitute the intrinsic prescriptiveness of "sociality", which goes far beyond the simple limitation of the content level. These prescriptive characteristics are pervasive in our daily media practice: such as social discussions with the explicit purpose of shopping and consumption; "entertaining" information forwarding that does not express any views and positions, even if it is political news, there is no "public", the "political nature" at the content level does not necessarily point to "action"; the "self-performance" "chatter" in the circle of friends, with no intention of receiving the opinions of others, is only satisfied with piecing together the imagination of social identity in the fragmented performance of the "front desk"...

Arendt is strongly critical of the intrusion of "social" content into the "public" field, but Habermas's questioning pushes us to think further, that is, if this "rejection" is simply appropriated from the content level and transplanted into modern society, then almost all the public communication platforms we see will be far from "publicity", and non-dialectical total denial is inevitable. We also see that Habermas, on the one hand, questions Arendt's distinction "no longer appropriate"; on the other hand, the person as an actor is truly embedded in the world, and in Habermas's view, he can only resort to the mechanism of verbal communicative behavior, and the modes of behavior outside of this are only "critical states of communicative behavior" (Habermas, 1981/2018: 126), and the specific three categories of purposeful behavior, normative behavior, and dramatic behavior reveal only one function of language, that is, ideographic purpose, interpersonal relationship, or self-expression. Habermas is obviously advancing pragmatically on the basis of Arendt's theory of speech/action, but at the same time, the mode of language communication also has an inevitable idealistic color, and the strong tension between the theoretical norms of "ideal speech" and the practice of life is a challenge and question to Habermas's construction theory. But if we can understand Habermas beyond the pure pragmatic vision, borrowing Arendt's critique of "sociality" as a kind of "indication" that transcends the content level, we will find that the behavior of purpose, normative behavior, and dramatic behavior coincide with the inherent prescriptiveness of the "sociality" we have talked about above. Actions that cannot really confront the world must be "social," "private," and obscure. Similarly, in such a vision, the question of media publicity, that is, the internal prescriptive care and consideration of different media spaces, will become clear.

In order to facilitate the specific development of research, we can divide the types according to the main nature of the virtual space, which can be roughly divided into three categories: network space with the main purpose of dating, leisure and entertainment, multi-theme social media platforms, and virtual communities with strong professionalism / more detailed classification. The first type of platform has a very clear purpose of communication, that is, users around the food, shopping, entertainment and leisure, dating and other themes to carry out purposeful communication, such as Taobao, Little Red Book, Dianping, etc. In this type of virtual space, the "consumption/consumptiveness" emptiness of "social" "metaphor" has become an obvious feature, Arendt's concept of consumption is the keyword of "labor", it means obedience to the requirements of the inevitability of life, in this sense, Arendt sees as a "labor animal" The "body-life" itself, indistinguishable from all organisms, is immersed in the appearance of abundance underneath the appearance of "the consumption of the process of life" an emptiness that "cannot identify and realize itself as an eternal subject after labor" (Arendt, 1958/2009: 135). Although leisure activities are undoubtedly important to modern man (both at the level of production and reproduction), interactions characterized by consumptivity/expendability cannot be public, it cannot produce real words and deeds. In some entertainment spaces such as game tieba bars, sometimes there will be "crooked buildings" of political expression caused by the extension of the theme, or a theme post directly related to the topic discussion outside the theme of the game, for example, in the post bar of Warcraft, there is a theme post as "Why do Chinese people always like to associate ability and quality", which seems quite "out of place" in the discussion of the same game topic, the discussion area is deserted, only 7 people participate in the topic, the reply is more than one or two sentences, and the player's "only discuss the game game is good" Timely "correction". In the "indication" of "sociality", the use of instruments is the inherent prescriptiveness of the entertainment consumption space, and people gather together for clear purposes and similar interests. The "cycle of repetition" of consumerity is the "pre-existing" spatial nature, and the people who enter it understand the purpose of their actions from the beginning, and such public platforms are only public forms of private space, a clear social virtual space, where people do not expect to encounter the world.

The second type of platform is a multi-themed social media platform (SNS), such as Twitter, Facebook, Weibo, WeChat and other virtual social space represented, people speak, follow, forward, comment on topics of interest to themselves, and the interaction between people is mediated by the theme of common interests or the relationship between acquaintances/friends. Especially when the virtual social platform has become a very important way of communication under the impetus of 4G technology from the PC to the mobile terminal, deep into the lives of modern people, then what is its picture under the care of Arendt's theory? As mentioned earlier, Arendt acknowledges that the craftsman adds useful things to the world through the products of his work, but the world is much more than that, and the British scholar Margaret Canovan points out that Arendt "sees the world in her eyes, as she understands... It is not so much a man-made home as a world of diverse cultural objects and cultural backgrounds" (Canovan, 1994: 109), and it is only through action that man truly gives meaning to the world through his encounters with the world. Arendt put forward a clear demand for the subject of action, that is, plurality, which is what Carnown called "diverse cultural objects and cultural backgrounds". So are the subjects of speech in the virtual social space plural? What is a plural?

"Action" is placed at the highest level of active activity because it gives meaning to the world—it gives the world the possibility of "beginnings and new ones." Because the position of the acting subject in the world is different, people are different from each other and interconnected, and this individual difference is the premise and guarantee of action. What the difference in the field of action emphasizes is not the difference in people's innate characteristics, but the fact that people are in different perspectives in the same world to observe and understand this world object, which is the difference between culture and world view. More importantly, although people's positions are different and the world seen in the eyes of individuals is also different, through words and deeds, people can confirm that what they see is the same world—a world that is clearer than what they can see individually. Because the world acquires a deeper understanding through the actions of plural people, which is impossible to accomplish in the private sphere characterized by "identity"; and at the same time, it is precisely because of the limited, single position that people's understanding of the world is limited, so that "beginning and starting" fundamentally has a practical dimension of questioning and actively solving problems in the existing world, and our world thus acquires the possibility of becoming better; from the individual point of view, it means an innovative practice of action. This opens up new possibilities for people's futures, not just a simple continuation and compliance with the past (Day, 2010: 138). Thus, modern political votes, jury votes, or so-called "public opinions/opinions" formed by cumulative opinions are not plural actions in Arendt's view, and none of them are truly public, because are not a simple collection of mechanical personal interests, and it should be noted that Arendt was never a political elitist, but rather to inspire every ordinary person to devote himself to real public life.

So, are the participants active on social media represented by Twitter, Facebook, etc. "plural"? Can "complex" be reduced to "diversity"? Such information exchange platforms are of great interest to researchers, and many see them as a potential driving force in the democratization process (Park, 2013). Of course, there are also many objections. Many studies have taken the role of social media in "crosscutting exposure" as an important consideration indicator, and there are generally two relative views: one believes that SNS plays the role of diversity facilitation, and the other believes that it is fundamentally the polarization of opinions. For the former, SNS provides a platform for the release of a large number of heterogeneous views, which is incomparable to other virtual spaces, and users accept far more new views on SNS than other types of media space, which also strengthens the connection of weak relationships to a certain extent, especially compared to facebook and other acquaintances social, stranger social Twitter has more potential to form public opinions; and for the latter, although multiple information and views flow in the virtual space of SNS, However, people still tend to accept, pay attention to, and interact with views and information similar to their own positions and interests, and the limited content push structure coupled with the selective contact of users makes pluralistic differences only a superficial information feast (Park & Kaye, 2017). We see that, for the second opinion, the "homogenization" of space is the key point at which democracy loses its structural support (Sunstein, 2002), which labels the social network space as unmistakable "de-public". For the first opinion, even if this pluralistic information exposure is repeatedly confirmed in empirical studies (which is only a pure theoretical assumption), it cannot be equated with plurality. First of all, there are a large number of entertainment themes in SNS, or many users use social networks for entertainment and leisure purposes, and in the existing empirical studies, the optimistic position on the differential contact of information also includes the "positive" use data of entertainment and leisure. But it is clear that, as noted above, such uses are fundamentally excluded from the realm of publicity by the designation of "privateness", so we are here to discuss only the political subjects of the "closest" public character in SNS. In Arendt's case, "plurality" is not only "people sitting in different seats", but also "people sitting around a table discussing problems": that is, people are talking about the same world, and it is through this connection of multi-angle speech and concerted action that the world is made clear, thus making it possible to "start a new". However, for SNS platforms like Twitter, the user's expression space is limited to 140 characters, and such a fragmented expression itself is "incredible" for Arendt, especially when a large number of pictures, emoji language and memes are filled with retweets and comments on the text, "rational speech" becomes an extremely difficult test, and the possibility of "starting a new" on this basis is even more slim. In addition, for tweets that are not heavily forwarded and become the focus, the expression is more "one-way", and people only show themselves in front of the Goffmanian "front of the stage" rather than "manifest", because the latter means "to be heard" and "seen".

From Arendt's perspective, the "publicity" of SNS has indeed been seriously questioned. But this does not mean that it is completely denied: the controversial access to differentiated content plays a role in certain types, certain groups of people, certain areas of users, and virtual cyberspace is not a "single- and", it always functions in the interaction with the actual social structure. Therefore, for the social structure with better information flow and more mature degree of democratization, the media space with "heterogeneous" factors has become a meaningful driving force and plays a positive role in the dissemination of information; in addition, in the social reality where words and deeds are more restricted, the heterogeneous information flow of virtual space may also open a channel for the closed reality structure, thus playing a positive role in the construction of publicity. However, if we ignore the specific social conditions, it is not appropriate to simply "place high hopes" or be pessimistic about the virtual communication space, because the uncertain and ephemeral characteristics of the virtual space brought about by the network technology itself make "power" possible to rise and dissipate rapidly: "power" is more precisely a kind of "communication power" in Arendt, it is not a materialized entity in the hands of the ruler, Arendt repeatedly emphasized, It can only exist in the public space of action, it does not belong to a ruler but to an entire group of actors. And a highly mobile virtual space cannot guarantee the durability of the power of communication. All in all, our discussion of the publicity of virtual space cannot be divorced from the social context, and in the events of the Arab Spring and KONY 2012, which we are familiar with, the interaction between virtual cyberspace and social structures is clear at a glance, and the fire of the Tunisian revolution can originate on the Internet, but it is only a short-lived meteor without the structural support of reality; Nor can U.S. documentaries in full swing in cyberspace save northern Uganda.

Finally, for the third type of virtual communities with strong professionalism/ more detailed classification, it is characterized by a clear theme or classification to attract more professional users to enter the platform discussion. Taking The Douban, which is mainly discussed in literature, academic thought, film and music, as an example, if we take Arendt's strict boundaries between sociality and publicity, only at the level of content, social themes have been rejected from the door of "publicness". Cultural texts such as literature, film, and music are far removed from politics/publicity in terms of content alone; but we know that Arendt's almost strict division of public and private lines is to protect the true "publicness", that is, to defend the public space in which people throw themselves into it with words and deeds, encounter the world, and bring about the possibility of starting a new era. Therefore, Arendt's definition of sociality is more at the level of "indications", and if we stick to the content and make simple exclusions from it, it is a shallow taste of Arendt's theory. In the case of Douban, it is different from other online community operation platforms with strong commercial atmosphere, and even the page form of the community is a simple small five-character Song style with few pictures, which is rarely seen in the network where "picture expressions are above the text". In-depth exchanges and rational discussions are supported by the structural support of the technical level, which attracts "a large number of young scholars and student groups, and the user locations are also spread around the world with the footprints of international students, and the use of Douban by this huge pan-academic group makes it the best academic social platform for the ecological environment so far" (Chen Yanjiao, 2017). We see that people devote themselves to public platforms out of their love of literature, scholarship, and art, people have broad cultural hobbies, but have different opinions on specific cultural ideas and products, and the virtual space structure allows them to express and discuss in depth. Douban clearly mentions "tolerant and rational treatment of different views, preferences and opinions" in the community guidelines, and clearly points out in Douban's "unwelcome behavior" that "it is forbidden to abuse product functions and destroy product ecology and atmosphere, not limited to: publishing content unrelated to the topic of the article discussion area or group; inducing likes, replies, voting, and screen brushing; maliciously attacking the normal management behavior of the group leader or administrator". Under strict regulatory conditions, we see that the topics and interactions initiated by Douban's "topic square" have a "depth" and rationality that are very different from the fragmented reading era, clear views and professional long-text discussions can be seen everywhere, rational communication of "going/less emotional" makes different opinions and opinions blend, "others" are seen, heard and respected, and plural others appear in public space.

In addition, in the field of culture and art, the content of the discussion is generally about the quality judgment of artistic products, which is related to are related to are the "fun" that Arendt talked about, "fun is not only judged by quality, quality does not need to be debated... No judgment is required to decide, nor does it take to persuade and win the consent of others...", and "fun determines who belongs to each other in the world ... A man reveals himself to a certain extent through his judgment" (Arendt, 1961/2011: 206-207). Thus, out of a love of a common world (in this case, the metaphor is the "world of culture"), people with different perspectives "manifest" themselves through the deep exchange of ideas, and people active on this public platform jump out of the category of "means-ends" tools, the exchange of ideas itself, and the new insights about culture that the exchange brings, a process that is itself full of meaning. Thus, for such a public platform, it has an undeniable public dimension; although the common "cultural world" is somewhat different from the "same world" that Arendt talks about, it does not belong to the strict sense of political public space, but the action structure behind "publicness" is supported in this virtual space. In addition to Douban, there are of course many such public platforms, but Douban can be described as a relatively high example of "de-commercial operation" in the virtual community, and it also opens up the distance from the technical structure of SNS, making public discussion possible.

Three

epilogue

New media technologies are developing at a rapid pace, not only becoming an important part of life, but even rewriting life itself. When the communication space connected by technology becomes the living situation that modern people cannot escape, the discussion of technological space naturally becomes extremely important. The instant interactivity allowed by new media technologies has greatly expanded the boundaries of communicative practice in the rich application of technology, the virtual and the real have accelerated their integration, the individual has opened up to others and the world to the greatest extent, actively or passively, and self-expression has become a necessary means of involving the world. So, is this public space that almost everyone can easily enter by relying on media technology naturally have "publicity"? One voice in the existing academic response cannot be ignored: Habermas's concept of the "public sphere" becomes a philosophical expression of physical public cyberspace, and the affinity between them is hastily brushed over or even used as a theoretical premise, skipping arguments and going directly into empirical analysis.

In this regard, we enter from Arendt's vision to seek answers. For Arendt emphasizes the "action" itself more than Habermas, the active engagement of people as "processes" rather than "ends" to the world. The grand research question is gradually decomposed and implemented: "publicness" is clearly defined in Arendt as "man" enters the "public/political" space in the form of "action", that is, man encounters and gives meaning to the world, and it is "private" that is opposed to "public/political"; then what is "action", what is "public/political" space? After trying to comb through Arendt's theory, we sort out four normative points: (1) subject: there must be a difference, plural "person" ;(2) space: there must be the presence of "others", not a homogeneous, silent place; (3) action: action is not an action, it is issued by each individual with differences, it is uncontrollable, and it is the process of each person's real association and interaction with others. Thus, it is unpredictable and may lead to the subject's "beginnings" ;(4) objects: an object of a world of things that draws everyone together.

Under the norms of these four aspects, we can ask specifically about the publicity of the media technology communication space, is it "shiny" (political) or "obscure" (private)? We pessimistically find that under Arendt's gaze, the media technology communication space exposes its fundamental problems, which are far from "public": "pluralism" does not mean difference and plurality, and "self-expression" does not mean the "self-manifestation" of "people". Vocal SNS and entertainment spaces can actually be silent, with everyone talking loudly without having to hear and see others. Fragmented word limits and pictures overwhelm the emotional expression of words, the individual is only a lonely "private" in a crowd, and Arendt regards the "private" as "worldless", because there is only the self, no others, and no real relationship with others, and it is even more impossible to participate in the "plural" world and participate in and change it with the actions of the self. In Arendt's perspective, grand questions are refined and implemented, but critical theory inevitably reveals its inherent pessimism, "the constant use of nature, reflection, and individuality as the basis for totalitarian power in critical technology" (Feinberg, 2002/2005: 38). For the theoretical problems submitted by technical practice, in the current academic context, this "pessimism" is "necessary and appropriate", which forces us to be optimistic and blind, and points out the monotony and loneliness behind the appearance of pluralism.

But on the other side of maintaining vigilance, we do not have to overcorrect and fall into complete denial, and the potential of light is still visible: First, in the professional niche communication platform, the tolerance of word count, the limitation of picture symbols, strict norms and other technical support make differentiated individuals possible, and deep reading and rational interaction make "others" possible to be seen and heard. The process of opinion formation itself is the essence of publicity, which requires consent to topics and proposals, and relies on "the level of negotiation and the quality of the results" and "the rational treatment of recommendations, information and theories" (Habermas, 2011: 448). These necessarily require high-quality verbal interaction as a prerequisite, and conversely, fragmented, entertaining, everyday chatter cannot bring out the real actors in the world. In addition, although the themes that bind individuals together may have nothing to do with politics, "political" itself is not necessarily only found in the narrow sense of political themes, and aesthetics and art are also about the cultural interests of the "world".

Second, although communication platforms such as SNS do not have the essence of "publicity", we need to pay attention to the fact that no matter what position technological communication occupies in life, it cannot completely replace and cover other modes of communication and become the only form of existence. Thus, "publicness" cannot be practiced within the technological space, but it can drag and envelop the potential impact and extend beyond the virtual space. It has some giddonism of Giddens' "structural reflexivity" theory, in which the energetic actions released from the social structure react to its social conditions of existence (Baker, Giddens, Rush, 1994/2014: 146), except that in our view, the social structure consists of different parts and levels, some of which have not yet been realized but whose underlying energy may be released in other parts, and these different parts all act on the same social system.

This article is a shorthand version, the references are omitted, and the original article was published in The International Press, No. 10, 2021.

The cover image comes from the Internet

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