Democracy in collapse: reflections about flows of attention and collective actions for social change on the Internet

Abstract

The platformization and algorithmic logic scenario provides new socio-political challenges for the participation of collective actions on the internet as it "colonializes" (Couldry, 2019) and intensifies the dispute for directing and standardizing collective attention (Couldry, 2010; Citton, 2017). However, if there are media organizations and economic groups controlling the internet business model and hierarchizing the topics of interest, there are also voices that seek visibilities for local causes in counterflow to the attentional dynamics established in the public sphere. Part of an ongoing research project on human attention and participation, this article aims to discuss the scenario of use of digital technologies that, in a controversial way, potentiate disputes and also visibilities while imposing obstacles to the effective exercise of democracy and participation by voices that seek to achieve local social changes. By discussing the media structure and digital technologies guided by the expansion of capitalism, we propose reflections on the dynamics of attention from the Habermasian public sphere and the proposal of "oppositional public sphere" (Caballero, 2020), indicating possible theoretical paths for understanding the paradigm of collective actions and social movements today