The Zombification of the Public Forum

The all-encompassing nature of digital technology has killed society’s public forum and resurrected it into a zombie. Tracing the public forum from its historical roots to the age of social media, this analysis highlights how the advent of digital technology has fundamentally altered the nature of the public forum. Social theorists including Jürgen Habermas, Jacques Ellul, and Sherry Turkle are invoked to show how the nature of the new digital public forum is from centuries past, exerting its efficient yet dysfunctional influence over human communication and connection. With technological innovations like the internet and social media that foster discourse, the digital public forum is as loud and active as ever. But this resurrection is not organic. Because of the nature of digital technology and how human interaction is mediated through it, this new public forum is zombie-like. Crucially, the public forum in the digital realm exists in a state of constant contradictions. It features and fractures democratic deliberation, connection, and identity. While powerful, ever-expanding, and a lively setting for political discussion and social interaction, the public forum is nonetheless a shell of itself, having lost the crucial human element of organic connection, much like a zombie brought to life in its original body but without the human spirit that defines it. It will take a concerted effort among the public to reclaim it.