The Escalation of Inter-Civic Conflicts in Social Networks and the Transformation of Social Consciousness

This article examines the escalation of inter-civic conflicts in social networks and its impact upon the transformation of social consciousness. The study proceeds from a structural distinction: conflict conducted in speech is dyadic, whereas conflict conducted in a network is triadic, since every utterance is addressed to an audience as well as to an opponent. From this change in the pragmatics of address three mechanisms are derived: the conversion of concession into visible defeat, the sedimentation of conflict in a searchable record, and the divergence between the rates of escalation and settlement. Social consciousness is shown to be transformed in three determinate respects rather than in general: the threshold of admissible intensity rises, the neutral register in which groups may be mentioned without partisanship disappears, and estimates of the typical adversary are formed from the least typical. The controversy between C. Sunstein and A. Bruns concerning polarisation and exposure is subjected to critical examination.