American Behavioral Scientist

2018, Vol. 62(3) 320–334

Democracy, Screens, © 2017 SAGE Publications
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DOI: 10.1177/0002764217708585
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Donald Trump’s Election

Ferran Sáez-Mateu1

Abstract
The unexpected election of Donald Trump as the new U.S. president is situated in a
complex and unprecedented intersection of ideas regarding democracy, identity, and
social networks, all against the background of the omnipresent and cultural centrality
of the digital screen. In this article, we will try to analyze these links through the
concept of the paraphragmatic screen, an unusual term from the Greek that is found
in Plato’s famous myth of the cave. Our thesis is that the paraphragmatic screen that
hosts social networks is not merely interactive. It is also a porous surface that no
longer serves only to communicate in the traditional sense but also for senders and
receivers to negotiate what is and is not real or true. Using it changes the rules of the
game for political communication and even for politics itself while it also generates
new types of negotiable identities, as much at the individual level as at the collective.

Keywords
Donald Trump, 2016 U.S. elections, political communication, social networks, identity

Introduction
In this article, I will put forth a different point of view regarding social networks and
their relationship to democracy and national identity, while—hopefully—I will avoid
the usual clichés. In my opinion, the confluence of these factors allows to understand
the election of Donald Trump in 2016. My academic background is based in classical
philosophy, not in the social sciences. I remark on this remembering the German
American philosopher Leo Strauss, who thought that the social sciences can describe

1Fundacio Blanquerna Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Corresponding Author:
Ferran Sáez-Mateu, Fundacio Blanquerna Universitat Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Catalonia 08022, Spain.
Email: ferransm@blanquerna.edu
Sáez-Mateu 321

the present but generally only in an ephemeral and trivial perspective. All the predic-
tions from Walter Lippmann’s 1920s book Public Opinion (Lippmann, 1922) are
today in force; in contrast, a lot of predictions made in the 1970s, for example, in Alvin
Toffler’s works, are nowadays outdated (Toffler, 1980). I think this is an important
lesson.
I would defend four ideas:

1. To make their commercial promotion more attractive, large companies such as

Facebook and Twitter, among others, adopted the sociological concept of
social networks, because it does not sound like a moneymaker. Jobs, family,
and professional associations are actually social networks, of course. In con-
trast, Facebook merely belongs to the entertainment industry, and Twitter is
nothing more than an amateur news agency. The use and abuse of the term
social in this context is equivocal and even mistaken. The German philosopher
Peter Sloterdijk says the new postmodern mass is only an addition of micro
anarchisms and solitudes. The election of Donald Trump shows that the social
networks have two very different faces. One face is actually a strategic ally of
liberal democracy, but the other is the gateway to hard populism in Western
societies.
2. When we compare the political uses of social networks nowadays with ancient
democracy in classical Greece, we commit an enormous anachro- nism. The
technological context, the mentality, social structures, and a vari- ety of other
aspects were completely different. The catastrophic end of the Arab Spring is
a very significant case. Many sociologists mistook the simple use of virtual
social networks on mobile phones for the real existence of a modern, articulate
and solid society—in the political sense. This type of soci- ety does not exist
today in countries such as Syria or Egypt. Therefore, those social networks
were only a technological illusion, a mirage. John Gray (2003) analyzed the
relationship between modernity and technology in an interesting essay. Trump
describes the press as “the enemy of the people” (“A few days ago I called the
fake news the enemy of the people, and they are— they are the enemy of the
people.”) and also sets the professional pressagainst neutral media such as
Twitter. His means of communication is based on tweets, which President
Trump believes is more direct and democraticthan the professional media.
3. The centerpiece of new cultural change is not, in my opinion, new trends in
cultural consumption or technological innovation, but new cultural uses of the
screen. The postmodern screen is no longer a social mirror (such as the cin-
ema) or a public window (such as the TV). It is another thing, similar to the
membrane that Plato called ta paraphragmata and described in his The Myth
of the Cave. I am also reminded of Jean Baudrillard’s (1997) Total Screen.
Donald Trump scored his victory by using the digital screen, relying on his
prominent background as an informal actor while maintaining control over his
public image.
322 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

4. Donald Trump won the election wielding a concept of North American identity
that was based on a very basic simplification of Samuel P. Huntington’s (2004)
book, Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity. This con-
cept of identity, which is almost “visual,” was more suitable for dissemination
through social networks and the screen via very simple and effective messages.
Everything that Trump asserts about Mexicans, for example, is already fore-
shadowed in this book.

First Point: The Use of the Term Social in This Context Is

Equivocal and Even Mistaken
Which causes do you care about? This question can be found on the official Facebook
page. The “causes” you could choose are climate change, poverty in America, environ-
ment, animal welfare, or human rights. The users/consumers can satisfy their expecta-
tions through virtual altruism, but without implying any actual commitment. It is a
comfortable relationship designed ad hoc. Social networks create a delusion of politi-
cal participation and collective activity, even of engagement with future generations.
Sitting in front of our computers, we imagine profound changes and historically ambi-
tious horizons. Within this mirage, we oppose conventional political structures, which
are apparently ineffective and obsolete, and embrace the modern social networks. It is
the future versus the past: The skill of advertising has finally achieved something as
unusual as companies transforming simple communication and entertainment into . . .
“social networking”! A postmodern miracle? Carefully reread the question at the
beginning of this paragraph: Which causes do you care about? Thus, the rebels finally
have “causes.”
However, that theory already existed before the digitalization of the public, before
the invention of the “social networking” business, and even before the global effects
of modern communication. In fact, Alvin Toffler already suggested standardizing
home video as an actual social network that would eventually transform institutional
politics (Toffler, 1980). Before Toffler’s classical prospective studies from the late
1970s to the early 1980s, many writers made similar proposals (so similar that they
were often interchangeable or, at least, transposable). Facebook and Twitter are not the
embodiment of ancient Greek democracy but are instead the latest version of global
capitalism.
The imaginary nominative called “social networks” is replacing or, at least, begin-
ning to displace, the classical notion of public opinion. I have never met anyone who
has been able to offer me a plausible description of that concept or of others such as
“civil society.” Nevertheless, the notion of public opinion seems to be at least a little
less evanescent than the absurd nominative “social networks,” an expression that often
drives journalistic information in formulations such as “social networks are against
such governmental measures.” As a rule, the data seem to be inferred from so-called
trending topics; that is, statistical peaks in which a topic predominates on Twitter and
other pages for a few minutes or even a few seconds.
Sáez-Mateu 323

Second Point: The Illusion of the “New Greek

Democracy”
On 15 June 2011, Professor Costas Douzinas published in the British newspaper The
Guardian an article titled “In Greece, we see democracy in action,” referring to peri-
odic meetings that take place among groups opposed to economic reforms in Greece.
The title of the article is a perfect summary of its content, which, according to the
author, was an example of “classical democracy” (Douzinas, 2011). After a short time,
professor Takis Fotopoulos (2011) replied to this with another article in which he
wrote:

The obvious conclusion is that, if classical democracy suffered from the demagogues, the
modern attempt at creating a direct democracy suffers from an even more important
problem: that such a democracy has to co-exist with representative democracy, i.e., an
institutional framework that is intrinsically hostile to direct democracy. This means that
Douzinas’s implied proposition, that “the outraged have shown that parliamentary
democracy must be supplemented with its more direct version,” is unviable. In fact,
representative democracy is as incompatible with direct democracy—if the latter is
properly conceived as a form of polity rather than just as a procedure—as ever.

This fragment is just part of a text published in Issue 7 of The International Journal of
Inclusive Democracy (Fotopoulos, 2011).
It is essential to clearly separate the ancient ideas associated with Greek democracy
from new elaborations on this same concept. The second case is merely a historical
projection, that is, an idealization—or even an ideologization. For example, the cus-
tomary failure to remember slavery under Greek democracy is an obvious idealization
of this historical system. The most frequent characterization of modern representative
democracy is this: a degenerated system based on the primordial or “real” model,
which is always direct and not representative. But this is a simple ideologization.
Nowadays, a lot of people seriously think that virtual social networks are exactly the
same as Greek democracy, or even better. This is nonsense.
The clearest case of this confusion is represented by the notion of demos. Here, the
etymology of the word is important. Despite the old cliché, the term democracy does
not mean in Greek “the government of the people.” In the language of those times, the
term demos would not generally have referred to citizens. It does not mean “majority”
or other similar concepts. In the last decade of the 5th century B.C., Cleisthenes
enacted administrative reform in Athens and the territory of the polis was divided into
several districts, which is what “demos” actually means. Demos only means a census,
and it never exceeded 10% or 15% of the total population (Dunn, 1995).
Regarding the idealization of democracy and the ideologization of Greek history,
Plato deserves a separate comment. For many students, the fate of the West is unintel-
ligible without the works of Plato, which have miraculously survived in complete form
up to today. The West’s quadruple identity of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christianvalues
was forged in the fires of the supposed dialogues between Socrates and his
324 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

fellow Athenians. These dialogues are extremely critical of the democracy in those
times.
In short, the standardized definition of democracy as a “government of the people”
is the result of modern historical idealization, which is clearly related to an ideological
attitude that is also modern.

Third Point: The New Cultural and Political Uses of the

Screen, From Plato up to Us
The first description of this type of screen can be found in Plato, no less, in what is
perhaps the most well-known fragment from his work: the beginning of Book VII of
the Republic (415a-415b), which lays out the so-called Allegory of the Cave. The term
paraphragmatic is in fact derived from this foundational text, which is no doubt one
of the most important in the history of philosophy. Because the following analysis is
based on a series of philological nuances, we have provided the original Greek, to
which references will be made directly.1 Plato’s description is well known:

Imagine human beings living in an underground, cave-like dwelling, with an entrance a

long way up, which is both open to the light and as wide as the cave itself. They’ve been
there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to
see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads
around. Light is provided by a fire burning far above and behind them. Also behind them,
but on a higher ground, there is a path stretching between them and the fire. Imagine that
along this path a low wall has been built, like the screen in front of puppeteers above
which they show their puppets.2

The first aspect to take into account is that the effectiveness and verisimilitude of
the artifice described by Plato relies entirely, both in its visual and acoustic aspects, on
the idea of a screen. In fact, if the puppeteers (θαυματοποιοῖς) were physically situated
in front of the captives (δεσμωτῶν), the illusion—that is, the ruse—would be impos-
sible. That would also be the case if they were too far away, out of visual and auditory
range. As such, it is the screen that allows for revealing and concealing simultane-
ously. Plato uses the term τὰ παραφράγματα, which is very uncommon in Greek and
was used only on one occasion—which we refer to here—in the whole of his work. It
is not a wall (τειχίον) but rather something that is at once a barrier or a separation while
also being a crossover or a communication; hence, the unusual name used to refer to
this particular idea of a screen. In order to understand the nature of the paraphragmatic
membrane, we need to draw on other Greek terms with the same root—such as, for
example, the diaphragm, that is, what separates and joins together the chest cavity
and the abdominal cavity. The notion of paraphragma expresses the idea of something
that only seems like a separation, barrier, curtain, and so on, since its purpose is ulti-
mately to display an appealing illusion of reality (θαύματα δεικνύασιν), which both
reveals and conceals the real nature of the connection between emitters and receivers,
and thus between the people themselves. In contrast to a conventional screen (e.g., like
Sáez-Mateu 325

in the cinema), the paraphragmatic screen that appears in Plato’s allegory is not looked
on as a spectacle by those who are looking at it (not as a reality) but as reality itself.
The screen is both the only connection with the world and the barrier that obstructs
contemplation of the world as it is. That is not a contradiction; it is the inevitable con-
sequence of its porous nature.
To the extent that personal—and even collective—identity in late postmodernity is
forged largely in the virtual context of social networks—as understood in their broad-
est sense—and taking into account that those networks can survive only behind a
screen, the nature of such an identity is clearly paraphragmatic. A Facebook wall (pre-
cisely a wall!) illustrates this condition in a surprisingly palpable way. It can be used
at the same time to open (ourselves up) and close (ourselves off), like a diaphragm, and
it is both a screen that reflects things and a wall that hides them. This is the case with
Plato’s paraphragmata in his Allegory of the Cave. Identity stops being interactive
and becomes simply porous: It is shaped by a “like” which, in turn, strengthens or
weakens certain content or attitudes.
The paraphragmatic screen breaks with the old rules of otherness, both in the mod-
ern and postmodern sense, since The Other is no longer the person opposite me, on the
other side of the screen, but rather he who does not inhabit it. Behind the paraphrag-
matic screen, there is still an identity that is no longer private or public, personal or
collective, familiar or alien, nor does it play the role of actor or spectator. In any case,
this is, without a doubt, a new way of constructing identity. Of course, we do not have
enough perspective yet to gauge the scope and momentum of this transformation.
It might seem that we are extrapolating the consequences of a purely technological
event—the touch screen—to an area which, in conceptual terms, extends far beyond
this instrumental circumstance. But that is not the case; and to confirm it, we will offer
up a curious piece of information. As strange and disturbing as it may seem, the meta-
phor or image of a touch screen reaches much further back than the actual touch screen
that has been developed technologically in recent years. Many years before Steve Jobs
created the iPad or the iPhone, Baudrillard—and even McLuhan—used the concept
literally to highlight its paraphragmatic nature.

Unlike photography, cinema and painting, in which there is a scene and a gaze, the video
image—and the computer screen—induce a kind of immersion, a sort of umbilical
relation, of “tactile” interaction, as McLuhan, in his day, said of television (Baudrillard,
2002, p. 177).

In brief, regarding the political potentialities of the social networks, we are living
in a huge collective delusion. We believe that Twitter represents a new agora, even an
update on the ancient ideas of Greek democracy. However, Twitter, Facebook, and
others are merely businesses based on a specific type of entertainment: virtual rela-
tionships. Of course, those relationships have an obvious politic influence, as did TV
in the 1960s, radio in the 1920s and newspapers at the end of the 19th century. But we
should not confuse this influence with unreal social networks or even new societies
based on classical direct democracy. In my opinion, the key of this problem is the new
326 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

use of the screen as a membrane. Following from Plato’s terminology in the Myth of
the Cave, I choose to name this new use “the paraphragmatic condition,” that is, just
another step in the postmodern condition.
On August 15, 2016, Ric Militi, creator of the Zip Questions and Answers appli-
cation, predicted that Trump would be the winner of the U.S. election in November,
and provided details in percentages and frequencies, even at the local level. It was
based on responses that more than 100,000 daily users of your app. The key to reli-
ability lay in the anonymity offered by the display. According to Militi, people feel
more comfortable when they can answer questions without fear of being intimi-
dated by the nature of their opinions, especially when they have a racist back-
ground. Surveys of traditional methods published by the major American newspapers,
however, failed miserably. That error, incidentally, joined of the Brexit referendum
predictions.

Fourth Point: Trump Proposes a Concept of Social

Network Identity Based on a Simplification of Samuel
Huntington’s Ideas
The United States is a historically recent national and cultural entity. While it can cer-
tainly be argued that Germany and Italy have even more recently become states, this
objection does not fit reality: Petrarch and Dante Alighieri, Luther and Bach, these
historical figures are much older than the respective unifications of Italy and Germany,
yet it is clear that the Italians and Germans regard these figures as something insepa-
rable from their collective identities. None of this can be applicable to the United
States. Moreover, the groups of small kingdoms and principalities that gave rise to
these two national realities have their territorial roots in ancient and prehistoric times.
This cannot be applied to the United States either. Third, and finally, the purpose—the
telos—which formed the majority of European cultures arose from circumstances that
were quite diffuse, vague, and perilous; it is useless to look for a “common founda-
tional cause” that covers the whole group. The United States, on the other hand, have
a definite and clear foundational cause that is related mostly to the religious persecu-
tions of 17th-century England (the sympathy and solidarity they have for the state of
Israel comes in part from this awareness). The first colonies on the East Coast had this
telos in common throughout a chronology that is very specific, highly pronounced and
still present in the collective memory.
These three differences we have just indicated form two opposing ways of under-
standing national and cultural identity. The United States and Europe certainly have
many things in common; but, regarding the points discussed above, they seem con-
demned to mutual incomprehension. A striking example: In the United States, it is
absolutely normal to see the flag of the Union in a prominent, highly visible place such
as Catholic cathedrals, Protestant churches, synagogues, and Masonic lodges, among
many others. In Europe, this crossing of identity symbols creates confusion and even
deep suspicion. This is certainly only anecdotal, but it is very significant.
Sáez-Mateu 327

The long preface we have just broken down is essential for properly contextualiz-
ing the important work of the American essayist Samuel P. Huntington. Who are we?
The challenges to America’s national identity is a book from the collective imagination
of the United States—not necessarily conservative or attached only to the ideas of the
Republican Party. In some respects, it could be considered fairly innocuous. Except for
a few intense allusions regarding the issue of Mexican immigration—which are very
similar to Trump’s discourse—and also some maximalist assessments on the alleged
social disintegration of the 1960s, the book fits perfectly into the standardized main-
stream ideas of the average American (but not all, of course). In Europe, however,
Huntington’s final book could provoke astonishment and, at times, outrage. Returning
to the example with which we closed the first epigraph, the natural way with which
religious sentiment and the North American national identity is juxtaposed takes the
average European reader back to periods that are considered obsolete. It is perhaps for
this reason that the author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order admitted to the American media—prior to his death in 2008—that the content
of the interviews substantially differed from those that were published in Europe.
According to Huntington, the United States did not result from the juxtaposition of
an ensemble of heterogeneous cultural residue—the famous melting pot—but instead
shares a single core identity: the Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture brought by early set-
tlers in the 17th century. This is something more than the English language, the differ-
ent faiths with Lutheran roots, the understanding of the law or other similar aspects. In
reality, according to Huntington, the North American identity is a set of shared beliefs
that emerged from the confluence of the points that have just been specified. It con-
cerns the North American creed, which, in broad strokes: simultaneously defends indi-
vidualism and equal opportunity; is committed to the initiatives of civil society rather
than perceiving the country as a state that manages the lives of citizens; believes in the
work ethic; and considers religion—whichever it may be—to be very prominent in the
lives of individuals and of the group. In this regard, the United States is not just a
“place,” but a particular way of understanding the world. This is Americanism.
Huntington argues that this is a singular phenomenon: No ideology can seriously be
described using names such as Frenchism, Italianism, or some other similar term.
On this point, Huntington was wrong. In my country, Catalonia, there is something
called “Catalanism,” which has many aspects in common with Americanism, although
they also share many insurmountable differences—beginning with magnitude
(Balcells, 1996; Keating, 2001; Llobera, 2004). We will later analyze this relationship.
First, however, we will pose a question that is necessary for carrying on with
Huntington’s argument: When it is so apparently obvious, why deny the existence of
the American melting pot? The answer is very simple: Because Huntington draws a
sharp dividing line between the colonists (who founded the nation) and immigrants
(who did nothing more—nothing more!?—than help make it the way it is today: the
number one world power). The Irish Catholics, Chinese, Central European Jews,
Italians, Mexicans, and many others—according to Huntington—did not arrive in a
simple territory but in an existing nation with a defined and recognizable cultural iden-
tity, equipped with political and administrative structures of specific laws derived
328 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

from the Anglo-Saxon tradition, a language and its own image (e.g., which is reflected
in the Westerns of John Ford). In general, these immigrants were integrated into the
culture of the founding fathers—indeed, yes, at different paces and under different
historical circumstances. They each contributed their own grain of sand to the North
American culture; they complemented it, but they did not create it. This distinction
between settlers and immigrants is, therefore, crucial for understanding the rest. In a
way, it is the principal—perhaps the only—argument that Huntington can put forth
against possible interpretations of multiculturalism.
In the labyrinth of national and cultural identities, two different types of crises have
been produced that can be confused due to their having occurred nearly simultane-
ously. The first is a global crisis, which is somewhat inevitable. According to
Huntington, the formidable advances in information and communication technolo-
gies—from the television of the 1960s to the Internet in the 1990s—have resulted in
profoundly redefining or even blurring nearly all identities that we could call “tradi-
tional.” This has happened everywhere, even in the remotest regions of the planet.
There is, however, a second and more specific type of crisis that has affected some
places more than others. It is, in the words of Francis Fukuyama (1999), the great
disruption that occurred in the 1960s. According to Huntington, the North American
national and cultural identity was—up to this decade—more or less the same as that of
the settlers who founded the country. It had been guided by a sense of patriotism
grafted to strong religious feelings and an inflexible work ethic. Most North Americans
felt primarily North American and it was only in a secondary or indirect way that they
identified with their family background, sexual gender, aesthetic tastes, or some other
similar factor. In the 1960s, that all took a new direction. The African American civil
rights movement, for example, was an important accomplishment; but it also rein-
forced an identity which, according to Huntington, had enjoyed only a vicarious and
reactive existence up until then. The same can be said of feminism, gay liberation, and
other movements. What were the defining features of that identity, the identity that had
been set aside?
I submit that—from a Catalan perspective and, in general, European as well—
Huntington’s response could provoke astonishment. Religion has been and remains a
core part (perhaps the core part) of the American identity. The United States, according
to Huntington, were founded in great part for religious reasons, and it is religious
movements that have for centuries determined the country’s evolution. Whichever
way you look at it, North Americans are far more religious than people in other indus-
trialized countries. The majority of Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are Christians. In a
world where culture and particularly religion shape the allegiances, alliances, and
antagonisms of people on every continent, it may be that North Americans will redis-
cover their national identity and their purpose as a nation through their culture and
their religion.
It seems clear that this passage converges on hyperbole and a great omission. The
former refers to the concept of “Christianity,” which Huntington employs in a biased
manner and, above all, with an accommodating attitude. When it is convenient for him,
he makes a sharp distinction between Catholics and Protestants; and when it is
Sáez-Mateu 329

not, as in this case, he sets it aside. As for North American Jews, when it suits him they
are fully “Western,” with freedom to be—at least nominally—at the margins of
Christian culture; and when it does not suit him, they are not. Regarding the omission
mentioned above, the bias in Huntington’s analysis is even more serious: The extremely
high racial tension that permeates the United States does not appear anywhere in his
text. Huntington considers it as having been “overcome” since the 1960s, an extreme
that is strictly false. In this sense, there is evidence for reasonably suspecting that the
concept of identity that he proposes is merely a pretext for legitimizing the White
Anglo-Saxon Protestant hegemony from a new perspective that no longer refers to
racial classifications, but which—tacitly—continues to be considered a given.
Viewed from my country of Catalonia, this discourse on identity is disturbing. And
that of Trump is even more so. With the exception of some authors of the 19th century,
each person’s religion is considered a private matter that neither adds nor subtracts a
single drop of Catalan identity. Race, obviously, also has no effect on whether some-
one is Catalan. The principal feature of identity is the Catalan language—or, rather, the
public use of the language and having a positive attitude toward this language that, for
political and historical reasons, finds itself in a situation of inequality when compared
with Spanish. This has definitively resulted in a civic project shared by the vast major-
ity of Catalans, whatever their origins. In this sense, Catalanism and Americanism (at
least, Huntington’s version of it) reflect two ways of understanding identity that have
little or nothing in common.

More Questions Than Answers: Is Trump the First Great

Postpolitical Phenomenon or Is He the Eccentric Star of
an Ephemeral Story?
Nowadays, nobody is isolated from political changes—even those that extend beyond
the social sphere—as they originate within the omnipresence and centrality of the para-
phragmatic screen, especially on mobile phones and tablets. Even a new vague nomina-
tive has emerged to become more prominent than other old, abstract nominatives such
as “citizenship” or “public opinion.” Today, we see headlines that—with great ease—
allude to an evanescent and elusive entity: “social networks cry out against ” I find
it difficult to imagine that someone 100 years ago would have written something to the
effect of: “The telegraph opposes the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ”
Yet today, we accept “social network” as a plausible collective nominative and
embrace the strange discourse that derives from this expression. Whatever the case, it
is undeniable that screens are changing the rules of politics. Many objections to repre-
sentative democracy are based on the conviction that, in many places today, direct
democracy is technologically feasible. In addition, if any call to assemble or social
initiative of a certain reach is to succeed or fail, it essentially depends on the degree of
connectivity among its participants (and not exactly among the social networks). The
so-called Arab Spring allowed us to see that things were a little more complicated: The
massive use of the mobile phone as a political tool does not guarantee any success.
330 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

Although not only the Greek term isegoria (ἰσηγορία) is used in relation to this
matter, the ultimate argument centers on whether the paraphragmatic screen helps
reinforce—or distort—the pillar that upholds the idea of democracy. The term origi-
nally referred to the possibility that everyone could express themselves before the
assembly on equal terms; in other words, the voices of the rich and powerful carried
the same weight as the poor and disadvantaged. Two quick remarks: (a) isegoria does
not refer to the possibility of deciding or voting but to expressing oneself publicly,
with the guarantee of being heard; (b) although they seem almost synonymous, the
concept differs from the modern “free speech,” where it is the content of expression
that is underscored. That said, we might be tempted to infer that the omnipresence,
porosity, and immediacy of the digital screen has led to a kind of isegoria paradise. Is
this really the case? We believe that this conclusion is hasty, to say the least. There are
more questions than answers. It is clear that—at least in regard to the rules of the game
in politics—we are at the beginning of a new era.

1. The democracies of advanced societies today are not threatened in the same
way as they were in the 1930s, but they are questioned by a civil society that
evaluates them as “insufficient.” When we consider the distance between the
prepolitical idealization of democracy and its realization in the form of a sys-
tem: Is it the radical and root cause of their disaffection toward politics that
many citizens are expressing? Regarding the idealization of the idea of democ-
racy: Has it been precisely the enormous potential of new information and
communication technologies that is responsible for having generated certain
maximalist expectations within the participatory sphere? Has Trump won
because, among other things, many North Americans perceive Twitter as
“more free and democratic” than traditional newspapers?
2. Since the time of the Greeks, the two golden rules of democracy are the con-
cepts of isonomia and isegoria. These two ideas were formulated in ancient
Greece but completely reformulated between the 18th and 19th centuries. In no
case, however, had anybody anticipated the mass media. The strength of public
opinion had already been predicted by the mid-19th-century French historian,
Alexis de Tocqueville, but in a completely vague way: Tocqueville could not
even begin to imagine the cultural and political changes associated with radio,
television, or the Internet. For obvious reasons, this all affects the complex
intersection between the concepts of participation and communication, which
are the bases of Trump’s argument for doing without professional journalism.
Has the classical concept of “citizenship”—a legacy of the Enlightenment—
ceased to be generally accepted as the real subject of the democratic system? Is
the new subject of the system public opinion? (This would have been unthink-
able, as such, in society prior to the rise of mass media.)
3. When they are not used purposefully but rather as a simple rhetorical crutch,
the concepts of freedom and participation can create strange illusions. The
perception of one’s own participation in the public sphere is indeed subjective:
Sáez-Mateu 331

There are those who believe that a tweet carries more “weight” than a vote;
and, on the other hand, there are those who believe just the opposite. Be that as
it may, it is clear that not all disputes arising from civil society come to be
interpreted as truly political. Is it the media’s fault that they act only as a sound-
ing board when it is convenient? Or that they respond to the expectations of
illusory participation as a technological reflex? Considering the actual results,
at what point do these expectations prove to be more frustrating than
stimulating?
4. The history of democracy is formed by a set of corrections to the foundational
Greek scheme (which, among other things, legitimized slavery and the per-
petual underage status of women). Trying to return to Greek direct democracy
seems, in this sense, to reflect an uncritical attitude. From the perspective of
the new political culture, however, the foremost model is no longer representa-
tion (intervened) but instead participation (direct). In modern societies, how-
ever, any attempt at direct participation occurs through the use of social
networks. Does the fact that new forms of direct participation depend essen-
tially on networks imply a long-term obstacle or constitute an advantage? The
election of Trump confirms, at the very least, that a true qualitative change is
implied.
5. The basic instrument of political visibility in the media is the generation of
pseudoevents in which cameras and microphones are present. The fact that a
group of naked people in a square are shouting slogans is not news; it is a story
with no public interest. The rationale of the media is to give substance to the
story and transform it into an “event” endowed with its own meaning. In any
case, the media’s dramatization of participation—each time becoming increas-
ingly sophisticated and spectacular—generates conflicts, especially in large
cities. Does this constitute a distortion of the concept of participation?
6. In a society such as ours, which is heterogeneous in every sense, political rep-
resentation is inevitably problematic. Therefore, harmonizing the concepts of
“participation” and “representativeness” is the keystone of democracy in the
future. However, is it not true that the anomalies and dysfunctions of the
media’s acoustics seem to be moving in the opposite direction? In the past U.S.
elections, for example, the voices of important analysts and prestigious intel-
lectuals were replaced.
7. The problem of representation inevitably looms over any form of democratic
government, whatever type it is. With all its flaws, the modern representative
model guarantees at least a consensual and transparent system of participation.
Can the same be said of what we could call media democracy? Even when we
consider it from the perspective of collective deliberation: Who chooses the
talk show guests, the experts in political analysis and others who are ultimately
the ones that open (or close) the great public debates and determine their
nature? Where is the legitimacy of this selection process that sets a radical
political agenda?
332 American Behavioral Scientist 62(3)

8. When we talk of new forms of political participation, there thrives a tendency

to confuse three models: the interpretative, the critical, and the propositional.
Through interpretation, which is inevitably subjective, the idea of democracy
is understood as a moral achievement and/or historical conquest rather than as
a specific form of political organization. Criticism of the system of representa-
tive democracy views it as a distortion of the original idea or foundation. The
propositional suggests new forms of participation that are not necessarily
incompatible with the system of representative democracy, but they neverthe-
less address the system’s inability—or, at least, failure—to manage the prob-
lems of a complex society. Why does the media tend to emphasize antisystemic
criticism—especially when in the format of a spectacle—and yet ignore propo-
sitional discussions that lack any emotional components?
9. The in-depth debate on new forms of participation would affect very important
aspects of current legislation, especially in relation to certain measures that are
binding or merely advisory. It must be clearly explained that truly and pro-
foundly enhancing citizen participation is not a harmless endeavor: It involves
a series of radical changes. One of them has to do precisely with a firm com-
mitment to regular participation and not to occasional and sporadic participa-
tion. In the current circumstances, is it realistic to consider a collective
commitment such as this?
10. A very serious form of regression has taken place through the trivialization of
concepts like majority and minority and the fact that they are understood as
details without much importance. Should new forms of political participation
be as subject to the principles of control and transparency as conventional
ones? This is worth emphasizing because regulating participation makes it
possible for the true will of the people to be exercised (not just that of the
minority being artificially amplified by the media). In any case, confusion is
increasing inexorably regarding the spheres of expression and real political
participation. Is it necessary, then, to assume with all normality that many new
forms of participation have a manifestly informal and ephemeral bias? Or must
we try to distinguish between actual majorities and false majorities, between
real social outcries and fictional social outcries?

Conclusion
Digitalization, according to Armand Mattelart (2001) is merely an offspring of the
modern project, but qualitative cultural changes also contribute—ambiguously and at
the same time inevitably—to its end. Jean-François Lyotard had already predicted that
this world would be focused on the digital screen, which simply was not yet the case
when he published The Postmodern Condition in 1979.
On the digital screen, the final stages of the modern world (understood as a philo-
sophical and scientific project related to technology) converges with the dawn of what
we consider to be postmodern (understood as nothing more than a mind-set that
diverges from the modern project or is already not recognized within it). Although the
Sáez-Mateu 333

phrase sounds a bit grandiloquent and bombastic, behind the surface of the screen there is—in reality—
a crossroads that allows us to simultaneously see what could have been Modernity and what ended up
being reality. In a sense that goes far beyondthe philosophical and scientific, even beyond politics, the
key concept of Modernity isthat of emancipation. It is that Kantian sapere aude! among many other
things. Today,the majority of humanity—in the case of the West, nearly the whole population—has
instant and free access to all human knowledge. Even from the screen of a humble cellphone, everyone
has the opportunity today to read Plato or Shakespeare, to listen to Bach and Mozart, to be able to see
microscopic details of Vermeer paintings. In gen- eral, however, they do not. They use the
paraphragmatic screen to negotiate what is and is not real or true, what must be made visible or
invisible, and which identity is emotionally more appealing. This is a profound change and has one
dimension that isqualitative and another that is quantitative, both of which have yet to demonstrate all
their effects. We lack the perspective for assessing it properly.