The quantified metrics of likes, shares, and followers are often likened to currencies of social media. Like dollars and cents, we seek to acquire and accumulate them for the value they confer us. However, while money is valued primarily as a means for exchanging goods and services, the metrics of social media are valued primarily as a means for acquiring social status.

Many have already considered how the novel features of social media may affect the communication that occurs on them. Some argue that social media improve political discourse by exposing users to perspectives which they would not otherwise encounter. Others argue that social media worsen it by using personalization algorithms that sort users into filter bubbles which induce polarization, or the tendency for humans to radicalize when they encounter beliefs similar to their own. Empirical research has nonetheless cast suspicion on this argument, with some studies documenting self-filtering in the absence of personalization and others disputing its polarizing effects.

As I have argued elsewhere, Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “social” indicates an alternative approach that locates the cause of online polarization in quantified social metrics as opposed to personalization algorithms. In The Human Condition, Arendt uses the concept of the social to refer to the modern tendency for activities that were once relegated to the private or domestic sphere to become matters of public or political concern. This occurs in two ways. First, while private households were previously responsible for the acquisition of their wealth (the English word “economics” derives from the Ancient Greek word for house or family: oikos), in modernity the state assumed a greater share of this responsibility, for example by guiding monetary policy or by redistributing economic resources. Second, while social status was previously determined by birth and household position, in modernity it became increasingly determined by the ability to conform to social conventions. In an early work that analyzes the life of the “parvenu” Rahel Varnhagen, Arendt describes how the salons of the 19th-century German bourgeoisie were not so much where free political discourse flourished, but where it became instrumentalized as a means for showing that one had the “right” opinions for membership in their respective class.

The increasing socialization of modern life transformed politics. According to Arendt, the value of politics lies in its potential for initiating unprecedented events capable of shifting the direction of a political community, such as the decision made in Philadelphia in 1787 to establish the first federal republic. The emergence of the social shifted this value to its ability to causally guide economic policy or symbolically confer social status. These changes had a correlative effect on political judgment. When understood in its pre-social sense, Arendt argues that the value of a political event ought to be judged in a way analogous to an aesthetic judgment. This entails a process of adopting an “enlarged mentality” that imaginatively compares one’s own perspective with a diverse spectrum of other perspectives from one’s political community. When understood in its social sense, the value of a political event need not be judged from the standpoint of an enlarged mentality but merely by considering its ability to realize the ends of the social: wealth and status. The socialization of politics not only limits our understanding of the multitude of ways in which others may perceive the value of a political event, but tempts us to consider its worth primarily in terms of our own interest in wealth and status.

One approach to understanding the polarizing effects of social media without relying on the personalization-induced filter bubble hypothesis is through Arendt’s theory of the socialization of politics and its judgment. Social media are not only platforms where individuals communicate, but platforms in which communication is quantified. Depending on the platform, users may receive followers and their activity may receive likes and shares. By quantifying online political activity these metrics shift its substantive ends. Once communication is quantified, social media can no longer be understood merely as an instrument for political discourse that promotes the consideration of a diversity of perspectives, but must also be understood as instruments for attracting ever increasing numbers of likes, shares, and followers. In this way social media play into a larger tendency, already present in the salons of Enlightenment-era Europe, that reduces political discourse to a means for achieving and validating social status.

It might be objected that the instrumentalization of political discourse for the sake of social status is ultimately harmless. This objection would overlook the danger it poses to polarizing political discourse. When individuals engage in online political discourse with the aim of achieving social status, users will be less inclined to guide their activity by considering an enlarged mentality of diverse perspectives and more inclined to tailor their activity for the sake of receiving followers, likes, and shares that confirm their status within the group in which they desire membership. This means that even if social media feeds are not personalized and present diverse perspectives, users will nonetheless be inclined to “self-filter” their online activity by giving less attention to content that originates from those whose views do not align with the group with which they desire membership.

It should be acknowledged that Arendt’s critique of the social is not uncontroversial. Amongst other criticisms, it has been criticized for being elitist and anti-egalitarian. While these criticisms have merit, I do not think they fully disarm Arendt’s argument. The meaning of political action is invariably richer than its function as a means for achieving the ends of wealth and status. Viewing political events from a purely social attitude, as social media incline us to do, not only deprives us from appreciating their fuller meaning but inhibits our ability to achieve a degree of consensus about their worth.

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