Communicative abundance, political scarcity? Challenges to democracy in the monitoring era

Abstract

This article presents a theoretical-analytical reflection on the relationships between Western democracies, the era of communicative abundance, and contemporary modes of political sociability. While, on the one hand, the global processes of democratization of information and the proliferation of institutions and mechanisms of political monitoring allow us to assert an "empowerment" of the demos and the consequent vitality of Western democracies, on the other hand we attest that a possible hypertrophy or the monopoly of monitorial political practices can produce adverse effects on democracies, such as the return of totalitarian populism. In view of this scenario, we present an ethical reflection that, besides emphasizing the fields of social communication and journalism, calls attention to the cultivation of signifiers, practices, and political powers beyond monitoring, especially those aiming at the production of a "common" other, more egalitarian, more democratic.