The Space of the World: Can Human Ethics Survive Social Media and What if It Can't?

This article reflects on the global space of communications and interaction constructed over three decades through a commercialized Internet and platforms whose business model depends on extracting data from users and shaping user behavior to optimize behavior that will generate advertising value. Those conditions have guaranteed a space of human interaction larger, more polarized, and more toxic than is compatible with human solidarity, and increasingly complicit with toxic forms of political power. I argue that social theory might play some role in deconstructing, and potentially solving, this major problem for humanity by formulating alternatives. How might we build a different space of the world, less likely to be toxic and more likely to generate the solidarity and effective cooperation that humanity needs to address its huge shared challenges? And what are the implications for media and communication ethics of these fundamental challenges deriving from the scale of our digital communications?