Anonymity and Democracy: Absence as Presence in the Public Sphere

Abstract

Although anonymity is a central feature of liberal democracies—not only in the secret ballot, but also in campaign funding, publishing political texts, masked protests, and graffiti—it has so far not been conceptually grounded in democratic theory. Rather, it is treated as a self-explanatory concept related to privacy. To overcome this omission, this article develops a complex understanding of anonymity in the context of democratic theory. Drawing upon the diverse literature on anonymity in political participation, it explains anonymity as a highly context-dependent identity performance expressing private sentiments in the public sphere. The contradictory character of its core elements—identity negation and identity creation—results in three sets of contradictory freedoms. Anonymity affords (a) inclusion and exclusion, (b) subversion and submission, and (c) honesty and deception. This contradictory character of anonymity's affordances illustrates the ambiguous role of anonymity in democracy.

Deliberation and Identity Rules: The Effect of Anonymity, Pseudonyms and Real-Name Requirements on the Cognitive Complexity of Online News Comments

“…This claim is echoed by Danielle Allen in her discussion of Creon’s regime in Sophocles’ Antigone, in which it was only the anonymous chorus who were able to speak truth to Creon’s power (though he did not listen), and from which she concludes that regimes of enforced public silence may look stable, but are prone to ‘rapid, radical change’ (Allen, 2010: 117). So anonymity can, on one hand, introduce power asymmetries and the strategic use of speech in the public sphere and, at the same time, offer release from demands for social conformity that can themselves reflect power asymmetries (Asenbaum, 2018). A reasonable, if not especially helpful, general answer to the question of the effect of anonymity on public deliberation would thus seem to be: it depends.…”

“…This is also how it has been framed by a number of empirical studies looking at the effect of anonymity on online commenting (Manosevitch et al, 2014: 1180; Janssen and Kies, 2005; Towne and Herbsleb, 2012). Yet a number of theorists have recently highlighted the conceptual complexity of anonymity and its productive and communicative dimensions (Asenbaum, 2018; Moore, 2018; Véliz, 2019). The case we examine in this article gives us an opportunity to empirically address these claims.…”

The politics of becoming: Disidentification as radical democratic practice

“…Here, practices employing anonymity can contribute to moments of disidentification through the interruption of the surveilling gaze of the police. Anonymity in various radical democratic practices, such as masked protesting, online debates, graffiti and pamphleteering, can contribute to personal expressions of the multiple self (Asenbaum, 2018a). Particularly online engagement provides the means to enact identity differently as a moment of anonymity is built into the communicative infrastructure.…”

Making a Difference: Toward a Feminist Democratic Theory in the Digital Age

“…Diversity is claimed discursively rather than visually. Identity boundaries are, however, destabilized (Asenbaum 2018a).…”