[Outside the inferno of the hostile public sphere...]
“You cannot imagine to what a disease the itch of news is grown”
John Cooper, 1667.
The public face of this election has suddenly threatened to turn this day into one of the low points in my experience of British politics, rather than the high I had hoped for. Never did I imagine that so many friends and acquaintances would attempt to dictate who I vote for. How dare the privacy of the polling booth, one of the most sacrosanct occasions of personal sovereignty and modern democracy, be spilled with such liberal contempt into the baying public arena? [Edit: With more on Facebook's breach of privacy, see Al's 'Social Media Fails']
The greater sharing of information, the extended reach for campaigning, and the innovative use of new media for political purposes are all to be respected and admired. We are at a time when we could be united in celebrating an open campaign which only goes to improve the (relative) democracy we are fortunate to have in this country. Instead, the derisory, majoritarian and adversarial tone of political ‘speech-acts’ has now shown that peer pressure has forced its way into youth politics, as I feared it might.
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