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Taking voice and taking sides: the role of social media commenting in solidarity contestation

New media forms and social media are increasingly used by citizens to engage with and debate the boundaries of political community and solidarity. Yet, the effects of fragmentation or inclusiveness on the public sphere are seen as ambivalent. In the literature, the destabilisation effects of social media on existing communities or publics are emphasised. In particular, social media and news commenting sites are often held responsible for the spread of hate speech and uncivic culture towards fellow citizens (Gerhards and Schafer, 2010; Michailidou et al., 2014; Rasmussen, 2014). Others, however, emphasise the new opportunities provided by social media as a stimulus for agenda-setting, more inclusive deliberation, identity-building, and therefore also solidarity. Political debates are more civic, global, inclusive and accessible, and empower disadvantaged groups and pluralise the public sphere in various ways (Dahlgren, 2013; Rauchfleisch and Kovic, 2016). An uncivic online sphere, on the other hand, would be a major threat to established solidarity relationships. The potential both to erode and to empower solidarity bonds across social, political and national boundaries establishes online and social media as networks or platforms for the contestation of solidarity. What these new ways for solidarity contestation have in common is that they engage users with media content that conveys information or messages about the needs of other people. Through the confrontation with such content, social media users become witnesses of instances of distant suffering by others. Such witnessing creates a situation of moral spectatorship (Boltanski, 1999; Silverstone, 2006). Social media moral spectatorship can consequently build more immediate relationships to objects of suffering while, at the same time, activating critical capacities of online citizen-users