Digital Cosmopolitism: Ulrich Beck and Communication as “Public Bad”

The chapter deals with the representative shifts engendered by the digital revolution, probed by Ulrich Beck in his posthumous analysis of the “politics of Visibility”. His analysis is founded on the intertwining of “communication and world”. Specifically, his thinking revolves around the communicative drawbacks of risk society, dependent on the tendency to reproduce and share any aspect of our daily experience. This is why Beck dwells on the “new landscapes of communication”, bound to create new forms of communities in the era of globalized cosmopolitism. Hence follows the convergence of old and new media, which foster the way people turn into their “imagined communities”. This is the phase marked by the transition to global communication, ruled by the representation of risks undermining the global balance. In this sense, the narration of progress and technological innovation mingles with the underestimation of the negative effects of globalization in terms of health and poverty. This is one of the most relevant aspects concerning the risk society, nourished by the fast metamorphosis of the globalized world. Therefore, this chapter aims to highlight the “public bads of communication” emphasized by Beck—following Habermas’ lesson—in the era of digital opinions, more and more fluctuating in the public sphere of connected actors.