Facebook -- The Bane of a Global Public Sphere

Thinking through whether there is or is not a global public sphere I am reminded of this election, and how sometimes it seems like we don’t even have a national public sphere because everything has become so fragmented that there is almost nothing in common between a Trump supporter and a Clinton one, much less Johnson holdouts or Stein advocates. If national public spheres are disappearing, or at least shrinking, is it then possible to have a global public sphere?

From Facebook to the spread of personalized news, and a desire to avoid being around people who are not exactly like us, people in the U.S. are ceasing to have common ground with their neighbors and associates. If one is not exactly like us then we don’t seem to have a use for them, and often view them with hostility. This is magnified when dealing with foreigners, those not a part of our countries almost seem to need the exact same interests as us in order to be accepted. So then, while we may have more opportunities to create global common ground, having anything coherently resembling a global public sphere seems even more distant than before.