The power of voice: bots, democracy and the problem of political ventriloquism

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the problem of political ventriloquism in a digital age. Democracy relies on the authority of collective voice conceived of as constituent power or vox populi but new technologies that mimic human participation can divert public debate, posing a threat to authenticity and accountability. If ventriloquism primarily serves to manipulate the gullible, the practice should be curtailed. However, this neglects the power of ventriloquism to also open politics to new voices and minimizes the responsibility of listeners. Efforts to address the practice, therefore, cannot follow a model based on simple silencing without prioritizing pacification over transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Voice
• democracy
• constituent power
• ventriloquism
• bots

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Bots that mimic real users influence online discussion in ways that ‘manipulate public opinion, choke off debate, and muddy political issues’. They also make ‘reasonable exchanges cacophonous’, and promote ‘zombie electioneering’. Although there has been significant focus on Russian influence in the 2016 US election, or misinformation campaigns in the Brexit debate, the use of bots is widespread enough to ‘disrupt civic conversations and organizations worldwide’ (Howard et al., pp. 83, 86-7; Bradshaw and Howard 2018, Badawy et al. 2018).

2. The concept of authority referenced here has both sociological and normative aspects (Haugaard 2018). The normative dimension of democratic authority arises in the idea that all voices should carry equal weight and that decision-making should be a function of how these voices converge behind a common project.

3. It should be noted that bots are used across the political and social spectrum, including by political parties, interest groups, and conventional journalism outlets. Generally, these are transparent about their automated nature. The focus in this section is on bots designed to mimic humans sufficiently to mislead an audience.

4. Bots and trolls work together in many cases, although it is the bots that deliver the scalable, high-volume impact of the digital environment. The terminology on digital ventriloquism is still emerging, and some researchers classify any online accounts with an ‘intent to deceive or create conflict’ as trolls (Badawy et al. 2018, p. 2). The focus in this discussion is on the capacity of the online environment to support disembodied voice at an unprecedented scale, which puts bots in the foreground.

5. Recent research found that in the 2016 American election conservative twitter trolls outnumbered liberal ones by two to one, and produced almost seven times as many tweets. Moreover, eleven percent of conservative trolls were identified as bots compared to five percent of liberal accounts (Badawy et al. 2018, p. 9). There is also evidence that conservative bots emulated human behavior more effectively than their liberal counterparts in the 2018 American midterm elections, a strategy that generated higher engagement and made them ‘more central’ to conservative networks (Luceri et al. 2019, p. 5).

6. Joseph Schumpeter’s claim that the classical idea of democracy was doomed to fail from the start would tend to undermine the distinction Mudde and Muller want to make around populism. Schumpeter characterizes the classical theory centered on the vox populi as ‘worshiping the will of the people’, and he considers it a dysfunctional myth. Not only is there no singular will to represent, he argues, but people inevitably fail to demonstrate the rationality this ideal requires. The typical citizen, he explains, ‘drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field’, easily falling prey to an opportunist who ‘create the will of the people’ (Schumpeter 2003, pp. 252, 262-3). However, if democracy is thought of as a system for generating collective authority from within an otherwise diverse and occasionally irrational demos (something along the lines of Rousseau’s general will) then Schumpeter’s objections do not hold, and the distinction that Muller makes between healthy and degraded democracy stands.

7. The relevance of Carl Schmitt’s friend/enemy concept of politics to the populist mindset is evident here. See The Concept of the Political (Schmitt 2007).

8. Murphy argues that a sovereign and constitutional regime made possible through constituent power can also betray its progenitor, abandoning the demos to abject conditions. That outcome, while possible, represents ‘a chilling betrayal’ of constituent power (Murphy 2017, p. 91).

9. This is in part because she begins her discussion by quoting Woodrow Wilson’s comment that the American constitution became the object of ‘an undiscriminating and almost blind worship’ (Arendt 1963, p. 10). The other case that Arendt repeatedly cites as capturing the dynamics of political beginning is Virgil’s Aeneid. In that work, Aeneas is led to refound Rome by following the often disembodied voice of prophecy (Arendt 1971, pp. 203-8).

10. The background to Brown’s writing was the political events of the Alien and Sedition Acts that aimed to ‘purify the voice of the nation’. Eric Wolfe reads the novel as ‘an oblique commentary on the crisis’ including the ‘Federalist fantasy of vocal unity’ (Wolfe 2006, pp. 433-4). Reportedly the first person Brown sent his new novel to was Thomas Jefferson (Connor 2000, p. 229). Jefferson’s capacity to deliver his own words as the voice of the people leveraged extraordinary powers, which might explain why Brown felt he was an appropriate first reader.

11. Or as Eric Wolfe puts it ‘If bodies produce voices, voices also produce bodies’ (Wolfe 2006, p. 435).

12. It is important to note that not every claim that finds a willing audience is an instance of a constituency finding their representative. If those unaffected by the issues at stake drive the success of a representational effort then representation may be a practical success, without being legitimate, leaving a potential constituency dangerously silenced. Disch (2015) argues that this distinction gives the representational turn its normative significance.

13. Those who diverge from conventional truths ‘can try to create an alternative set of relevant others’ to validate their position (Haugaard 2012, p. 84). Prophecy provides one way to generate such validation when worldly authorities withhold it (Scott 1990).

14. Even Hobbes’ sovereign is authoritative by social compact rather than by nature. He is a ‘Mortall God’ – a human construction, nothing divine (Hobbes 1985, p. 227). The view that the voice of popular authority is neither pure nor complete may seem to adopt an overly critical view at the cost of normative principle. It could be argued in response that the proper goal for democracy is to at least aspire towards completeness. But this sets up political life as something grander than the people that compose it, and that ultimately may prove disempowering (Haugaard 2018, p. 128).

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Catherine Frost

Catherine Frost is a professor of Political Science at McMaster University in Canada. She writes on issues in political theory including representation, community, nationalism and identity, as well as on communications theory, literature and new media. Her current research looks at political founding and constituent power, with a special focus on Declarations of Independence and the origins of law.