Arendt in the Metaverse
Four properties of eXtended Reality that imperil factual truth and democracy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21689872 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Morten Bay (0000-0003-1431-3297, University of Southern California, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 1698-1712 |
| Publication date | 2023-12-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Convergence The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1354-8565 • E-ISSN: 1748-7382 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/13548565231199957 |
| OpenAlex | W4386449307 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 37 |
This article explores the democratic implications of the wide adoption of XR (eXtended Reality) technologies, drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political theory and her concept of common reality. Arendt argues that the intersubjective construction of a common reality is what enables the establishment of factual truth and that both are prerequisites for a functional democracy. Without them, ideology can be established as truth by anti-democratic forces with power over media outlets, paving a path toward totalitarianism. This article argues that XR technologies can be used to inhibit the construction of a common reality through the same individualization of media experiences that has been shown to impede democratic processes in the social media context. The companies generating increased revenue through individualized micro-segmentation are now also vying for dominance in the XR media arena. It is argued in this article that such individualization can impede the co-construction of a common reality and a factual truth because XR media are hyper-persuasive and capable of altering an individual’s overall perception of reality. The viability of such platform-controlled individualization in XR is demonstrated through an Arendt-based critique of four properties related to XR technologies: Hypertargeted personalization, false memory creation, reality indistinguishability, and predictive processing theory. Based on these analyses, the article concludes that XR policy and regulation must consider how XR gives platforms unprecedented persuasive powers as they become capable of altering a user’s reality perception remotely and how, per Arendt, this may threaten democracy
Aesthetics · Democracy · Epistemology · Human–computer interaction · Ideology · Media studies · Metaverse · Perception · Political science · Politics · Reality television · Sociology · Virtual reality · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Law · Philosophy · Virtual Reality Applications and Impacts · Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
Lie Machines
The Platform Society
Elite rhetoric can undermine democratic norms
Predictive coding in the visual cortex
The Ethics of Realism in Virtual and Augmented Reality
Perceiving is believing
Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science
Political Memes and Fake News Discourses on Instagram
Psychology of the Digital Age
Post-Truth, Fake News and Democracy
The role of (social) media in political polarization
Governance by algorithms
The mediated construction of reality
The origins of totalitarianism
Are We All Amazon Primed? Consumers and the Politics of Platform Power
Propaganda through 'reflexive control' and the mediated construction of reality
| Highly cited | No |
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