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as ‗liking‘ it. In this respect, Facebook communication and sociability (and, as it has been argued
particularly in the early days of the internet, the entire online communication) could be seen as a
certain degradation of offline face-to-face interaction: in the most instrumental user practices
friends are ‗stored‘ to be ‗retrieved‘ when needed, communication may easily be ended by not
replying, or plain ignoring what a friend has just posted. Another common reproach to digital
communications, also applicable to Facebook, is the degradation of ‗pristine‘ eye-to-eye and/or
flesh-to-flesh contact. Yes, communication in Facebook is indeed often fragmentary, cursory ...
although often also the most practical substitution for face-to-face communication.
However, this can only be seen a degradation, if ‗real‘ offline face-to-face communication, on
matters both serious and mundane, would invariantly exert elaborate arguments and high levels of
linguistic accuracy and stile, etc. 347 If, in other words, one would presuppose the existence of what
Zygmunt Bauman calls ―human individual‘s capacity for immaculate conception.‖ 348 Attention
and devotion to linguistic detail and solid argument in media and/or political discourses is, more
often than not, staggeringly low. The media (and politics as well) are usually a field of thriving
gossip and little argument, just as much as the most quotidian pub-talk is. Hence, the difference
between online and offline communications practices cannot be based entirely on what and how is
said. Additionally, John Storey‘s warning that ―we must always be alert to the what, why, and
[also (and this is important!)] for whom something is being articulated, and how it can always be
articulated differently in other contexts,‖ retains all its relevance.
A more valid line of distinction has to be sought elsewhere: regardless of the ‗argumentative
power‘ of wither gossip or argument (I put this in such distinctly oppositional terms for the sake of
the argument), what eventually counts are the ripples they make when chucked into the networks
of social, political interactions. Or rather, the attention should be directed to the resonances and
effects that the mundane and/or political discourses have in the fabric of social interaction. Once
this is acknowledged, the media and political discourses can be approached more critically. Just as
well, online ‗gossiping‘ can, just as critically, be given credit as a non-negligible, not at all
irrelevant, frequently democratising factor in creating a public space. John Storey further argues
that the postmodern culture offers the possibility of many different articulations, 349 and it has to be
added that it is the DME enabled/enabling technologies that do much the same in the realm of
digital communications. This is a corollary predominantly of mass and digital mediation (and
mediatisation) of everyday life, politics, science, consumerism, entertainment. In their particular
347 See ―Jugoslavijo,‖ Chapter 3 on use of language in Youtube comments.
348 Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 2000, 168.
349 John Storey, Inventing popular culture, Malden, Oxford, Carlton, Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 73.
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