STI: Your Digi_morals project seeks to study how disagreements work in everyday digital contexts. What have you discovered, so far?
ML: We haven’t started the empirical part yet. We are working on the concept of “moral disagreement,” which we take from philosophy, to see how to make it operational in communications and social sciences. These are the three legs on which this project – interdisciplinary from its conception – is based.
We are currently considering the possibility of analyzing the characteristics of potential platforms for which we think our analysis would make sense. From the point of view of communication, which is the closest to my specialty, we know that each digital platform has its own design singularities (in the digital world, this is known as affordances). This factor determines the communicative dynamics that emerge from the digital architectures of these platforms. That is, each platform has generated its own culture.
The distinction between networks is fundamental to study the dynamics of disagreement that emerge depending on the information that each platform provides to its adherents. It is becoming increasingly rare for people to interact with an isolated message. When the conversation turns ugly and the speech drifts towards hostility, a conversational turn can often be observed in which users try to access any additional profile information that allows them to make inferences about their interlocutor that allow them to make ideological, social (to which groups they belong), cultural, etc. generalizations. From here, we move on to what the social sciences call ‘affective polarization’. In this sense, what each platform makes visible to the user becomes a key element of interaction.
This diversification of platforms is also necessary due to the new circumstances established by social networks such as Twitter, whose research API is no longer free and open to research, as it has been until very recently. Therefore, we are trying to reconstruct debates identified as moral disagreements in philosophy, develop communicational keys, and take them to theoretical models of computational communication – computer mediated communication – for a potential experimental design that allows us to begin to test hypotheses about disagreements in the digital realm.
We know that, the greater the parity, the greater the capacity for agreement. We would like to isolate the elements that are mitigating radical and anti-civic disagreement; disagreement that undermines public discourse and, consequently, the possibility of arriving at collective decisions.
STI: What was the motivation for starting the project?
ML: In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, I proposed to different UC3M researchers the creation of an interdisciplinary network around the theory of the civil sphere. We understood this network beyond our respective departmental research groups, intra-area networks, etc., to (1) generate a space for dialogue between our disciplines, (2) materialize this space in a common research program around the topics that have already been emerging and (3) generate enough momentum to expand throughout Europe.
The initiative soon arose from there to present a European project focused on the problems of social polarization and rooting. I was inspired by a collective publication on the civil sphere and radicalization linked to the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology and the sociologist Jeffrey Alexander, with whom I had recently collaborated. The CHANSE scheme in which we proposed the project had an impact on the digital realm. We therefore formulated a project at the convergence of three lines: polarization, civil sphere and digital media. Unfortunately, we did not get funding… I am aware from this and other cases that some 90% of applications cannot get funding.
Nevertheless, the degree of all the researchers’ involvement was strengthened. The project helped us to get to know each other better, to share in depth the thematic field of the research, and to maintain our interest in participating in interdisciplinary research. We were all willing to continue plowing forward towards materializing the network in projects funded both nationally and on the European level. Finally, our efforts were rewarded. Through philosophy, we obtained funding from the BBVA Foundation to carry out this project on moral disagreements in the digital sphere.
STI: In a world as polarized as today’s – especially in the digital sphere – is it possible to have a reasoned debate and seek consensus in social media?
ML: We think so. In fact, our project is not aimed as much at revealing disagreement as it is at offering a proposal to arrive at agreement. There are already powerful international initiatives aimed at social depolarization that we are exploring to generate synergies and collaborations.
STI: How are moral disagreements understood by digi_morals?
ML: By moral disagreements we mean controversies or disputes involving opposing values. We distinguish at least four types of moral disagreements. Sometimes we encounter apparent moral disagreements. Although the two sides hold a different moral view on a dispute, recourse to evidence can cause both sides to converge on a common position (McGrath 2008. Tersman 2006). Other times opposing moral positions are inserted into a common set of values, a set that is subject to different orders. Two groups can value individual autonomy and loyalty to the group, prioritizing those values differently in a specific case. We speak then of genuine moral disagreements (Haidt 2013).
Sometimes evaluative disagreements point to moral frameworks that do not contain the same values. In such cases, we find radical moral disagreement, as the opposing moral position includes some value alien to both parties. There is a long debate about whether evaluative disagreements are possible in this radical sense (Aguiar, Gaitán, Viciana, 2020 for a recent review). Although it is not clear that there are radical disagreements, it seems useful at the outset to keep this possibility in mind.
Finally, it is increasingly common to find cases of moral disagreement in which what is at issue are the basic criteria governing moral debate. These are profound disagreements centered on the nature of the very principles of justification and moral deliberation.
STI: How can you enhance the positive effects of moral disagreements and minimize polarization?
ML: We’re working on it. In my opinion, and based on recent mega-studies such as that of Voelkel et al, 2022, pluralism will represent a good antidote to antagonistic and radical political depolarization at a symbolic-discursive or communicative level. Authors such as Laclau and Mouffe already considered polarization in terms of hegemonic discourses that compete with each other, that is, in semiotic chains of equivalences that unite heterogeneous signifiers and disparate political issues under an empty banner or signifier (a signifier that encapsulates multiple, and even contradictory, interpretations rather than particular meanings).
In this way, the problem of political polarization (and that of disagreements) could be framed in terms of how hegemonic and relatively stable discursive formations not only limit the “free play of signifiers” (Derrida), but also perpetuate group belongings and exclusive identities. On the contrary, pluralism made it possible to decouple meanings and values that are at the basis of these radical disagreements. In other words, if polarization and radical disagreement can be limited “issue by issue,” on the basis of unity and plurality, it might be possible to harness the energy of polarization, while disarming its antagonistic potential.
STI: Do networks make us more intolerant, by exposing us to opinions contrary to ours? Are we more exposed to disagreement or to echo chambers and communication bubbles in which we only see what we want to see?
ML: Empirical sociological studies seem to contradict themselves in this point. There are studies that show that the most polarized personalities in digital environments do not correspond to those who are most exposed to other opinions. Yet, there are also studies that show the opposite, in the line of echo chambers and communication bubbles that promote network dynamics and algorithms that personalize the information to which the user is exposed.
STI: What tools could help improve understanding and enhance the positive effects of moral disagreements?
ML: I am convinced of the effectiveness of discursive or communication tools adjusted to the communicational dynamics and designs of the digital platforms and social networks, as I said in one of the first questions. However, we still have to develop a “toolkit” to achieve this. On the other hand, I know that many media outlets, for example, use the same technology that fosters disagreement to moderate radical opinions in commentaries on their articles. These media have developed AI tools to detect levels of aggressiveness, hatred, and uncivil polarization online. There are even tools that allow users to detect if their message or the message thread in which it enters has toxic elements.
Visit http://www.digimorals.net/ for further information about Digi_Morals and those involved.
