Whether it is about the chaotic rise and return of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency or the destructive fury of wars along the European Union’s borders, a defining feature of the social media age is a tendency to claim that contemporary moments of crisis are without historical precedent. This widespread anxiety that the global order is being overwhelmed by radical changes is frequently accompanied by expressions of concern over the supposed fracturing of democracies into “echo chambers” in which social factions close themselves off from the rest of society.
Yet the ardor with which many commentators express such anxiety over the future of public debate ignores how efforts by different communities to construct their own social spaces has been an inherent part of democratic life since long before the advent of social media.
Fears that factional rivalries will inevitably destroy social unity have been a recurring theme among rulers and philosophers since the earliest states were formed. The role played by the wider public in the political life of Ancient Greek city states and the Roman Republic produced regular flareups of violence between supporters of different patronage networks. Endemic rioting between “Blue” and “Green” fans of charioteering teams in the sixth-century Byzantine Empire and deadly disputes between “Guelph” papal loyalists and “Ghibelline” supporters of the Holy Roman Empire in 12th-century Italy show how the fracturing of societies into rival factions continued to shape moments of crisis many centuries before the technologies that now define 21st-century political life emerged.