Within recent years, we've experienced somewhat of a boom in literature
offering a media-centric perspective on universal moral and ethics, raising
questions of the increasingly moral role of media in public life as a consequence
of an increasingly globally integrated world379. The common denominator in
this literature has often been (explicitly or implicitly) the promise, or at times
the dismissal, of some kind of a cosmopolitan global society, populated by
engaged world citizens, communicating, engaging politically and not least
acting ethically and empathically across boarders in a spirit of mutual tolerance,
reciprocity, universal morality and claims to justice. The role of new social
movements, articulated as e.g. the demos, the multitude, the swarm intelligence
or the empowered civic cultures, has often been highlighted in these dreams of
difference.
In these numerous accounts new media technology is often either celebrated
for expanding political discourse beyond the here and now into transnational
political communities as well as closing the moral distance between world
citizens. Or, alternatively, such technology is condemned for undermining the
authenticity of discou
