The Global Village Is Here, Just Not Like We Expected: Transnational Politics on Social Media and the Rise of Networked Cosmopolitanism

This chapter examines the promise and limitations of global political networks on social media. Early scholarship portrayed these networks as transformative instruments for political mobilisation and cosmopolitan dialogue in a ‘global town square’, where barriers to participation would be substantially reduced. Yet empirical research has revealed significant constraints that complicate this optimistic vision – not the least, the rise of nativist populism. However, this chapter challenges the prevailing thinking that the cosmopolitan project of social media has failed. Drawing on an analysis of engagement with the 2020 US presidential election on Twitter, the chapter presents a revised conception of cross-border communication. ‘Networked cosmopolitanism’, in practice, may not meet the ideological expectations of ethical cosmopolitanism, but nevertheless is a strong shaper of online communication and the circulation of political ideas. The chapter argues that cosmopolitan communication on social media is marked by a normalised fluidity between the national and the global, is not merely a practice of elites, and has become an important means of sharing political vocabularies among a wide spectrum of ideological positions, including those who would declare themselves anticosmopolitan.