The Concept of Anonymity in the Public Media Discourse since the Age of Enlightenment. Phenomenology – Structure – Function |
During the Age of Enlightenment there were radical changes in society and media. Traditional behavioural practices and knowledge experienced a far-reaching metamorphosis as secularisation unfolded. Traditional authorities were questioned by individual reasoning; rationality stood alongside dominant religious belief systems. Increasing individualisation meant that each human being was personally responsible for his/her own actions, which contributed to the increasing importance in the concept of anonymity in the public discourse and was actively sought.
The appearance of anonymously or pseudonymously published papers was hard to hinder by institutional measures such as copyright or royalties. This development increased with the parallel differentiation of the book market and the formation of a new media culture. Henceforward texts – mass produced and often published as periodicals – created a barrier between the author and audience and made communication anonymous. I propose that due to the development of medial communication in the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of anonymity and “being anonymous” gained special importance and absorbed specific functions of self-reflection and moral discourse. Further, I assume that even today anonymous public communication has a specific significance which can be understood analogously to the structure and function of anonymity in the 18th Century.
Hence, I assume that there is a connection between radical social processes of transformation, technical inventions and the increasing attractiveness of anonymity in public communication. This connection – as a model – claims validity for the Age of Enlightenment as well as for the present day. I presume that current processes of increasing anonymity in society are rooted structurally and functionally in developments in the 18th Century. I therefore wish to reconstruct the cultural significance of the phenomenon of anonymity in the Age of Enlightenment which shall lead to the ability to historically classify, understand and explain comparable processes that are taking place in the present.