Democracy's Fatal Flaw: Anonymity and the Normalization of Offence in John Dunton's Epistolary Periodicals

Abstract

Epistolary periodicals associated with English coffee house culture have often been associated with Jürgen Habermas' model for the rise of the ‘bourgeois public sphere’. Habermas proposed this ultimately gave rise to the free articulation of public opinion and the emergence of democratic values. Written at a time of socio-political upheaval, John Dunton's serial publications relied upon anonymous authorship, particularly his most famous periodical, the Athenian Mercury (1691–97), which pioneered the question-and-answer format and gave rise to many imitations. In the present era, we are witnessing democracy imperilled by the proliferation of AI-driven ‘fake news’. This paper proposes that the origins of this phenomenon may be found in epistolary periodicals which normalized giving and receiving offence in print. The pernicious quality of anonymous print, free from personal accountability or consequences, embedded from its inception a fatal flaw in the project of constituting a democratic public sphere.