Lurkers and the Fantasy of Persuasion in an Online Cultural Public Sphere

Abstract

This contribution revolves around political discussions in forum discussion threads on the Swedish online LGBTQ community platform, Qruiser. Political discussions in these online forum threads are studied as cultural participation in an online cultural public sphere. The specific question the chapter seeks to answer is what role so-called lurkers play for active participants’ meaning-making practices. Lurkers could be understood as a fantasy, an imagined audience willing to listen and be persuaded by active participants’ arguments. However, applying a Lacan inspired analytical framework, the chapter will conclude that the fantasy is not so much about the lurkers themselves (that may be imagined or just invisible), but the belief in persuasion. Hence, the answer to the question of why users participate in verbal battles with each other online would be because they are driven by a fantasy of persuasion as a way to cope with the lack of enjoyment in terms of them being split from a harmonious world of political unity.