🤔 The Monarchy, the Subaltern and the Public Sphere

In the age of participatory media, a predictable event like Queen Elizabeth’s death has at least three acts. There’s the pre-ordained reactions, the obituaries written years before they needed to run, the reactions from world leaders and luminaries. In the second act, there’s a set of unanticipated reactions to a news event, as people who weren’t booked years in advance take advantage of the event to promote narratives they feel are important, hooking an oped to the news hook, or using the historical moment to remind people of an underexplored chapter of history. And then there’s a third wave, in which we debate whether or not speech in the second wave is acceptable in a democratic society.