A ’virtual Square?’ Performative Representation in Social Media

The traditional Pitkinian (1967) concept of representation, which defined it as making present something literally absent, has recently been challenged by the constructivist-performative view (Rai and Reinelt 2015; Rai et al. 2021; Saward 2017; 2020; Petrovic Lotina and Aiolfi 2023). The central point of this challenge lies in the importance and performative possibilities of claim-making (Saward 2010; 2020; Severs 2012; Guasti and Geissel 2019) in scenarios where the represented and the representative are mutually present (Diehl and Saward 2024). Nevertheless, the main direction of the challenge has been to revaluate the the study of embodied politics, materiality and physical co-presence, while the possibility of a ’virtual Square’ (Saward 2024) has remained rather underdeveloped, and the nature of popular presence in and the performative possibilities of social media as an arena of political representation have rarely merited sustained theoretical reflection (Lappy 2025 being a noteworthy exception). The proposed paper addresses this gap in theorizing by bringing into dialogue the constructivist-performative approach to representation, performance theories, and the empirical contributions of social media research, with the aim of specifying in what sense social media might be seen as a ’virtual Square’ of representative claim-making. To do this, it focuses on three more specific problems. Firstly, on the performative possibilities of social media for representative claim-making: while it has been shown that settings of physical co-presence provide a rich performative inventory to aid constituency-making in the embodied dimension (Diehl and Saward 2024; Illés and László 2024; Osler and Szanto 2022), it is less clear to what extent these means are also available in the virtual setting of social media. Debates in performance theory between approaches that clearly distinguish between real-life and virtual performances (Fischer-Lichte 2008; Phelan 1993) and those that relativize this distinction (Auslander 2022) provide a promising starting point for such a discussion. Secondly, the paper discusses the possible effects of social media on the nature of constituencies brought about by claim-making: may this setting be especially conducive to flexible forms of identification, creating resonance (Rosa 2019; Beasley-Murray 2010) rather than identity, as some research suggests (Lappy 2025)? And, simultaneously, may it stimulate the creation of stronger collective affective intentionalities than traditional social identities by providing opportunities to jointly disclose situations (Szanto and Slaby 2020)? Examining existing social media research from this theoretical perspective may yield some answers to these questions. Thirdly, the paper aims to contribute to clarifying the nature and democratic possibilities of popular presence on social media: may these settings enable ’democratic encounters’ (Saward 2024) or ’candid’ situations (Green 2010) in a way physical co-presence does, by infusing representative performances with contingency and eventfulness? Or is a plebiscitary setting (Gerbaudo 2022; Illés and Körösényi 2024), where we can rather speak of acclamation than of actively contesting representative claims (Bene, Tóth and Goyanes 2024), the best we can hope for?