Kierkegaard, the Press, and the “Little Mic”: From a 19th-Century Critique to a 21st-Century Solution
Hockey Day Minnesota 2026 is officially scheduled to take place in Hastings in January 2026, making it an excellent opportunity to make great use of Soundbites during the event! Image: Søren Kierkegaard AI by Local Pigeon
The Philosopher Who Feuded with the Press
In 1840s Copenhagen, a young Søren Kierkegaard watched with growing alarm as the power of the press expanded in his small society. Kierkegaard – now hailed as a pioneer of existentialist thought – lived in a world where cheap newspapers and pamphlets were the new media revolution. Born in 1813 and educated in theology and philosophy, he became famous (and infamous) for writing under witty pseudonyms and for his fearless critiques of culture and Christendom en.wikipedia.org, en.wikipedia.org. Yet, beyond theology, Kierkegaard also became one of history’s sharpest critics of the media and “the public.” His origin story as a media critic was partly personal: after a satirical newspaper The Corsair mocked him for months – caricaturing everything from his lofty tone to his physical quirks – the once-anonymous writer found himself a public laughingstock abc.net.au, abc.net.au. Children taunted him in the streets of Copenhagen, and the experience left a bitter mark on his view of the press abc.net.au.
This episode, known as the Corsair affair, was more than a bruised ego; it crystallized Kierkegaard’s conviction that the emerging mass media had a toxic influence on society. He responded not by retreating entirely, but by doubling down on criticism of the press in his writings. In “The Present Age,” his 1846 essay-length review of a Danish novel, Kierkegaard describes a society where passionate commitment has given way to detached indifference – a “reflective” age dominated by talk about things rather than action upon things patheos.com, patheos.com. And at the heart of his critique were two intertwined villains: the press and “the public.”
Kierkegaard on the Media and the “Monstrous” Public
Kierkegaard’s words about the press were scathing. He lambasted the media of his day as “the most wretched, the most contemptible of all tyrannies” and even “the evil principle in the modern world.” As for journalists, he quipped with acid sarcasm that if his son chose that profession and stuck at it five years, “him I should give up.” abc.net.au Clearly, this 19th-century thinker saw something deeply wrong in how journalism was done – even Donald Trump’s denunciation of the press as “enemies of the people” sounds “positively amateurish” next to Kierkegaard’s wrath abc.net.au.
But Kierkegaard’s critique went deeper than personal animosity. He feared what he called “leveling” – a flattening of genuine individuality and truth under a kind of mass complacency. For true “leveling” to happen, he argued, society conjures up a phantom: an abstract, shapeless entity called “the public.” “For leveling really to take place, a phantom must first be raised… an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage – and this phantom is the public,” Kierkegaard wrote patheos.com. In a healthy, passionate age of engaged citizens, “there is no such thing as a public,” he believed patheos.com. But in a more cynical, detached age, the press can create this illusion of a unified public opinion – an abstraction of people rather than a real community.
Importantly, Kierkegaard stressed that “the public is not a people, not a generation, not one’s age, not a congregation… for all these are… only by being concretions.” In other words, actual communities are made of real individuals in relationship, whereas “the public” is a faceless amalgamation patheos.com. This phantom public, propped up by an impersonal press, becomes “the actual master of leveling”, enforcing a mediocre consensus that stifles individual passion and thought patheos.com. He calls the public “a monstrous nonentity.” The press, in Kierkegaard’s view, feeds this monster with endless chatter – information and opinion detached from personal responsibility. News writers could pontificate anonymously to a mass audience, with none of the accountability or intimate dialogue that face-to-face communication requires.
Kierkegaard’s foresight was uncanny. In one journal entry, he imagined a troubling scenario: “Suppose someone invented an instrument, a convenient little talking tube which could be heard over the whole land – I wonder if the police would not forbid it, fearing that the whole country would become mentally deranged if it were used.” abc.net.au In effect, he predicted the social consequences of something like the radio – or Twitter. Today, we do live with “little talking tubes” in our pockets: anyone can shout their thoughts across the world in an instant. Kierkegaard feared that such a technology, amplifying voices without restraint, could drive society mad with rumor and reflection devoid of action abc.net.au.
The Modern “Phantom Public” and the Crisis of Trust
Fast-forward to the 21st century. Our age of 24/7 news feeds, viral tweets, and infinite scrolling often sounds eerily similar to Kierkegaard’s “present age.” The “phantom” public is alive and everywhere – on cable news panels, in trending hashtags, in comment sections and viral memes. Information flows faster and wider than ever, but with that has come a dizzying sense of disconnection. We have unprecedented quantities of news and opinions, yet citizens often feel less informed and less empowered. Misinformation spreads easily; meaningful civic action seems harder to muster. Many observers note that society is “over-communicated but under-connected.”
Public trust in media has plummeted in recent years. Polls consistently show that people have a low opinion of journalists’ honesty and a growing skepticism toward what they read or watch abc.net.au. In Kierkegaard’s terms, we’re living in the aftermath of leveling: when every claim or source seems as dubious as the next, people throw up their hands and retreat from engagement. The Internet’s ability to give everyone a voice – that “convenient little talking tube” writ large – has indeed produced amazing diversity of content. But it also enabled echo chambers, anonymous trolls, and the pile-on phenomenon (online mobs attacking individuals, something Kierkegaard himself experienced in analog form). The result can feel like exactly what he warned: “an all-encompassing something that is nothing” – a loud, chaotic public discourse that generates more heat than light patheos.com.
Yet, it would be too easy to conclude that Kierkegaard’s stance was purely pessimistic. He did suggest a remedy: a return to the single individual, to subjective commitment, and to communities grounded in truth and authenticity. “It can be halted only if the individual, in individual separateness, gains the intrepidity of religiousness,” he wrote, implying that only deeply rooted personal conviction (he spoke in religious terms) could resist the tide of leveling patheos.com. In a secular context, we might say he wanted people to step out of the abstract public and take personal, accountable action.
So how do we restore trust and substance to public discourse? One intriguing answer is emerging not from a big media corporation, but from a local experiment in civic technology. In an era when problems of misinformation and alienation often feel global and unsolvable, a small city in Minnesota is testing a solution at the community level – one that resonates uncannily with Kierkegaard’s ideas.
From Kierkegaard to Hastings: A Local Answer to a Global Problem
Hastings, Minnesota, is a river town of about 22,000 people – a place of strong community ties and proud local institutions. It has its weekly newspapers and Facebook groups like any town, but like everywhere, it struggles with the noise of the information age. City notices can get lost in the social media shuffle; local businesses can find it hard to get the word out in a trusted way; rumors can spread before facts do hastingsnow.com. In short, Hastings residents often ask the same questions we all do: “Is this true? Is it current? Does it help me?” hastingsnow.com.
Enter HastingsNow.com – a civic-tech initiative that has built what it calls a “community trust layer” for local information hastingsnow.com. At first glance, HastingsNow is a local news and events website. But at its core is a new model of gathering and sharing information that pointedly tries to avoid creating yet another “noisy feed.” Instead, it focuses on clarity, verification, and usefulness hastingsnow.com. The platform’s signature feature is the Soundbite – essentially a 30-second voice note that any verified local person or organization can record by phone or web. Each short audio is then turned into a multimedia post on the HastingsNow site, combining text, photos, video, and audio. Crucially, every Soundbite post comes with built-in signals of trust and accountability that address the very issues Kierkegaard fretted about: How do we know what we’re reading is true? Who is this “public” we’re hearing from? And will all this talk spur any real action?
Alt: A retro-style microphone with the words "The Little Mic That Builds Local Trust," symbolizing a platform that amplifies community voices with accountability.
HastingsNow’s approach is summed up by two concepts drawn from philosophy and information science: “comparative epistemology” (in plain terms, how we know what we know) and “provenance” (where information comes from). These lofty terms are made very practical on the platform. Comparative epistemology, for HastingsNow, means that different kinds of evidence are explicitly shown for each story – like lanes on a bridge all leading to the truth hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. A city announcement might come with a reference to an official memo, a voice quote from an official, and perhaps a photo of the posted notice; a local business blurb might include an audio message from the owner plus a photo of today’s handwritten specials board. Each piece of content is labeled for its source and method – e.g. Source: Civic (City Hall), Method: Document + Photo + Audio hastingsnow.com. By showing the evidence behind a claim, the site invites the reader to trust not because of a brand or authority alone, but because they can see why the information deserves trust hastingsnow.com. As the HastingsNow team puts it, different evidence “each tell part of the story,” and every post shows those methods so you see exactly “how we know” hastingsnow.com.
The second concept, provenance, is about tracing the chain of custody of information. Borrowing a term used in art, archives, and even wine, provenance on HastingsNow means every Soundbite story comes with a kind of audit trail: you can find out who recorded it, when and where, how it was transcribed or processed, who verified it, when it was published, and even what happened after hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. It’s like an ingredient label or a logbook attached to each update. Rather than asking readers to take it on faith, the platform makes “where it came from” visible and auditable hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. For example, a lost-pet alert posted by a resident will show that person’s verified status, the time and neighborhood from which they submitted it, and later it might show an update that the pet was found (causing the post to expire) hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. In a sense, this addresses the accountability issue that so troubled Kierkegaard: the press in his day operated opaquely, with anonymous writers wielding outsize influence. By contrast, HastingsNow operates on a transparent chain of responsibility. There is still editorial oversight – content can be flagged or corrected – but the goal is that nothing is published as “news” without accompanying context of how and why it’s credible. It’s an effort to rebuild that lost “face-to-face” scale of communication, digitally: you might not literally know every contributor personally, but you see their role (resident, business owner, city staff, etc.) and the evidence they bring. It restores a human scale and source to news, countering the faceless “phantom public” with known, local voices.
Comparative Epistemology: Blending Ways of Knowing
HastingsNow describes itself as “the Hastings Bridge for information: many lanes of evidence, all meeting in one trustworthy crossing.” hastingsnow.com This metaphor captures how the platform deliberately combines multiple ways of knowing. In philosophy, epistemology asks how knowledge is justified – what counts as evidence or proof? A key insight of both science and journalism is that claims are stronger when supported by multiple, independent sources of evidence. This is the “comparative” part: by comparing different types of evidence on a story – say, a firsthand testimony and a document and an image – people get a more complete and convincing picture.
On a Soundbite post, you’ll see a set of “How We Know” labels attached to the story, summarizing its evidentiary backbone hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. These typically include: Source (who is behind this information: a local official, a business, a citizen witness?), Methods (how the information was obtained: via official document, audio testimony, photograph, data, etc.), Locality (is the source physically local and verified in Hastings or nearby?), Status (has it been verified by an editor or is it a community-submitted tip awaiting verification), and often a Reliability Score. The site even distills these into a simple score out of 15, reflecting the overall trustworthiness of the post based on those factors hastingsnow.com. For instance, a city-issued road closure alert, submitted by a known city staffer with a PDF permit attached, a map screenshot, and a voice note, might score very high (say 13/15 or “Verified, High” on locality) hastingsnow.com. A lost-dog report from a citizen who isn’t identity-verified might initially score lower (perhaps “Locality: Medium, Status: Unverified”) until others corroborate it hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. The key is not that readers must trust a number, but that they can immediately gauge how we know what’s being reported, at a glance.
This approach fights the Kierkegaardian “leveling” effect in a clever way: it refuses to treat every piece of news as equal. An anonymous rumor on Facebook and a sourced update on HastingsNow are not just two competing “opinions” in a void; one clearly carries labeled evidence and higher reliability. By elevating transparently sourced information, the platform hopes to reward truth over spin. It is a modern answer to the 1846 lament that an age lacking passion becomes overwhelmed by dubious talk. Here, talk must be backed by proof, and the community can compare and weigh evidence for themselves.
Provenance: In Search of a Real Public
Perhaps most striking is HastingsNow’s emphasis on provenance – essentially the pedigree of information. Every step of a Soundbite’s journey is recorded. In the background, when someone calls the dedicated phone hotline to record a 30-second blurb, the system already notes the phone’s location (to ensure they’re within the community or a known contributor), checks a passcode or identity if provided, and starts a chain of custody. The audio gets transcribed by software, an editor reviews it for clarity and any issues (like profanity or personal data that shouldn’t be public), and then it gets published along with any attached photos or links. This journey – capture → process → verify → publish – becomes part of the post’s metadata, forming a clear trail of how the information moved from microphone to webpage hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. Even after publishing, outcomes are tracked (more on that shortly), and any updates (like corrections or follow-ups) are logged. It’s a bit like handing every reader the reporter’s notebook and the editorial checklist along with the story.
Why does this matter? For one, it tackles the anonymity problem head on. Kierkegaard saw anonymity as a curse of the press – writers could hide behind it and avoid responsibility. On HastingsNow, contributors are not faceless. A post might be attributed to “City Hall” or a specific local organization or just “Hastings Resident (Verified)” – but in each case, there is accountability. Even regular citizens can earn a verified status by consistently contributing reliable information or by linking their account to a real identity or organization. And if something is unverified or based on hearsay, that status is clearly indicated until it’s confirmed. Nothing is presented as authoritative news without a provenance label that tells you how much it has been vetted.
This re-introduces the notion of a concrete public. Instead of an abstract “public” of anonymous masses, the voices on HastingsNow are explicitly local and particular. The “public” that emerges is actually the people of Hastings, identifiable by role. In Kierkegaard’s terms, it’s more like a “community” or “congregation” – a group defined by real participation – than a formless public patheos.com. And by keeping the focus on one town, HastingsNow also preserves a human scale. Readers often personally know the shop owner or the teacher who’s speaking in a Soundbite, or at least they know of their business or school. This familiarity, combined with the provenance trail, fosters trust in a way that national news or big social platforms struggle to achieve. It’s a face-to-face ethos implemented through a digital medium.
From Talk to Action: Measuring Real Outcomes
Another of Kierkegaard’s criticisms of the “present age” was its lack of passion and action. People would read the news and become momentarily excited or outraged, then do nothing – a kind of voyeuristic spectatorship. He feared a society where everyone observes and comments, but no one acts. Modern social media often falls into this trap too: endless debate, little resolution, a lot of “sound and fury.” HastingsNow addresses this issue in a tangible way by tying every Soundbite post to a measurable outcome. Rather than just consuming information passively, residents are prompted to do something with it – and that action is tracked (in aggregate, privacy-respecting ways) to close the feedback loop.
How does this work? Each post comes with one clear call-to-action (CTA), tailored to the content hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. It could be a “Claim” (for a coupon or offer), a “Call” (to directly dial a phone number, say for a city office), an “RSVP” (to a local event), a “Book” (schedule an appointment), “Donate”, etc. Technologically, these are implemented via unique short links or QR codes or even a simple codeword. For example, a HastingsNow post about a local brewery’s one-day promotion might include a QR code or codeword to redeem that promotion in person. A post about a charity fundraiser might include a special link to the donation page. A city announcement about a meeting could have a one-tap RSVP link or a phone number to call for more info. Each time residents follow through – scan the QR, click the link, use the code at a shop – the platform counts that as an Outcome event.
This is transformative. It means news isn’t just news – it’s a spur to participation, and its success is measured by that participation. HastingsNow explicitly ranks and values stories based on outcomes, not on vanity metrics like clicks or shares. A sensational headline that everyone reads but nobody acts on would be seen as less impactful than a modest story that, say, gets 50 families to sign up for the library card drive. In fact, the site’s philosophy is “we don’t ask you to ‘trust the hype’—we measure the bites.” If a restaurant’s Soundbite claims “best burgers in town,” the platform will literally measure how many people tapped the “Claim free burger” coupon to test that claim hastingsnow.com. By closing the loop from information to action, the system injects Kierkegaard’s missing ingredient – real-life doing – back into the cycle of news. Information is no longer an end in itself, but a means toward tangible community outcomes.
For the citizens of Hastings, this offers an empowering twist on media. Instead of just hearing about a problem or an opportunity, they can immediately do something (attend, volunteer, redeem, respond) and see that their action counts. It also combats the cynicism that nothing ever changes: each Soundbite has a built-in way to gauge if people found it useful. For instance, if a Soundbite announces “Blood Drive this Saturday,” the attached RSVP link will show how many locals actually signed up hastingsnow.com. If a city post says “New bus route now open,” a shortlink might track how many clicked for the timetable. This focus on outcomes ensures that news moves beyond talk, aligning media with real-world change.
A “Trust Layer” Built on Local Ground
Bringing all these pieces together, HastingsNow’s Soundbites can be seen as a direct antidote to Kierkegaard’s nightmare of a detached public misled by an unaccountable press. Where Kierkegaard saw an abstract public, HastingsNow cultivates a particular public – the residents of Hastings – engaging with one another’s voices. Where he decried the unaccountable press, this platform makes verification and audit trails explicit, so that every story carries a “How We Know” label and a provenance record hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. Where he lamented an age of talk without action, here every story is linked to an action and a result hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com.
To be sure, this is a localized solution. HastingsNow is not (yet) a household name beyond its region. But in an age when trust in media is at a nadir, perhaps solutions have to start small and grow from genuine success. The project’s creators sometimes call it a “little mic” approach – a humble, small-scale microphone for a community, as opposed to the deafening loudspeakers of national media. By geofencing contributions (ensuring they come from the local area or verified contributors) and curating them with a common standard, they prevent the chaos of global social platforms while preserving the openness of letting many voices speak. On HastingsNow, a school principal, a teenager with a community tip, a local business owner, and the Mayor’s office all share the same interface and standards for posting – “many voices, one clear trust language,” as their site describes it hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com. This egalitarian but accountability-focused design essentially seeks to recreate what the best of local journalism has always done (amplify community voices, hold officials accountable, inform and mobilize residents) but with modern tools and transparency.
Conclusion: Bridging Philosophy and Civic Tech
It’s not often that a small-town news experiment can illuminate the ideas of a 19th-century philosopher. Yet, in the story of HastingsNow’s Soundbites, we see a remarkable bridge between Kierkegaard’s vision and a modern community’s practice. The bridge is more than metaphorical – Hastings’ real Mississippi River bridge, iconic and connecting, is evoked in how this platform tries to connect information with trust, and ideals with action hastingsnow.com. Kierkegaard, writing in Copenhagen, could not have imagined the technologies we have today, but he keenly understood the human stakes. He warned of media that erodes meaning and publics that become apathetic phantoms. His answer was to return to the individual, to truth, to accountable relationships – essentially to re-ground the abstract in the concrete.
HastingsNow, in its own innovative way, is doing just that. It has created a real-time, transparent media platform that encourages people to speak responsibly, listen critically, and act locally. It turns a community into its own media outlet, but with guardrails that ensure quality and honesty. It remains to be seen how far this model can spread or scale – will other towns adopt the “little mic” and its comparative epistemology ethos? Could larger media learn from these principles of evidence labeling and outcome tracking? Those questions linger. But in Hastings, residents are already experiencing a healthier information flow. City updates don’t just disappear into the void; they carry proof and get results. Neighbors don’t just scroll past headlines; they respond and close the loop. The information flow in town, once murky, is becoming clearer and more like a shared public record.
In an age when democracy worldwide grapples with echo chambers, fake news, and disengaged citizens, the combination of old wisdom and new technology provides a ray of hope. Søren Kierkegaard’s critique of the press has found an answer in a most unlikely spot – a local website that decided to bake philosophy into its code. By asking at every turn, “How do we know this, and what will we do about it?”, HastingsNow is reclaiming the idea of a public that is not a monstrous phantom, but a community of individuals working together. It’s a small bridge in one town, but as Kierkegaard might agree, big changes often start when individuals take a stand – or in this case, when they pick up a little mic and speak the truth, with everyone listening.
Sources:
Kierkegaard, Søren. The Present Age (1846) – as quoted in Patheos: “For leveling really to take place… this phantom is the public.” patheos.com, patheos.com; on the press and public as abstractions patheos.com.
Kierkegaard’s journals (1840s) – thought experiment of a nationwide “talking tube,” anticipating modern social media abc.net.au.
ABC Religion & Ethics. “Søren Kierkegaard versus the internet” – context on Kierkegaard’s media critique and the Corsair affair abc.net.au, abc.net.au.
HastingsNow Blog. “The Little Mic That Builds Local Trust” – explanation of Soundbites, comparative epistemology (“how we know”) and provenance (“where it came from”) in local news hastingsnow.com, hastingsnow.com, and how each story carries evidence, a reliability score, and a measurable outcome.
