Rethinking Democracy with Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA are blamed for almost everything that is wrong with democracy. They are held responsible for pollution of the democratic environment through fake news, junk science, computational propaganda and aggressive micro-targeting and political advertising. They are accused of creating political filter bubbles, where citizens exist in ever narrower 'echo chambers' of personalised news and connections with like-minded people, which mean that they are exposed only to similar ideological viewpoints, feeding their own opinions back to themselves and creating a 'Daily Me' news environment. In turn, these phenomena have been implicated in the rise of populism, political polarisation, waves of hate against women and minorities, far-right extremism and radicalisation, post-truth, political chaos, the end of democracy and ultimately, the death of democracy. 1 Discussion of social media's role in democracy sounds like a premature lament for a sick patient, without investigating the prognosis.