S3E8 - Will Social Media Break Democracy?
We had some audio problems with this episode so we apologize for the buzz and echo in some places! It’s still understandable, so we decided to still put it out there for you. Enjoy! - Chris
How did we get from the Arab Spring to Cambridge Analytica in less than 5 years? Waves of pro-democracy protesters in the Middle East have given way to waves of nationalism around the globe. In less than a decade, the Internet went from harbinger of democracy to herald of demagogues.
What happened? And ARE WE … DOOMED??
Technology and social media are undoubtedly changing how elections and government run today. Will democracy survive them?
And how do Christians survive—each other?
Adam and Chris tip-toe through the minefield of political vitriol—risking life, limb, and Facebook friends—in hopes of getting a handle on the chaos we call democracy today. Listen and decide whether we succeeded.
Links
The 2013 documentary “The Square” offers some insight into how protesters used social media to facilitate and organize their protests in Egypt. (Beware, a couple gruesome scenes.)
Zeynep Tufekci is a leading voice in this discussion. In “How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump,” she offers the perspective of someone who’s Internet optimism fueled by the Arab Spring has been tempered by more recent political dynamics online. Tufekci challenged some of our own assumptions about social media’s influence in this arena. Worth your time.
The New Yorker’s 2018 headline reflected a common sentiment many people expressed after Cambridge Analytica became public, wondering whether Facebook would “break democracy.”
Doris Graber’s Mass Media and American Politics is in its 11th edition, a standard textbook on this topic.
There are many more articles you could explore around this topic, including aspects such as election tampering, filter bubbles, polarization, blocking Internet access, and more.
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Photo by Vincent M.A. Janssen