Will social media destroy democracy?
We should think about all of the institutions that make democracy strong, and we should think about how to revive all such institutions
This series of videos/articles focuses on the power of social media to destabilize democracy:
A decade after Twitter and Facebook were instrumental to massive national protest movements in Iran, Tunisia, and across the world, our understanding of how social media impacts democracy is quickly evolving. Early narratives pointing to these platforms as great agents of democratization have given way to a more nuanced understanding of their impact on our political discourse. While these technologies still possess tremendous power to organize communities and to break down traditional mechanisms of oppression, more recent experiences suggest that they can also be an agent of destabilization for democratic structures, or even of building and entrenching new autocratic regimes.
But too much of the conversation focuses on "social media is bad." Social media is like the virus that only gets you when your immune system is weak. Why is the democratic immune system weak? It's worth focusing on what makes democracy strong. Here are some institutions that have proven themselves crucial to democracy:
labor unions
newspapers (more than TV, we need long-form in-depth investigations)
churches (especially those of racial minorities, as with Martin Luther King)
schools
NGOs
libraries
All of these played a role in growing democracy. Many of these are now weakening. Labor unions have shrunk, newspapers are going bankrupt, churches have lost attendance.
Likewise, schools can be an important center for political activity, but the more that schools are rationed, and/or become expensive, the more that students are under pressure to treat schools as mere vocational training, rather than a center for the formation of a wider society.
I suspect that if these older centers of democratic action were still vibrant, then we would worry less about social media. We should not reverse cause and effect. The institutions of democracy have weakened, therefore social media is influential, not the other way around.
Tyranny thrives in a society of loneliness and isolation. Almost anything that brings people together, and extends people's social connections, helps democracy. Even having a big community party is, itself, a case of people coming together and forming connections. And yet, I have the impression that even having a big party is something that has become less common -- people work long hours, have small apartments, and can't organize big parties so easily. I recall my parents hosted big dinner parties very often, but few people in my generation do so, and when people do have parties, they tend to invite just their friends, rather than a broader selection of professional and political associates.
The way out of this is for everyone to think about what they can start doing to build up the institutions that are known to be pillars of democracy. And where operating as an individual seems hopelessly small-scale, we should think about ways we can form larger groups for a better organized effort.