The internet was expected to renew democracy, tackle the hegemony of the monopoly news providers and draw us all into a global community. Over the past six months, that idea has been undermined by a new myth which suggests that democracy is, in fact, being overturned by the spawn of the internet: Russian bots and fake news “ and that news organisations are losing their power to keep people informed.
But “ in the UK at least “ there is no evidence to suggest that made-up stories from fake news sites have had any significant impact. The BBC and the mainstream media are still our major sources of information both on and offline. Research during the EU referendum campaign for example found that, of all Twitter links analysed, 63.9% led to stories from professional news organisations. Junk news made up around 5% of the total and there was “little evidence of Russian content”.
Improved democracy
The internet was supposed to do this by breaking up media monopolies and allowing everyone to join the conversation. However, more than 200 local newspapers closed in the UK since 2015. Certainly there is more choice if you look for it, but the biggest concern is the number of people who have simply tuned out altogether and choose to watch kittens and comedy rather than news.
We are all journalists now
We can all broadcast from our smart phones, but mostly we share pictures of our children. The effect of digital disruption has been that the media landscape is becoming more concentrated and the number of paid journalists is dropping as “legacy” media organisations struggle with falling revenues.
On the other hand, the internet has created an army of social media “influencers” who, if they are canny, turn themselves into “brands” which they leverage online to recommend “ or sell “ everything from make up to luxury cars in return for payment.
That many are smarter
than the few
Books with titles such as The Wisdom of Crowds have suggested that the internet would lead to a form of pure direct democracy because, if you ask enough people a question, the answer will always be correct. But this naive optimism did not factor in the myriad ways in which people could be manipulated.
Global village
The “global village” was the brainchild of American media scholar Marshal McLuhan who “ as early as 1964 “ expounded the idea that in the electronic age, everyone would have access to the same information through technology. This would seem to have been borne out by the internet.
But evidence suggests that the centralising tendency of monopoly global media is growing. A tiny number of companies including Facebook and Google are now the gatekeepers to information across the world “ and they are nearly all American. And, in emerging economies and authoritarian states, the hopes about democratising social movements are being undone by the growing incursion of government propaganda into the online space.
That internet brings
us together
There is much to be grateful for in the ways in which the internet and social media allow us to communicate laterally. It takes only seconds to communicate to thousands via WhatApp and minutes to produce a petition and upload it to FB. What is less certain is its ability to unite people across the boundaries of personal affiliation and to encourage genuine debate.
Nobody trusts mainstream media
When asked whether they trust the media, the tendency in many countries is to say no “ but when asked whether they trust their favourite news outlet, trust levels rise dramatically. However in northern Europe, one factor stands out: people trust their traditional media more than they trust online and social media news sources. More importantly public broadcasting tends to be trusted across the political spectrum drawing people together rather than splitting them apart.
New digital generation
Here is the biggest myth of them all “ that there is a new digital generation that is mistrustful of mainstream news. It is reassuring to think that young people have the answers and will usher in the newer, nicer world that their elders failed to produce. But none of us is born digital. Young people are no more instinctively able to navigate online than they would be able to drive a car without lessons.
So, yes, technology is changing our democracy “ but we are not helpless in the face of it, nor are we liberated by it. As with previous major technical shifts, we are in the processing of adapting it to our needs and that process varies according to who we are and where we live. Democracy will be strengthened if we learn how to use the internet wisely. If we leave it to the winds of the free market we may indeed find that it overwhelms us.
