The article argues that the effect of social media is to weaken democracy. And the comment to which I responded, as I understand it, argues that social media, in itself, represents a flowering of democracy.
My own view is a variation of 'the medium is the message': that social media molds the world to suit itself.
Online platforms all have idiosyncrasies: one platform incentivizes performative behavior, another incentivizes flame-wars, a third leads users to misjudge the prevalence of some subculture in society, and so on.
So I agree with the article that social media is weakening democracy, in as much as we have designed social media sites stupidly. And I disagree with the comment to which I responded, insofar as, if social media represents a flowering of democracy, it represents democracy based on people who are effectively in an altered state of mind.
I don't know if flowering is the right word, that might be too rosy of a picture (sorry, bad pun).
I don't mean to attach a value judgement to direct democracy. If you asked me to, I'd agree that it's something thats doomed to fail.
I just find it ironic that an elite media institution makes the argument that something that ostensibly lets every person (all of the 'demos') voice their opinion is undermining "democracy".
I find it hard to explain the amusement that I get from this scenario... it's sort of like a double entendre. If you use the original literal meaning of the word democracy, the headline seems like an obvious contradiction (letting all the people speak is undermining rule by the people!). If you translate democracy to "our specific form of democracy" or just "our current system" then the effect goes away.
Of course a lot of this relies on social media being some perfect public forum, which it obviously isn't. I just saw some comedy to the situation is all.
I see some truth to that, but I tend to focus on all the possible versions of the internet we could have designed, probably some would be dystopic, and others utopic.
I also can see the irony in democracy falling to democracy, but, at the risk of sounding preachy, we should remember that the most infamous dictatorships of the 20th Century sprang from democratic elections.
Democracy leading to non-democracy isn't the irony i was talking about.
The irony is in an institution that has enormous power in our system complaining that giving the little people a chance to speak up is somehow undermining the ability of those little people to self-govern.
Edit: In other words, social media may not be perfectly representative of the people's will, but it's almost certainly more so than what comes out of something like the atlantic. On top of that, you could argue that social media diminishes the power of an institution like the atlantic. That is the irony.
My own view is a variation of 'the medium is the message': that social media molds the world to suit itself.
Online platforms all have idiosyncrasies: one platform incentivizes performative behavior, another incentivizes flame-wars, a third leads users to misjudge the prevalence of some subculture in society, and so on.
So I agree with the article that social media is weakening democracy, in as much as we have designed social media sites stupidly. And I disagree with the comment to which I responded, insofar as, if social media represents a flowering of democracy, it represents democracy based on people who are effectively in an altered state of mind.