Is Social Media Good for Democracy?

• Author: Weinberger, David
• Position: Debate

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have revolutionized how we communicate. Facebook has 2.3 billion users worldwide, Instagram has 1 billion, and Twitter has 326 million. In the past few years, these platforms have been enormously influential in getting Americans to debate the issues facing the nation. While many applaud social media's ability to reach ordinary people, critics point to Russia's manipulation of social media during the 2016 election as one reason to be concerned.

So is social media good for democracy? A scholar of the internet and a longtime technology entrepreneur face off.

YES

The early hope for the internet was that it would improve democracy not only by giving people far more access to information but also by enabling people to connect with one another directly, and speak in their own voices about what matters to them. Social media has indeed done all that.

Before social media, the information you could get about a candidate or political issue depended on what the news media and the politicians chose to say. If you wanted to do a "deep dive" on something that mattered particularly to you, you were probably out of luck. If you had questions about your chosen issue, there was likely no one you could ask. But now social media makes it easy. You can share what you dig up on the internet, ask questions, propose answers, and talk with others to explore what's going on and what it means.

Before social media, if you wanted to be involved in politics, there were few opportunities for regular folks to give input on a campaign. Virtually all the communication would be one-way: The campaign would come up with brief "messages" that reduced complex issues to a few words--"an economy that works for everyone" or "freeing business to succeed!"--and there would be no practical way for you to communicate your ideas up the chain of command to the candidate. Now with social media, we get to speak, not with the candidate directly, but to the campaign staff since they monitor commentary on social media.

Beyond that, thanks to social media, powerful political movements have arisen that have had real effects. For example, rather than relying on a complicated political organization, the #MeToo movement formed around a simple hashtag, as women posted personal stories of sexual harassment on social media. Without any formal organization or leaders, this movement has been successful in exposing wrongdoing and changing...