Fake news has led to the collapse of broadly shared public narratives and in some cases even shared facts . It has also further undermined confidence in the reliability of the news media , which in turn is part of the broader crisis of faith in expertise . Digital technologies have lowered barriers to entry creating an explosion in new sources for news .
To compete , traditional media that formerly played the role of gatekeepers , in principle responsible for quality assurance , have tended towards more extreme positions , and generally defined along partisan lines to draw audiences . This has pulled audiences and reporting capacity apart and led to a fragmentation of the news audience . In this new media landscape , politicians and journalists alike are free to denounce unwelcome information as politically motivated ‘ fake news ’, with no authoritative arbiter to sort truth from falsehood .
Additionally , the digitization of the public commons has moved political discourse online and brought with it the normative incivility of the space . Simply put , people are willing to say things online - in comment threads , on Twitter and Facebook that they would never say to someone ’ s face and this is even truer when people are able to make their comments anonymously .
The decline of civil discourse is aggravated by the enhancement of echo chambers that reward extreme positions and polarize
Lies , mischaracterization , and bias interpretation are not new problems in politics , but the speed and distance with which social media allows them to travel is unprecedented , making it an outsized threat to the development of the well-informed citizens that democracy requires .
Unable to keep pace with technological innovation and deployment - neither in its adoption nor in its regulation - and unable to protect itself from hacks that expose state secrets and private emails , governments appear ineffective and incompetent , accelerating a decades-long trend of declining trust in political elites .
the population . The list of consequences and vulnerabilities reverberating through democracies continues to grow .
The impact on government from these forces is particularly concerning . Unable to keep pace with technological innovation and deployment - neither in its adoption nor in its regulation - and unable to protect itself from hacks that expose state secrets and private emails , governments appear ineffective and incompetent , accelerating a decades-long trend of declining trust in political elites .
Additionally , politicians are not immune to the conditioning of a polarized society that expects them to adhere unwaveringly to partisan positions . Compromise becomes impossible when shaking hands with those across the aisle is perceived as fraternizing with the enemy .
As traditional parties fail to live up to promises to protect citizens from the forces of technology and globalization , citizens are increasingly looking to political outsiders . Some of these outsiders offer genuine alternatives and are seeking to equip society to meet its political and economic challenges , but others are demagogues looking to profit from fear and pessimism created by this uncontrolled change .
We have seen early signs that these developments now threaten some of the recent achievements of liberal democracy as countries begin to turn their backs on open borders , trade , and closer political integration . Brexit , the rise of far-right candidates and parties across Europe , and the last two U . S . presidential election : are all evidence of more divided , more fearful , and less optimistic societies .
Information technology is not the only nor necessarily the immediate cause of all these trends . In fact , many of these trends stretch back to before the widespread availability of the Internet and social media . However , it is now clear that communication technology is aggravating and accelerating these problems and giving new tools to those who would use them to divide and destabilize democracy .
Indeed , evidence points to a number of ways in which social media contributes to making us less tolerant , more fearful , more distrustful , and more vulnerable . At a minimum , these effects undercut the ability of society to work together to solve policy issues . At worst , they call into question the legitimacy of a democratically elected government ; as is the case with the recent U . S election .
African countries have not been left behind
Public practices of congratulations after an election remain common , but since 2019 , presidents like Paul Biya of Cameroon and Ali Bongo of Gabon have been forced to jump onto Facebook to prove that they are not dead , while many more have used Twitter to share updates about meetings they are taking to address Covid-19 on the continent .
International relations has always been a form of performance , but in the digital age the speed and intensity of the performance has grown significantly and it is increasingly clear that the people who build these platforms are wholly unprepared for what people are using them for . It has turned out to be a Frankenstein monster .
It is hard to believe that Twitter is only thirteen years old given how central it has become to the way societies around the world are doing politics . Twitter has been
26 MAL39 / 20 ISSUE