I was in a debate last week, 'This House Believes Social Media is Undermining Democracy'. After a lot of thinking and worrying, I think it is. A thread here to explain why I think that.
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Replying to @carljackmiller
I was considering going to that, but, end of a week and I didn't feel like going to London. For your analysis to be meaningful, you have to do the same exercise for Television and Printing Presses.
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Replying to @anomalyuk
Why stop with television and the printing press? Surely we'd have to include writing, oratory, and probably the wireless too?
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Replying to @carljackmiller
You could, but if you're talking about the (immediate) future, you have to compare it with the present and recent past. Comparing it with antiquity might be additional illumination, but it's optional
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Replying to @anomalyuk
I wouldn't really say that that a 1440 invention is the recent past. In comparison the first radio message was sent in 1895.
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Replying to @carljackmiller
I'm not talking about the origin of these technologies, I'm talking about the politics that they supported. Within living memory, the newspaper was the dominant mode of political communication.
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Replying to @anomalyuk
Can you link to evidence for that please? Radio is incredibly important for politics.
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Replying to @carljackmiller
You could be right. It also has a very different pattern of control -- maybe the reason newspapers stayed important is precisely because they could be more diverse.
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All I'm saying is that these comparisons are important. The USSR ran newspapers in the UK. Probably the CIA did too.
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