Is tech really undermining democracy? @Smashmore86 on @JamieJBartlett's 'The People vs Tech'https://capx.co/MsxDa
The big problem with all these "what is X doing to liberal democracy" analyses is a lack of curiosity about what that democracy actually was before X. Highly-targeted online campaigning is a new way to influence voters. What does it replace, and how does it differ?
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The first motivation for this lack of curiosity is the cognitive dissonance I wrote about in 2011. People want to believe things about democracy that they can only continue to believe by not looking too closely or thinking too hardpic.twitter.com/Ng09M9dlDu
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The other motivation is that you can make a prediction of what effect, say, targeted messaging will have on the political process, but if you admit that there is wide disagreement over the impact of cable TV news, predictions about the future seem less convincing.
End of conversation
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