#153 - Is Social Media Good For Democracy?

Open to Debate

Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 July 2018

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

MOTION: Social Media Is Good for Democracy By connecting people across the world for free, platforms like Twitter and Facebook set the stage for a promising digital revolution, providing tools that helped foster global friendships, break down long-standing barriers that kept people and ideas from being heard, and served as the ultimate democratizing force for information. Now, lawmakers in the U.S. and beyond are reeling with questions of how to prevent the spread of digital political propaganda and protect citizens' personal privacy online. Critics argue that rather than uniting and informing, social media deepens social and political divisions and erodes trust in the democratic process. Will the power of social media yet be harnessed and used as an unprecedented force for good in the world? Or do systemic platform flaws pose an irreversible threat to the world's democratic institutions? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In a world that is absolutely without social media, and there was a world like that, I think
0:08.8	I remember living in it, and I'm sure some of you do too.
0:11.4	In such a world without social media, lots of things that we now take as fact might never
0:15.6	have happened.
0:16.8	The women's march never would have happened without Facebook.
0:19.8	The Me Too movement, dependent on Twitter, so did Black Lives Matter, and then there's
0:23.9	the Parkland students' hashtag.
0:26.2	On the other hand, Facebook, and also Twitter, these places were vehicles through which
0:31.5	an election got itself hacked.
0:34.2	And fake news, real fake news, which is something of an oxymoron, that kind of fake news
0:39.0	got itself spread around corrupting the democratic process and manipulating us by algorithm.
0:44.4	So we have social media as the great connector, a democracy enhancer, and we have social media
0:50.3	as poison in the process, and poison for the discourse, a democracy corruptor.
0:54.8	But which of those things is social media mostly?
0:58.1	Well we think that has the makings of a debate, so let's have it.
1:00.9	Yes or no to this statement.
1:03.2	Social media is good for democracy.
1:06.1	I'm John Donovan, and I stand between two teams of two experts in this topic who will
1:10.7	argue for and against that motion as always our debate will go in three rounds, and then
1:16.0	our live audience here at the St. Regis Hotel in Aspen, Colorado will vote to choose the
1:21.0	winner.
1:22.0	And if all goes well, civil discourse will also win.
	...

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