Lawfare Archive: The Paradox of Democracy

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4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

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Summary

From July 11, 2022: We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing. Democracy means majority rule and public participation. Liberal democracy means democracy plus minority rights. There's no guarantee that democracy will be liberal. And in fact, some of the same things that enable democracy can also undermine its liberal commitments.

Zac Gershberg, a professor of journalism and media studies at Idaho State University and Sean Illing, the host of the Vox Conversations podcast, have recently released a new book, The Paradox of Democracy: Free Speech, Open Media, and Perilous Persuasion.

In the book, they argue that every democracy is fundamentally shaped by the dominant media technology of its time. And that the current landscape of social media and cable news fuels our democracy, but also pushes it in an illiberal authoritarian direction. Alan Rozenshtein spoke with Zac and Sean about how American democracy got to this point, how the present compares to the past, and what, if anything, can be done to put liberal democracy on firmer footing.

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1:29.3	I'm Caroline Cornett in Turnout Lawfare, with an episode from the Lawfare Archive for January 20th, 2025.
1:52.1	The media landscape is rapidly changing.
1:55.2	In recent weeks, Meta decided to end fact-checking and limit content moderation on its platforms.
2:04.6	Elon Musk's X has developed into a home for right-wing content, and Jeff Bezos made the decision to halt the Washington Post's long-standing tradition
2:09.6	of endorsing a presidential candidate.
2:12.6	For today's archive episode, I selected an episode from July 11, 2022, in which Alan Rosenstein sat down with Zach Gershberg and Sean Iling to discuss their book The Paradox of Democracy.
2:27.3	They discussed how democracy is fundamentally shaped by the dominant media technology of its time, and how the current landscape of social media
2:35.5	and cable news both fuels democracy and pushes America in an illiberal authoritarian direction.
2:49.7	I'm Alan Rosenstein, and this is the Lawfare podcast, July 11, 2022.
2:55.6	We often use the terms democracy and liberal democracy interchangeably, but they're not the same thing.
3:02.6	Democracy means majority rule and public participation.
	...

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