By Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga
Urszula Terentowicz-Fotyga is an Associate Professor in British and American Studies at Maria Curie-Skłodowska University. She is currently researching contemporary social media dystopias as part of a three-year research project funded by the Polish National Science Centre. This research was funded in whole or in part by National Science Centre, Poland [grant number 562236]. For the purpose of Open Access, the author has applied a CC-BY public copyright license to any Autor Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.
This op-ed is part of the Utopia and Democracy series. Op-eds in this series draw on presentations delivered at the conference held under the same title on July 3 to 5, 2024, organized by the Utopian Studies Society/Europe and hosted by Czigányik Zsolt, Iva Dimovska, and Daryna Koryagina – researchers in the Democracy in East Central European Utopianism project, at the CEU Democracy Institute in Budapest.
Within a very short period of time, a utopian vision of social media as a liberating technology, capable of creating a new form of direct, participatory democracy, has given way to a pessimistic, even catastrophic outlook. Understanding and channeling the power of the current communication revolution is crucial for restoring the transformative and democratic potential of online platforms.
The idea that we live in dystopian times has become a cliché in recent years. The environmental crisis is no longer a distant future but a daily reality in which increasingly turbulent “natural” disasters change how we live, travel and, most importantly, see our future. The COVID pandemic made the seemingly impossible real, materializing images that we had only known from Hollywood blockbusters in our homes, schools, shops and hospitals. Its global scope meant that the lives of people around the world changed dramatically in the matter of a few weeks. The frantic pace of technological change confronts us with a world we struggle to understand and fail to predict or even imagine. The dangers of such seismic technological changes have thus contributed to our feelings of living in a dystopia.
One of the areas where our failure of imagination proved most spectacular was the role of social media and its impact on all aspects of our lives, including politics and the shape of contemporary democracies.
The creation of internet platforms was driven by the wave of utopian dreaming that accompanied the origins of the internet. It was hoped that a networked society with instant, unlimited access to unfiltered information would produce informed, committed citizens who would help shape a truly egalitarian future, ushering in a new era of digital democracy. The mass protests of 2008 and the so-called Arab Spring at first appeared to be a dream come true. Dubbed the “Twitter revolutions”, they seemed to prove that social media can help organize and coordinate collective action and boost pro-democratic initiatives.
However, only a few years later came the shocking election of Donald Trump and the equally stunning results of the Brexit referendum. The scandal of Cambridge Analytica and the inquiry into the impact of Russian trolls on the American elections exposed social media as a perfect tool for enabling social manipulation on a grand scale. Between these two transformative moments for Western democracies, authoritarian rulers in Russia, China and Iran sealed off the internet from external influences and came to use platform media as a most efficient surveillance machine – something Orwell’s Big Brother could only dream about.
In an informed analysis of the impact of the internet and social media on the condition of democracy, Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age, Martin Moore diagnoses the condition of contemporary politics in a world undergoing a radical communication revolution. He discusses the present situation and examines the changes that have taken place in the last two decades, showing the different ways individuals, plutocrats and states use platform media to play havoc with democracy.
Moore highlights issues such as the declining influence of the press, including an almost complete obliteration of local reporting, growing distrust in the legitimacy of authorities and mainstream media, the shift of platform capitalism into data mining and monetization of hate, as well as expansion of state surveillance and control.
All of these changes, the author contends, have led to a dramatic undermining of the rules that used to characterize the public sphere, such as respect, temperateness, civility and a collective aspiration to the truth.
As Moore writes, although Facebook, Google and Twitter/X emphasize their attachment to democratic values, they are ruled like feudal monarchies rather than modern organizations.
The idea that powerful tech giants will change their modus operandi, which is geared towards profit-making, in order to improve the condition of the public debate and protect democracy is completely misguided.
The digital revolution, Moore writes, “is buffeting our elections, capsizing conventional candidates and drowning centrist parties” and “if we are to have any chance of determining the type of political system that will emerge from this maelstrom, then we need to start by trying to understand it” (p. xi).
The most valuable aspect of Moore’s book is his projection of possible scenarios for the future.
Current global trends suggest that democracies are likely to go in three different directions.
The first is platform democracy, in which the current platforms will become even more powerful and will take control over an increasing number of areas of life, digital and material, superseding and ultimately replacing the state. The second possibility is the kind of digital democracy in which the state will use the digital realm to track, control and shape its citizens on a scale unknown in contemporary liberal democracies. Both of these scenarios would mean a system that is the direct opposite of what early techno-optimists hoped for.
The only sensible path forward is what Moore calls a re-hacked democracy, a system that will radically reform current institutions. Re-hacking democracy depends on giving more power to the people by involving them in the process of deliberation and compromise. The viability of such change is demonstrated by the strategies introduced in countries such as Taiwan and Estonia.
Yet, to achieve such a radical reform, it is crucial that the debate about the impact of the ongoing communication revolution on democracy goes beyond the world of academics and critical commentators. It is essential that we incorporate these questions into our education system at all levels to help students think critically about the world we live in.
The last national elections in Poland, in October 2023, revealed both sides of digital democracy. On the one hand, showy, populist events attracted a lot of attention and went viral. The best example of this strategy was the meetings of one of the leaders of the far-right party, during which he offered beer to his supporters and showered the audience with fake banknotes. On the other, there were many individuals and grassroot social media initiatives aimed at boosting voter turnout, which resulted in a record participation of almost 75%, with the biggest rise among youngest voters. In effect, the anti-democratic ruling party was defeated and a return to the democratic system was initiated.
Though the dystopian aspects of the digital revolution are becoming more apparent in our daily lives, critical individuals – pivotal to 20th-century anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe and central to dissident thought – remain an influential force. They can bring about the necessary change and function as a source of hope. New media can act as a liberating technology supporting democratic initiatives, yet real change will only occur if the current condition of platform capitalism is properly diagnosed and radically redefined.
