How web-based tools can improve our democracy simply and easily

Two recent news stories got me thinking about about web tools and democracy. On the one hand, Facebook’s campaign to remind their US users how to register to vote in the upcoming presidential elections, which in many states significantly increased the number of people on the electoral roll.

Then there’s Google’s tool for fact-checking items on Google News by using a tag that allows users to contrast or establish the veracity of stories and facilitating sites that check news to include the results of the fact-checker next to the news item itself.

Facebook highlights the potential of social networks to not only provide reminders, but ways to make it easier for people to get certain things done. The US electoral system requires people to register in order to exercise their right to vote, and the percentage of registered voters has increased throughout the country’s history from the times when only white, landowning men could do so, up to the present when despite universal suffrage, less than 45% of the population is registered to vote. That something as simple as an online campaign by a social network like Facebook should significantly increase voter registration throughout the country improves the quality of democracy as a whole.

Clearly, the key to the campaign’s success has been its simplicity. Previously, people had to remember to register to vote, find a suitable time for it, and learn about where and how. The Facebook initiative sends you a reminder with a direct link to the government site for the state where you live along with feedback showing which of your friends have already registered to vote. Sometimes, improving a country’s democracy, at least in terms of the number of people involved in collective decision-making, is as simple as using the right tools.

Google’s fact checker is another way to improve the quality of democracy through media that carry out their work responsibly. At a time when the most basic ethical principles seem under threat from corporations that lie about their vehicles’ emissions and politicians lie and steal, it seems “normal” to forget and move on. In response more and more organizations dedicated to fact checking are appearing, analyzing news and facts and contrasting them with reliable and verifiable data at a click, which is undoubtedly to be welcomed.

The Washington Post has had an online fact checker since 2013, awarding in recent editions its highest rating, four Pinocchios, to Donald Trump’s speeches, which might lead some to question the paper’s editorial line, but if nothing else, it raises public awareness about its analytical tools and the sources used in the process. We can argue about the material used to carry out checks, but it certainly provides a higher level of analysis, and therefore helps readers establish what it is true and what is not. Helping readers to fact check, even when the outcome is tendentious, is still a useful way raising the price of lying and therefore improving the quality of democracy.

I should point out that Spain, from where I write, where there is a chronic need for fact checking, is one of the few countries in the world without Google News. Does anyone remember why the service closed?

(En español, aquí)