#DemocracyAtRisk — Social media and the democratic process: parallel session during the MCAA Virtual Conference
This session was chaired by Valentina Ferro (Vice-chair of the MCAA) and involved three other panelists: Giuseppe Porcaro (Head of Outreach and Governance), Nahema Marchal (a Doctoral candidate at Oxford Internet Institute researching the relationship between social media, political communication, and polarization), and Virginia Fiume (coordinator of the European Initiatives promoted by Science for Democracy and of the pan-European citizen’s movement Eumans).
Valentina started the session by giving an overview of the power of social media: being a useful tool to get in touch with many other people all around the world in just one click, reaching out with people we couldn’t have met in the past, finding mentors or being a mentor for other people. However, being such a powerful instrument, doesn’t mean that social media are easy to use, on the contrary, social media are very subtle, and they can be also used to polarize information and manipulate people at the same time, putting democracy at risk.
In today’s session, the goal is to cover the good, the bad, and the evil of social media, and the discussions were related to how we can use social media in a proper way, without affecting others.
What is computational propaganda?
Nehama answered the first question raised by Valentina, and she immediately underlined that the concept of Propaganda has been around since Alexander the Great, but the real difference nowadays is that social media are of course a much powerful source to share a message to a very large audience, in a very simple and cheap way — including, unfortunately, also misleading messages.
Moreover, social media made it easier to target a message to a specific part of the population.
Computational propaganda focusses on all the aspects that are related to the propaganda which nowadays happens in an automated way thanks to social media. It studies also how these messages are sent, and who are the messengers; most messengers are of the real ‘cybertroop’ type that today are in charge of sending millions and millions of this targeted information to a predetermined segment of the audience.
“Social media like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, are very powerful media, they allow individuals to connect to a large number of people quickly and in a cheap (or free) way, and it makes very easy to create a community, which makes easy to people to find ‘ourselves’ on the internet”
And this last element is particularly relevant, not only because through this community a message could be spread even faster, but it is also one of the ways in which the ‘cybertroops’ mentioned above can find a target audience, because of the data that are constantly exchanged between the users and the social media platform.
In a dystopic future, there could exist an app ‘swipe-to-vote’: what do you think is the relationship between technology and democracy?
Valentina moved on to the next question, and in this case, Giuseppe provided a very comprehensive answer.
He focussed on three major aspects:
1. A rather non-technological solution in which we go in the direction of an oversimplification of the system, trying to apply a ‘tinder policy,’ in which you can simply swipe (left or right) for an election: choosing a politician, a party, or even a President.
2. A ‘Techno-utopia’ stream of thinking in which there is the idea that technology can fix the gap between the citizens and the government. Of course, using technology is important, but it has to be done in a correct way. Giuseppe underlined that “we tend to forget what democracy is: it is not a result of an election; democracy is a general participation.” Technology needs to be used to educate people to participate in the democratic procedures, not only when it comes to vote.
3. A completely automated process of democracy, in which our decisions could be somehow led by our previous choices, e.g. he made the example of Spotify, in which the app suggests you new songs based on your library and the songs you usually listen. This element is probably the most dangerous because it would exclude a citizen from the engagement in the democratic discussion.
How can we use technology to enhance the democratic process?
First of all Virginia underlined that it is important to keep in mind the concept of participatory democracy, which should ensure that citizens are afforded an opportunity to participate or otherwise be involved in decision-making on matters that affect their lives.
“Democracy is much more than an election; as a whole, it is the life of being a citizen. […] Social media are a set of tools that should be used, but they should not be used alone, they must follow the rule of law.”
It is important to underline that participatory democracy is a part of democracy, it is not an element that should substitute democracy. It is a tool that would ensure better collaboration between political representatives and citizens, following the rule of law, which is defined as ‘the authority and influence of law in society, especially when viewed as a constraint on individual and institutional behaviour; hence, the principle whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are considered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes.’ (Oxford English Dictionary)
A tool to improve the aspect of participatory democracy, and which is under development by EUMANS (an association that ‘acts at a pan European level trying to engage citizens in democratic initiatives aimed to achieve by 2030 the UN sustainable development goals’) is the development of ‘assembly for citizens,’ which would elaborate and improve the decision making process.
Do we need to regulate social media?
Nahema underlined the very important aspect that democracy is not simply the election process, but it is important for citizens to take part in the democratic life. Social media are important to engage people, but it would be also important to protect the messages that can be sent on these media; fake news are a reality nowadays, and we would definitely need better tools to help us filter this bad information, compared to the legitimate ones.
Virginia underlined that rather than thinking about what is published on social media, which is of course very important and needs attention, there is also the need to pay attention to the concept of being ‘locked’ in social media. People need to be trained that information can be found on different websites, not only in one single platform. Thus, technological regulation and openness of platforms are also key points that should be taken into consideration.
Free speech when it comes to social media: should we tolerate fake news simply because they are a form of free speech?
Giuseppe underlined that the most important thing is that citizens must take part in political life, and certainly social media can help in doing that. It is important to build an ecosystem that could ensure a political and civil education, which would then enable people to discriminate the news in a correct way.
The session then moved on with a brief discussion also including some questions from the audience, such as how to educate people to use social media, and how researchers should properly use social media in order to transmit their messages in a more efficient way.
Valentina finally closed the session anticipating the news that the Marie Curie Alumni Association will soon close its Facebook page due to the policy of the social media and asking the panelists some final comments about what to expect in the next years on the topic.
Ruben Riosa is an animal nutritionist currently working as a PhD student at the University of Bonn/University of Glasgow, where he is part of the MSCA ITN project MANNA. His project focuses on dairy cow’s nutrition and physiology. In the MANNA network he is also the Scientific copywriter. He is deeply interested in science communication and loves to write.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenriosa/
Website: https://rubenriosa.com/
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