I will outline a different and more uncomfortable view: Social media’s democratising nature is the most critical factor in understanding its political effects, including its negative ones. It is precisely because social media has democratised the public sphere that it has contributed to trends liberals (including myself) are so worried about.
The story that I find plausible is different. For the most part, social media doesn’t manipulate “good” people into accepting “bad” information. It simply reveals popular perspectives on reality that elites previously excluded from mainstream discourse, often for good reason. It is this public revelation and normalisation of popular ideas that explain social media’s most dramatic and dangerous impacts, including its connection to right-wing populism.
The Case for Democratic Pessimism
“Democracy,” said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
The quote expresses a pessimistic view about democracy that is politically incorrect these days, but it was the norm among elites and intellectuals throughout most of history.
Although part of this hostility to democracy was undoubtedly self-serving, it was also driven by the recognition that democracy is absurd on its face. A political system that gives everyone an equal say conflicts with the reality that not everyone has equally valuable things to say. People differ in their wisdom and virtue. A large number of people possess neither of these traits.
Such differences are especially salient in politics, where it’s been known for a long time that most voters are shockingly ignorant and misinformed, with many approaching politics more in the manner of sports hooligans and religious fanatics than the rational deliberators of liberal fantasies.
One reason for this is that politics brings out the worst in us. People are typically fairly rational when it comes to issues of immediate practical importance. But modern politics involves distant, abstract, and complex issues. It is challenging to form accurate opinions in most cases, and there are few incentives to do so. Given this, many people treat politics symbolically, embracing facile slogan-based worldviews that resonate with pre-scientific intuitions and help them signal their tribal allegiances and demonise people they dislike.
As Joseph Schumpeter observed,
The Problems and Positives of Elite Gatekeeping
Elite gatekeeping sounds bad. In many ways, it is bad. The central problem with elitism, including elitist critiques of democracy, is that elites are also human. They might dress up their self-interest, prejudice, and unreason in fancy language, but even the highest-quality punditry and legacy media are biased by propaganda, groupthink, and worse.
These days, right-wing populists draw attention to how much of establishment discourse is subtly and often not-so-subtly biased by progressive (“woke”) values, and they have a point. But this is just one bias among many economic, social, cultural, and political forces that corrupt elite opinion and news media, both today and throughout history.
At the same time, a fair-minded analysis must also acknowledge that elite gatekeeping has many benefits. Outlets like the BBC and the New York Times might subtly select, omit, frame, contextualise, and package reality in misleading ways. But they also typically impose basic standards of professional journalism and exclude many people who have nothing of value to contribute.
Social media welcomes such voices into the conversation. More precisely, platforms that have relaxed “content-moderation” (i.e., elite-gatekeeping) policies do. The result? Deranged conspiracy theories about Jews, medieval discourse about demons and occult forces, the most hyperbolic forms of bigotry imaginable, and countless other popular ideas that were previously excluded from mainstream discourse. More concretely: some of the biggest stars of the social media age, including Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, Candace Owens, and Tommy Robinson.
When highly educated, liberal professionals encounter such content on social media platforms, they often assume that there must be something dysfunctional about the platforms. As Francis Fukuyama puts it,
***
In some ways, this analysis aligns with Brian Klaas’s excellent article, “The Democratization of Information Production is Killing Democracy.” However, Klaas’s argument focuses on how media fragmentation and engagement-maximising algorithms increase the production and consumption of “bad” information, which dupes voters into supporting Trump and other populists.The story that I find plausible is different. For the most part, social media doesn’t manipulate “good” people into accepting “bad” information. It simply reveals popular perspectives on reality that elites previously excluded from mainstream discourse, often for good reason. It is this public revelation and normalisation of popular ideas that explain social media’s most dramatic and dangerous impacts, including its connection to right-wing populism.
The Case for Democratic Pessimism
“Democracy,” said H.L. Mencken, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
The quote expresses a pessimistic view about democracy that is politically incorrect these days, but it was the norm among elites and intellectuals throughout most of history.
Although part of this hostility to democracy was undoubtedly self-serving, it was also driven by the recognition that democracy is absurd on its face. A political system that gives everyone an equal say conflicts with the reality that not everyone has equally valuable things to say. People differ in their wisdom and virtue. A large number of people possess neither of these traits.
Such differences are especially salient in politics, where it’s been known for a long time that most voters are shockingly ignorant and misinformed, with many approaching politics more in the manner of sports hooligans and religious fanatics than the rational deliberators of liberal fantasies.
One reason for this is that politics brings out the worst in us. People are typically fairly rational when it comes to issues of immediate practical importance. But modern politics involves distant, abstract, and complex issues. It is challenging to form accurate opinions in most cases, and there are few incentives to do so. Given this, many people treat politics symbolically, embracing facile slogan-based worldviews that resonate with pre-scientific intuitions and help them signal their tribal allegiances and demonise people they dislike.
As Joseph Schumpeter observed,
“The typical citizen drops down to a lower level of mental performance as soon as he enters the political field. He argues and analyzes in a way which he would readily recognize as infantile within the sphere of his real interests. He becomes a primitive again.”Lippmann’s “Mental Barbarians"
For these reasons and more, the prophetic journalist Walter Lippmann published two highly influential critiques of democracy in the early twentieth century, first in Public Opinion (1922) and then in The Phantom Public (1925). Although Lippmann was a liberal and progressive, he argued that for liberal societies and progressive policies to succeed, “the public must be put in its place [...] so that each of us may live free of the trampling and the roar of a bewildered herd.”
Part of Lippmann’s argument involved a sophisticated analysis of why even intelligent and well-meaning citizens will inevitably form distorted political opinions. But he was also sensitive to the large number of citizens who, for want of a better term, are complete write-offs.
In a passage that is outrageous to modern sensibilities, he observed,
Part of Lippmann’s argument involved a sophisticated analysis of why even intelligent and well-meaning citizens will inevitably form distorted political opinions. But he was also sensitive to the large number of citizens who, for want of a better term, are complete write-offs.
In a passage that is outrageous to modern sensibilities, he observed,
“The mass of absolutely illiterate, of feeble-minded, grossly neurotic, undernourished and frustrated individuals, is very considerable… Thus a wide popular appeal is circulated among persons who are mentally children or barbarians, people whose lives are a morass of entanglements, people whose vitality is exhausted, shut-in people, and people whose experience has comprehended no factor in the problem under discussion.”You don’t have to go quite this far or use this language to acknowledge that there are more than a few grains of truth here. And you can’t understand many pathologies of social media without confronting the fact that its ruthlessly democratising character has given all such people a voice.
The Problems and Positives of Elite Gatekeeping
Elite gatekeeping sounds bad. In many ways, it is bad. The central problem with elitism, including elitist critiques of democracy, is that elites are also human. They might dress up their self-interest, prejudice, and unreason in fancy language, but even the highest-quality punditry and legacy media are biased by propaganda, groupthink, and worse.
These days, right-wing populists draw attention to how much of establishment discourse is subtly and often not-so-subtly biased by progressive (“woke”) values, and they have a point. But this is just one bias among many economic, social, cultural, and political forces that corrupt elite opinion and news media, both today and throughout history.
At the same time, a fair-minded analysis must also acknowledge that elite gatekeeping has many benefits. Outlets like the BBC and the New York Times might subtly select, omit, frame, contextualise, and package reality in misleading ways. But they also typically impose basic standards of professional journalism and exclude many people who have nothing of value to contribute.
Social media welcomes such voices into the conversation. More precisely, platforms that have relaxed “content-moderation” (i.e., elite-gatekeeping) policies do. The result? Deranged conspiracy theories about Jews, medieval discourse about demons and occult forces, the most hyperbolic forms of bigotry imaginable, and countless other popular ideas that were previously excluded from mainstream discourse. More concretely: some of the biggest stars of the social media age, including Tucker Carlson, Andrew Tate, Candace Owens, and Tommy Robinson.
When highly educated, liberal professionals encounter such content on social media platforms, they often assume that there must be something dysfunctional about the platforms. As Francis Fukuyama puts it,
“There is an internal dynamic to online posting that explains the rise of extremist views and materials. Influencers are driven by their audiences to go for sensational content. The currency of the internet is attention, and you don’t get attention by being sober, reflective, informative, or judicious.”There is a grain of truth here, but also wishful thinking. The more fundamental reason social media features a vast amount of unsober, unreflective, uninformative, and injudicious content is that it gives a platform to large numbers of shockingly unsober, unreflective, uninformed, and injudicious people who were previously excluded from mainstream discourse.
by Dan Williams, Conspicuous Cognition | Read more:
Image: Thomas Chan on Unsplash
