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#Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media
Abstract
Although political polarization in the United States has been known and discussed for a long time, the dramatic unfolding of the presidential election last year still appalled many citizens. The election, believed to be the most divided one in recent U.S. history, highlighted the underestimated ability of social media to reinforce echo chambers and polarize publics. In this sense, Sunstein's new book—#Republic—is extremely relevant to the current political environment. In this book, Sunstein argues that the ideal of consumer sovereignty in a communication system, represented by the algorithm-driven news personalization on Facebook and Twitter, denoted by countless speech niches, and prophesied by the Daily Me, can exacerbate citizen self-insulation, create social fragmentation, promote ideological extremism, corrode democratic self-government, and ultimately reduce individual freedom. Sunstein calls for the Internet to become a general interest intermediary—like public forums that bridge contradicting opinions and ensure a commonality of experience among citizens. Sunstein contends that it is possible to design government regulation and policy interventions that can rein in the perverse effects of digital technologies without necessarily restricting free speech.
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Citations
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Müller, K., & Schwarz, C. (2017) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3082972 · Cited by 105
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Bowes, S. M., Costello, T. H., Lee, C., McElroy-Heltzel, S., Davis, D. E., & Lilienfeld, S. O. (2022) · Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin · doi:10.1177/0146167221997619 · Cited by 87
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Berg, S., & Hofmann, J. (2021) · Internet Policy Review · doi:10.14763/2021.4.1612 · Cited by 64
Lai, M., Tambuscio, M., Patti, V., Ruffo, G., & Rosso, P. (2019) · Data & Knowledge Engineering · doi:10.1016/j.datak.2019.101738 · Cited by 61
Echo chambers? Filter bubbles? The misleading metaphors that obscure the real problem
Bruns, A. (2021) · Hate Speech and Polarization in Participatory Society · doi:10.4324/9781003109891-4 · Cited by 54
Kaiser, J., Vaccari, C., & Chadwick, A. (2022) · Journal of Communication · doi:10.1093/joc/jqac002 · Cited by 44
Wu, S., & Resnick, P. (2021) · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · doi:10.1609/icwsm.v15i1.18105 · Cited by 34
Perspective-Taking to Reduce Affective Polarization on Social Media
Saveski, M., Gillani, N., Yuan, A., Vijayaraghavan, P., & Roy, D. (2022) · Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media · doi:10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19343 · Cited by 28
Wojcieszak, M., Casas, A., Yu, X., Nagler, J., & Tucker, J. A. (2021) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/xwc79 · Cited by 20
Nordbrandt, M. (2022) · Frontiers in Political Science · doi:10.3389/fpos.2022.921188 · Cited by 5
“This finding is noteworthy because it contradicts a widespread assumption in the popular and scholarly discourse that online networks tend to be characterized overwhelmingly by opinion homophily—not least on social media (Pariser, 2011; Sunstein, 2018)—and it agrees with studies that have challenged this notion (Duboi…”
BackgroundResultInfluentialWojcieszak et al No Polarization from Partisan News IJPP Forthcoming
Wojcieszak, M., de Leeuw, S. E., Menchen-Trevino, E., Lee, S., Huang-Isherwood, K. M., & Weeks, B. (2021) · doi:10.31219/osf.io/hqmuy · Cited by 3
Metadata
- Authors
- Zhou, A. Y.
- Venue
- Journal of Communication
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2017-12
- Volume
- 67
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- E12-E14
- ISSN
- 0021-9916 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2772505590
- Cited by
- 405
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 114.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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