Media and Democracy

Catalog description

What role should media play in democracy? What impact do media forms such as social media have on democracy? As Americans increasingly get their news through social media and a wide variety of partisan online sources, they face an array of new challenges in gathering the information necessary of citizenship. The 2016 election and its aftermath added to a long list of worries about how media interacts with democracy—from Russian trolls to partisan bubbles to fake news to manipulative social media algorithms. Yet, at the same time, social media has enabled citizens to participate in shaping and contesting their informational environment in previously unimaginable ways—from #BlackLivesMatter to #MeToo.