Loading...
In the American Tempest: Democracy, Conspiracy, and Machine
Biagetti, Samuel
Biagetti, Samuel
Keywords
Collections
Files
Abstract
No one can be certain precisely what “democracy” is, but everyone seems to agree that it is in danger. Since the beginning of the pandemic, warnings of “toxicity,” “vitriol,” and other ill humors infecting the body politic have invaded mass media and political discourse, while the foundations of our civic order—“truth,” “facts,” and “civility”—have been seen to erode to the point of collapse. Although the exact cause of the present rupture in the social and epistemic fabric is hard to pinpoint, many observers seem to agree that the internet is to blame. Online algorithms are found to spread “misinformation” and “disinformation,” while anointed experts attribute unexpected outcomes of public events, from election results to the verdicts in defamation suits, to online campaigns by malicious “bots.” A New York Times opinion piece from June 2021 warned readers against examining or analyzing claims found online, since the impulse towards curiosity “allows grifters, conspiracy theorists, trolls and savvy attention hijackers to take advantage of us.” The atmosphere of confusion and distrust not only pervades public discourse in the English-speaking world, but increasingly spills beyond it; the phrase “fake news” has entered, untranslated, into political discourse in France, where a law criminalizing false statements online fuels an acrimonious debate.