Over time, the nexus between social media and democracy will get deeper and sinister in design. Elections have become a referendum on virtual perceptions and false narratives. They managed to spread the word to get elected, but now, it is manipulated by a virtual world which, at times, is all about perception, deceit, and manipulation. Social media is a potent tool for influencing perceptions and actions by convincing the electorate to vote in favour of a particular narrative or personality.Įarlier, people did work to get elected. The proliferation and use of social media has subverted the very fundamentals of democracy. When we look at the events in the virtual world, social media representation is incompatible with democracy, and threatens the legitimacy of the choices available. Genevan philosopher Rousseau believed that democracy is incompatible with representative institutions. The French philosopher Montesquieu said in 17th century that “without strong public virtue, a democratic republic is likely to be destroyed by a conflict between various ‘factions’, each pursuing its narrow interests at the expense of the broader public good.” In today’s time, it would be ‘social media platforms’ in addition to the ‘factions’. It is right to conclude that social media is subverting the time-tested model of democracy from a citizens’ and governance standpoint. It is a call to action for a new way of looking at democracy and democratic institutions. It is not surprising to find the social media accounts of global leaders being suspended or removed, but that is not going to help social media will be used to disrupt elections in favour of powerful manipulators. It is a fact that the theory and practice of democracy have undergone a massive change. The more social media gets closer to politics, politics gets disconnected from reality. Elections and democracies are increasingly getting into the hands of power brokers and career politicians who have made democracy and elections a façade to fool the public and usurp institutions to remain in power using social media. It will be no more about bottom-up leadership. It is also about the work in the virtual world. It is no more just about the actual work on the ground. Elections will not be about one’s hard work or image but about damaging the opponents’ and building narratives. With deep fakes becoming a reality, it is easy to influence the voters and malign the opponents. We have witnessed how social media has been used to influence voters and even orchestrate an attack on the Capitol Hill to scuttle democratic institutions and duly elected governments by forcing false narratives. All of us have seen the Cambridge Analytica episode about elections. Cookies on our browsers, the hidden programmes and the malware track us through our browsing habits and app usage. The internet follows people and bombards them not just with information that might be manipulated news and reports but, most importantly, also understands their likes and dislikes.
As the world gets taken over by the digital age and people spend hours browsing, the very fundamentals of democracy are undergoing a change. However, all this was in an age and time when the world was connected only physically, and leaders emerged either through real work or word of mouth, for what they did and communicated one-on-one these leaders were thinkers and doers.
Since then, this has remained the de facto definition of democracy. In 1863, US President Lincoln, during his address at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, said: democracy is “government of the people, by the people, for the people”. The word ‘democracy’ has its origins in the Greek language, and is a combination of two words: ‘demos’, meaning citizens living within a particular city-state, and ‘Kratos’, meaning power or rule. It was a bottom-up-driven model, where the majority decided how and who should govern them. For nearly 2,600 years, democracy as an institution remained the best form of government, which meant that the elected ruled.
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