The growth of what Tim Wu from Columbia Law School has described as the attention economy: ‘the resale of human attention – that is, gathering eyeballs or access to the public's mind and selling it to advertisers.’ raises profound questions about the news people access (do clicks matter above all else?) and whether citizens understand this new landscape where misinformation and disinformation proliferate online alongside traditional journalism. Thirdly, we are living with a radically altered media landscape where tech platforms are now receiving the bulk of advertising revenues which used to go to traditional news publishers including local newspapers. But there is now an extraordinary concentration of market power in a very few US-based technology companies, raising serious questions in a world where artificial intelligence and technology have the potential to transform whole sectors of the economy in the way we have seen in recent years with news.
#MAY BE SPREADING MISINFORMATION UNDERMINE EFFORTS FOR FREE#
Opportunities for free speech crept into relatively closed societies via the internet. The intermediary liability protections internet companies have enjoyed in much of the world in recent years facilitated a flourishing of free expression online.
Currently, major internet platforms are not regulated as media companies (despite in many instances curating content) or as public utilities. Secondly, there is a tremendous concentration of power and money held by internet platforms. And at this time when established sources and institutions have lost credibility and people struggle to accurately identify when news is false, these factors contribute to potentially fertile ground for those wishing to manipulate opinion in a particular direction. At other times, the motivation is purely financial, as in the case of Macedonian teenagers who were targeting Trump supporters in the 2016 US presidential election for the advertising revenue they received. Sometimes, it is a deliberate attempt to spread false information or sow doubt in people's minds as in Russian disinformatzya tactics. There are different motivations for the types of propaganda and ‘fake news’ we are seeing.
First of all, disinformation and fake news are widespread, and those seeking to manipulate the online public sphere can capitalise on declining levels of trust in institutions and experts. What is happening to the online public sphere is complex. Susan Morgan, Senior Program Officer at the Open Society Foundations, speaks with Journal Editor Emily Taylor about the fragility of the online public sphere, the ways in which technology is being manipulated for political purposes, and suggested responses for civil society and government regulators to create resilience in the digital world.ĭo you think democracy is in crisis? Can you describe some of the current challenges facing the digital information ecosystem and a healthy online public sphere? There is an urgent need to find ways to enable democracy to defend itself, and to bring into the open the intentional tactics being used to undermine public discourse and democracy.
Classic tactics of disinformation seen in authoritarian regimes are emerging in Western states, and the economic insecurity of millions of people is fuelling a growing disaffection with politics. Novel ways to use citizen data are exposing widening gaps between the practices around elections and the current regulations that underpin them. Evidence is growing of the sophisticated manipulation of technology platforms. There are fundamental challenges facing journalism as it seeks a sustainable financial model. The supporting infrastructure of a healthy public sphere is under strain.
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