The Role of Technology and Social Media in Undermining Democracy

Today's world is, it would appear, on a path indifferent, even hostile, to plural and democratic rule. Freedom House — a think tank  — laments what it describes as the seventeenth consecutive year of democratic decline, pointing to the ongoing war in Ukraine, coups in West Africa, and political destabilisation in Peru and Brazil. Our World In Data estimates the presence of 90 democracies as of last year, a drop from the peak number of 96. Similarly, IDEA, a Swedish watchdog group, suggested half the world’s existing democracies were in a state of decline, with negative consequences for civil liberties, the rule of law, and authoritarian repression.

The explanations for this trend have been plentiful.Common themes include political polarisation (indicated in Hungary, Poland, and the United States as a source of deep distrust amongst opposing political blocs, and therefore of institutional cronyism), populist rhetoric used by parties of the extremes in response to cost-of-living crises, and the takeover of independent institutions (such as courts, the media, and private-sector organisations) by would-be authoritarians. However, this article seeks to postulate an additional source of democratic rot: social media, technological tools, and their misuse.  

Consider the size of the average electoral constituency. In Britain, approximately seventy thousand people inhabit the mean parliamentary constituency. In India, that number is significantly higher, at 2.5 million people. In the United States, the average Congressional district comprises seven hundred thousand people. These are large numbers; they make it impossible for individual representatives — MPs, congressmen, deputies — to get to know their constituents. As a result, representatives are to their populations a distant, often famous, figure seen on television, at rallies, and in the media. 

The impression gained of political representatives, then, is not one crafted organically. When individuals vote, they have in mind an image of who they are (and aren’t) voting for that was not created by them. Ironically, those people who influence a voter’s behaviour are often unelected and undemocratic: civil servants, media moguls, journalists, founders of political campaigns, NGOs, and the like. Consequently, the people who schedule and run rallies, organise interviews, and condition politicians’ public appearances are often far removed from individual voters, and not always in their service. Central to the whole processis the direction and conditional of technological tools: pictures taken, video tours, interviews, Q&As, and on-the-road updates, crafted to perfection and then sold to the public. 

In that sense, today’s democracy has turned into a polyarchy of sorts; a motley crowd of groups vying for power, in a system nominally chosen through popular will, but managed in practice by interest groups, parties, and organisations removed from the populace- at least in countries that already possess democratic institutions. 

In countries that do not have democratic institutions, the picture is even darker. A study published in theQuarterly Journal of Economics examined the nature of AI as used in autocratic regimes and  come to a frightening, yet predictable, conclusion: AI technology and autocratic regimes can mutually reinforce each other. 

As seen in the example country of China, facial-recognition technology is a particularly useful tool where it allows autocrats to suppress any civil unrest by providing quicker and more efficient access to the identities of those dissenting, turning the tech into a tool of political control. The pendulum swings the other way, too where such repression plays into the hands of AI firms, which are likelier to innovate their products for both commercial customers and autocratic governments to keep the system running. 

This is no necessary solution though.  Technology can just as easily prove a good force for anti-corruption, allowing greater efficiency in the delivery of public services, and turning the process of government into something transparent, potentially monitored by every citizen. But if the tide against the principle of the consent of the governed is to be turned, the fruits of innovation must be harnessed correctly, with technological tools being pit as a check against power, and not as its extension.