[kictanet] Democracy After Facebook

[anyega jefferson]

https://aeon.co/essays/the-end-of-a-world-of-nation-states-may-be-upon-us

Nation-states are unlikely to collapse overnight. There are no barbarians
at the gate. Even Rome did not collapse in a day. But it evolved during a
time of industrialisation, centralised ‘command and control’ bureaucracies
and national loyalty. Modern technology tends in the opposite direction:
it’s distributed, decentralised and uncontrollable. If our political
arrangements are a mirror of the modes of production and assumptions of the
time, the future doesn’t look rosy for this 19th-century relic. It looks
far brighter for the modern, connected, agile city, whether that’s on land,
on borders, or out in the ocean. And anyway: doesn’t it pay to have some
experiments going on, just in case?

On Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 10:48 AM, anyega jefferson <
jeffersonanyega at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/
> what-facebook-did/542502/?utm_source=atltw
>
>
> We’ve known since at least 2012 that Facebook was a powerful, non-neutral
> force in electoral politics. In that year, a combined University of
> California, San Diego and Facebook research team led by James Fowler
> published a study in *Nature*
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11421.epdf?referrer_access_token=3hEGlbqHkEuGY21mtWU9ytRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0O-9kUewX3bdNdtBQCWYxxxyT1mLWjysh846djISzhdVQ8te60SwiEQkr8UOR_w6foAEMGP1agrQAR91rzU45X9hd7s6U3lIzEIbd35aX7ruNgD1yER8FcGDfCZKhbg6O9VCsEgb3kEZAqVvcbtCbcEZFbuSfvBx75f4RZqlS8DhyQ4yVH7PQ2vxssZZOlc6z5EWL8qXh-xIkjAG_gl0XMoATarImt_N_loxzfUHP134AZ9TGXojQKJCt64RPRMU58%3D&tracking_referrer=www.theatlantic.com>,
> which argued that Facebook’s “I Voted” button had driven a small but
> measurable increase in turnout, primarily among young people.
>
> Rebecca Rosen’s 2012 story, “Did Facebook Give Democrats the Upper Hand?
> <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/did-facebook-give-democrats-the-upper-hand/264937/>”
> relied on new research from Fowler, et al., about the presidential election
> that year. Again, the conclusion of their work was that Facebook’s
> get-out-the-vote message could have driven a substantial chunk of the
> increase in youth voter participation in the 2012 general election. Fowler
> told Rosen that it was “even possible that Facebook is completely
> responsible” for the youth voter increase. And because a higher proportion
> of young people vote Democratic than the general population, the net effect
> of Facebook’s GOTV effort would have been to help the Dems.
>
>
> The research showed that a small design change by Facebook could have
> electoral repercussions, especially with America’s electoral-college format
> in which a few hotly contested states have a disproportionate impact on the
> national outcome. And the pro-liberal effect it implied became enshrined as
> an axiom of how campaign staffers, reporters, and academics viewed social
> media.
>
> --
> Anyega M Jefferson
>
> jeffersonanyega at gmail.com
>
> 0703824326
>
> Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.
>
>


-- 
Anyega M Jefferson

jeffersonanyega at gmail.com

0703824326

Start where you are,use what you have and do what you can.
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