By Ezra Minard ’28 (DCI Fellow)
It is in our nature to be social creatures. From the forums of ancient Greece to the protest movements of the modern era, we have always sought spaces to gather and deliberate about the systems that govern us. It’s no surprise, then, that political discourse and deliberation has transcended physical spaces and moved into the digital realm.
Today, the social media ecosystem is arguably the most influential platform in which social and political discourse occurs in America. For younger generations, platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram are where politics happens. For older generations, the public forum includes the neighborhood Facebook page. The internet is a new commons, but like the Wild West, the rules that govern it have yet to catch up. The effects of this innovative yet unpredictable space cannot be overstated. One key convention is the erosion of trust of major media institutions.
Given these developments, we must consider what meaningful deliberation looks like in this new, digital public square. We must learn the skills necessary to foster the best possible relationship with social media, particularly in this moment of political upheaval.
At its best, the internet offers a powerful democratic tool as a space where people can challenge each other and share ideas across thousands of miles. People can form social and political groups without ever meeting each other in-person. The barriers to entry for public speech have never been lower. But this access is complicated by the complex ecosystem that online platforms have created.
These platforms reward engagement above all else because, unlike the prototypical public square, the platforms themselves are a business. Nuance, reason, and context do not drive profits in this space, unlike virally appealing memes. This landscape allows fringe groups, conspiracy theories, and ideological cosplay to be promoted disproportionately. The internet economy is one of outrage and confrontation.
Consider the growing fetishization of niche, obscure, or extreme political beliefs dressed as ‘edgy’ memes. These interactions teach viewers a politics that is insincere, opportunistic, and often hateful. These are the politics that one is unlikely to share with their grandmother, or their book club, or their congregation. An optimist may assert these beliefs are manufactured by the internet attention economy itself, rather than organically growing through society. A pessimist might suggest that the internet is just amplifying what is already spreading among us.
In these online spaces, political expression appears more like cosplay than grounded ideology; influencers may be pretending to be extreme rather than actually believing in the views they share. The internet uplifts these voices even if they hold little practical value in real-world politics. More concretely, we need to be mindful of a generation that receives news and information not from those they know but from a person behind a screen who does not know them but wants their money, or at least, their attention.
A 2022 Pew Research survey found that 64% of Americans believe social media is a “bad” thing for democracy,[1] while 79% of Americans believe social media has made people’s political opinions more divided.[2] Why? For one thing, the internet makes us appear more combative than collaborative. It also enables extreme forms of personalization that creates a digital experience that is curated to each individual’s tastes and biases. The result is a social media landscape of echo chambers. While convenient, personalization leaves users more alone and less connected to real people;imagine our town hall meetings consisting of a multitude of self-selected smaller meetings, all disconnected from one another.
Recently, prominent journalist Ezra Klein has described a “ricochet effect” of polarization, in which high engagement movements rise and are met by equally high engagement counter-reactions from their opposition—resulting in a climate of exponential polarization.[3]
Still, the internet is not irredeemable. Whether or not we see it as a net positive, we live in the internet age. The work ahead is not to retreat from the internet but to learn how to foster a positive relationship with it. As a major force in society, citizens have the obligation to engage in this work. So what are the solutions? Government crackdowns on hate-speech? Or state-verified social media profiles?
No. Rather, imagine a social contract for the digital age in which we create and uphold norms of civility, integrity, and pluralism for the greater good. The government, for its part, ought to set legal regulations that prevent abuse by either users or platforms. It should initiate an open process for us all to deliberate about how we define such abuse and what we should do about it. More importantly, we all have an obligation to use this gift of interconnectedness with great care. In their book, Why We Argue, American philosophers Aikin and Talisse state, “In order to have the humanizing effect we all need, our relations of mutual interdependence must be in some sense reciprocal.” Reciprocity is the core of my argument for a better media landscape.
Reasonable pluralism states that we can live together peacefully while disagreeing. Maintaining restraint and assuming good faith are two positive steps. What about disinformation, we might ask. With the prominence of AI art and Large Language Models (LLMs), it is becoming increasingly difficult to differentiate between the human-made and not, between reality and fiction. As such, media literacy has never been more important. We can’t necessarily control what’s on the internet but we can control how we respond to it.
Clearly, the ways in which we deliberate in person trickle into the online sphere, and vice versa. Therefore, we would mutually benefit from greater mindfulness about how we engage in online discourse. The internet has changed communication, but it has not changed the fact that we must communicate. We ought to approach digital communication with the same energy and care we bring to a town hall or a dinner table.
[1] Richard Wike et al. 2022. Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier. Pew Research Center.
[2] Richard Wike et al. 2022. Social Media Seen as Mostly Good for Democracy Across Many Nations, But U.S. is a Major Outlier. Pew Research Center.
[3] Ezra Klein. 2025. A Theory of Media That Explains 15 Years of Politics. New York Times.
