Page 101 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Since the early 2000s, the wider diffusion of the network, the dawn of Web 2.0 and social

media’s increasingly influential impacts, and the maturation of strategic uses of online platforms

to influence the public for economic and political gain have altered discourse. In recent years,

prominent internet analysts and the public at large have expressed increasing concerns that the

content, tone and intent of online interactions have undergone an evolution that threatens its future

and theirs. Events and discussions unfolding over the past year highlight the struggles ahead.

Among them:

• Respected internet pundit John Naughton asked in The Guardian, “Has the internet become

a failed state?” and mostly answered in the affirmative.

• The U.S. Senate heard testimony on the increasingly effective use of social media for the

advancement of extremist causes, and there was growing attention to how social media are

becoming weaponized by terrorists, creating newly effective kinds of propaganda.

• Scholars provided evidence showing that social bots were implemented in acts aimed at

disrupting the 2016 U.S. presidential election. And news organizations documented how

foreign trolls bombarded U.S. social media with fake news. A December 2016 Pew

Research Center study found that about two-in-three U.S. adults (64%) say fabricated news

stories cause a great deal of confusion about the basic facts of current issues and events.

• A May 2016 Pew Research Center report showed that 62% of Americans get their news

from social media. Farhad Manjoo of The New York Times argued that the “internet is

loosening our grip on the truth.” And his colleague Thomas B. Edsall curated a lengthy list

of scholarly articles after the election that painted a picture of how the internet was

jeopardizing democracy.

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