Is Digital Media Undermining Citizenship?
Article

Is Digital Media Undermining Citizenship?

Media theorist Elizabeth Losh explains how politicians’ digital strategies appeal to the same fantasies of digital connection, access, and participation peddled by Silicon Valley.

Elizabeth Losh and The Editors of the MIT Press Reader
Sifted, 2022
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8

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Media scholar and author Elizabeth Losh illuminates how politicians at both ends of the ideological spectrum use digital technology to galvanize their supporters. Referring to digital strategists at the highest levels of government in several United States administrations, Losh offers revealing insights into how technology reinforces and undermines democracy. This discussion from the MIT Press Reader and moderated by its editors will interest politicians and political campaign managers of any ideological stripe, and, more generally, any citizen or student who uses the internet as a source of information.

Summary

Technologies can undermine and reinforce democracy.

Politicians use digital media to encourage public fantasies of access. Digital media managers for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama acknowledge that their initial aspirations to digital democracy proved illusory. Jane Cook, who started the whitehouse.gov website during George W. Bush’s administration, said the team wanted to use cookies to learn more about people who visited the site, but that users feared an implication of government surveillance. Thus the Bush administration was anti-cookie; the Obama administration was not.

Gauging the impact of technology on the public’s perception of politicians and politics evokes the...

About the Authors

Elizabeth Losh, a professor of English and American Studies at the College of William and Mary, ​​​​​​also wrote Selfie Democracy.

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