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by jplayer01
2409 days ago
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1) Accessibility 2) There's always been some measure of manipulation by political leaders in order to achieve certain goals. Obvious examples are the US in drumming up support for WW2 or the Vietnam war or ... well, any war, really. I don't think anything has really fundamentally changed since the "good old days", except people have realized that they can subvert democracy by just telling people what they want to hear. We have decades of history where you can say something and then do something else entirely, and this is just the natural extension of that. Political leaders, businesses, etc. have realized that there are no consequences for being bad actors, only benefits. Even if they are found out, they can influence the news in ways to make it blow over in a day, or they can tie up courts for years and years if it ever does go there (rare). All I see is an inexorable march which started decades ago, and it's not going to stop here. |
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This doesn't get mentioned as often as it should. I have read almost no critical analysis of the fact that cheap smartphones coupled with relatively cheap mobile Internet have brought the political discourse to lots and lots of more people, who otherwise most certainly would have switched the TV channel when the politics were on or who didn't read the politics section in the newspapers (if they used to read newspapers at all).
In other words, Facebook and Twitter by themselves would have meant nothing without the cheap Android phones.