| I disagree with your factual statements as well as political theoretical statements. Regarding political theoretical statements: There are different paradigms of liberal democracy currently. Some of them can be regarded as appealing to the will of the majority for legitimacy, but essentially they don't assume that the majority are reasonable, but merely that we shall respect the will of the majority and base policies on their stance. Disregarding illiberal democracy paradigms, all liberal democracy paradigms recognize the value of minority voices and recognize that their rights shall be protected, the right to freely express included. Regarding the factual statements: The mainstream US media didn't take social media as an input of significance for understanding the majority stance of US population before 2016. Those journalists had their echo chambers and represented a vocal minority in their echo chambers. Social media, on the other hand, provides a meaningful alternative allowing some different opinion groups to express their opinions beyond the echo chambers of mainstream media. The liberal-leaning mainstream media now has a tendency to exaggerate the influence of some niche circles on social media (e.g. the so-called alt-right), though. |