Opinion Martin Regg Cohn: Want to save democracy? Focus on these three things
The hard part is deciding what the biggest peril is. Otherwise, the hand-wringing becomes pointless finger-wagging.Information: In the battle between disinformation and information, are social media platforms destabilizing us with conspiracy theories? What about the mass media that demoralize us daily with sometimes wild tales of foreign interference?
Mia Gaviola explained how disinformation took root in her native Philippines and is now infecting all democracies. A longtime collaborator with the Manila-based journalist and Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, she argued that misinformation has multiplied because social media technology moves at warp speed.
Faulty information rapidly erodes faith in our institutions — and trust is core to democracy, said longtime public servant Matthew Mendelsohn. Trust is what allows people to move beyond family ties to clans, tribes, and finally nation states that work together and govern themselves across regions that span thousands of kilometres and millions of people.
That’s a point worth bearing in mind amid our ideological politics and polarizing battles. We can hold opposing views while sharing similar democratic beliefs. The inequities are increasingly entrenched because workers and activists lack clout — and focus: “The workforce is extremely atomized, we don’t have strong unions, we don’t have a strong collective voice. We are much more into identity politics than we are into class politics.”
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