There is a supposition in democracy that a democratic citizen is expected to know what the issues are, what the relevant facts are, what the alternatives are, and what the likely consequences are of any decision that a citizen may make. This expectation of a well-informed democratic citizen is unrealistic. The current state in western democracies can be more accurately described as widespread apathy if not downright ignorance. This is why representative democracy is needed and parliament exists.

Despite the rather depressing scenario in many western democracies, what is a sine qua non is that citizens should in fact be informed. Factual information is data that we collect in one way or another. The value of this data is in the context in which we find it, or in the context where we use it. Sometimes, data used in the right place at the right time can create new added value.

My nephew has diabetes. If he is misinformed about diabetes, this can lead to poor health, early death, and loss of productivity from wasted time dealing with what is a controllable disease. Many citizens in democracies are simply not well-informed and are unable to make informed choices, unlike my nephew who is and will live a long, healthy and productive life because he has the necessary skills, strategies and knows how to determine if new information on diabetes is valid, and if he should refine his dietary practices.

The information diet of comics for adults in the form of The Sun and other similar tabloids is well-established in Britain (The Sun is now 52 years old). The Sun is a brash, unashamedly downmarket tabloid, running pictures of topless girls on its Page 3. It has become a social institution, which offers its readers the “brave, bold and bawdy” according to its ex-editor, David Dinsmore[i]. Furthermore, he states that The Sun “makes life simpler, richer and more sensational” and “is an instigator, an entertainer, a cultural reference point, a finger on the pulse, a daily relationship”. It is a relationship with approximately 10 million readers a week. Its mixture of salaciousness and entertainment, barely disguised as news, is not the kind of information that helps readers in making decisions about public policy. Despite its predominantly frivolous content, the Sun has also acquired significant political influence. The notorious headline “It’s The Sun Wot Won It” when the Conservatives unexpectedly won the 1992 general election has become synonymous with tabloids that shamelessly whip up public emotion for their own ends, basically to sell more papers. It could be argued that The Sun has created a positive culture around encouraging ignorance and a lack of respect for other people. Stylistically and linguistically, it is a barrage of corny puns. Whether The Sun sets out to misinform is difficult to know, but there is certainly a strong element of escapism.

However, The Sun seems to pale into insignificance compared with social media. Online social media and the information they distribute are part of a far larger and far more complex ecology than that of the world of traditional newspapers. It is very difficult to fully map the processes involved in the rapid spread of misinformation or to identify where a fake story, a rumour, a hoax originates. It seems massive digital misinformation is becoming pervasive in online social media to the extent that it has been listed by the World Economic Forum (WEF)[ii] as one of the main threats to our society.

According to a group of scientists[iii] , the wide availability of user-provided content in online social media facilitates the aggregation of people around common interests, worldviews, and narratives. They suggest that the internet is a fruitful environment for the massive diffusion of unverified rumours.  The authors show that online social media information generates homogeneous and polarized communities having similar information consumption patterns. In other words, people like to retreat to the comfort of their echo chambers; a metaphorical echo chamber is a description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system. Sources of information often go unquestioned and different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresented. People stay in their caves and don’t engage with those who have a different perspective. Information claims can be made, which many like-minded people then repeat and repeat again (sometimes in an exaggerated or distorted form) until most people assume that some extreme variation of the story is true[iv].

Within the din of social media, it seems only the loudest and brashest get heard. Any story becomes a true story for undiscriminating consumers of information and liars become Presidents.

[i] https://newscommercial.co.uk/brands/the-sun

[ii] Howell L (2013) Digital wildfires in a hyperconnected world. WEF Report 2013. Available at reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2013/risk-case-1/digital-wildfires-in-ahyperconnected-world . Accessed December 7, 2016.

[iii] http://www.pnas.org/content/113/3/554.full.pdf

[iv] See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)