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Are digital media bad for democracy?

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In established democracies, on the other hand, the data show that digital media can have a more detrimental effect, particularly in eroding trust in political institutions, and were also connected to the spread of hate, polarisation, misinformation and populism in these societies. For instance, in Germany, increased media use to support for the far-right populist party AfD, and parallels were found in Austria, Sweden and Australia. Related to this, when it comes to news consumption, while several of the surveyed articles showed that social media and search engines do diversify people’s news diets, the reviewed articles consistently showed clusters of likeminded users in social networks.

"Perhaps one of the most important contributions of our review is that it clearly describes the state of the research field, which has comparably little causal evidence, is heavily US-based, and especially relies on correlational evidence on media use and self-reported political outcomes,” says Lisa Oswald. According to the author, that makes it hard to say “why” digital media use is associated, for instance, with higher political polarisation. Is it that more extreme people are the most active on social media or because social media makes people more extreme? “Even though the field is far from being in the dark about the links between digital media and democracy – something major social media companies like to claim, more evidence on these why-questions is sorely needed,” she adds.