Impacts on Democracy

 Pros:

At the beginning of the Internet, we felt it was a Democracy of information; people had access to enormous amounts of information worldwide. Which affects information democracy. People don’t have to wait for the newspapers or news on television; they get the news immediately, and everybody has access to it simultaneously. People can talk with each other worldwide; this is also a democracy. It allows like-minded people to come together and talk about their rights. Which may later create a massive protest.  For example, the Egyptian revolution around Tahrir Square was boosted by the internet connection with social media. People started to believe that if they wanted a free society, they just needed internet access. It is still true. Social media has been designed to empower the user. They can create content and post information about anything. The young crowd (Who first started using the internet widely) will know all the information without restrictions. The truth about other nations as well as their own nation. Like police violations of black people. It intends to change political power. Now, the political people reach out to the general public more directly, for example. Donald Trump didn’t pay for ads on TV media; he just tweeted to his 10 million followers. The Internet has given ordinary people broadcast power, which was only available to big media. People can put something on social media and get a big crowd.

Cons:

In other ways, the internet makes us disengaged, stupid, distracted, and clueless. People are losing their concentration abilities. The mind wants to behave the way a person behaves online. Too much information prevents people from learning anything and makes them too stupid, especially since the rise of fake news. Fake news is created to make people believe something else when they might be confused with the real news. This is how crazy people are getting together and making a global fake news emperor.

To understand the use of the Internet for corporate benefit, we need to understand the relationship between capitalism and democracy. It has been said that capitalism and democracy go hand in hand. But in reality, they have no connection. Without government regulation, capitalism gives enormous power to a couple of corporations. These corporations then have the power to influence the government. The government started making all decisions in favour of these corporations. The majority of the population has no influence on the policies.

Social media is now the most significant monopoly business. They are the big corporate giants now. Small company websites or anything like that are crashing because of these giant internet corporations. These corporations are becoming the only online earning machines. They are earning 2/3 of all online advertising revenue.

Every social media platform now collects personal information and puts it in an algorithm. Because of algorithms, news and information are given to us like an ideological bubble. Here, you don’t decide what you see or know what is left out. So, we are not free of information; an algorithm gatekeeper controls information coming to us.

Fake news generates more money than mainstream news. The democratic system shouldn’t rely on commercial journalism. It is difficult to understand who we are, the real one or the fake one. Things depend on who owns the media. Are they giving enough real information? Fake news influences every modern communication. It’s tough to know what’s true and what’s not.

The democratic Index ranked those countries first, subsidizing private journalism and keeping real journalism alive.

Now, with the internet, we have all the tools that can be used to liberate or oppress.