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.
