Why Is Social News Bad for Democracy

“fake news”... is grossly inadequate to explain the nature and scale of the problem... is being used by politicians... against the fourth estate and an excuse to censor free speech...
There are four distinct motivations ... political, financial, psychological (for personal satisfaction) and social (to reinforce our belonging to communities or “tribes”).... we need to address these motivations separately....
Social media force us to live our lives in public, positioned centre-stage in our very own daily performances... driven by our desire to make a good impression on our audiences, imagined and actual... we should actually view communication through the lens of ritual if we want to understand why people seek out, consume and make sense of information... “News is not information, it is drama.”...
many of the solutions being proposed to tackle the spread of disinformation... focus on the transmission model... flagging disputed content are founded on the idea that information consumption is rational... we need to start recognising the emotional and social drivers that shape people’s relationship with information.