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Many Tech Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy

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Many Tech Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy FOR RELEASE FEB. 21, 2020 Many Tech Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy About half predict that humans’ use of technology will weaken democracy between now and 2030 due to the speed and scope of reality distortion, the decline of journalism and the impact of surveillance capitalism. A third expect technology to strengthen democracy as reformers find ways to fight back against info-warriors and chaos By Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie FOR MEDIA OR OTHER INQUIRIES: Lee Rainie, Director, Internet and Technology Research Janna Anderson, Executive Director, Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center Haley Nolan, Communications Associate 202.419.4394 www.pewresearch.org RECOMMENDED CITATION Pew Research Center, February 21, 2020, “Many Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy” 1 PEW RESEARCH CENTER About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the world. It does not take policy positions. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, content analysis and other data-driven social science research. The Center studies U.S. politics and policy; journalism and media; internet, science and technology; religion and public life; Hispanic trends; global attitudes and trends; and U.S. social and demographic trends. All of the center’s reports are available at www.pewresearch.org. Pew Research Center is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts, its primary funder. For this project, Pew Research Center worked with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, which helped conceive the research and collect and analyze the data. © Pew Research Center 2020 www.pewresearch.org 2 PEW RESEARCH CENTER Experts Say Digital Disruption Will Hurt Democracy About half predict that humans’ use of technology will weaken democracy between now and 2030 due to the speed and scope of reality distortion, the decline of journalism and the impact of surveillance capitalism. A third expect technology to strengthen democracy as reformers find ways to fight back against info-warriors and chaos The years of almost unfettered enthusiasm about the benefits of the internet have been followed by a period of techlash as users worry about the actors who exploit the speed, reach and complexity of the internet for harmful purposes. Over the past four years – a time of the Brexit decision in the United Kingdom, the American presidential election and a variety of other elections – the digital disruption of democracy has been a leading concern. The hunt for remedies is at an early stage. Resistance to American-based big tech firms is increasingly evident, and some tech pioneers have joined the chorus. Governments are actively investigating technology firms, and some tech firms themselves are requesting government regulation. Additionally, nonprofit organizations and foundations are directing resources toward finding the best strategies for coping with the harmful effects of disruption. For example, the Knight Foundation announced in 2019 that it is awarding $50 million in grants to encourage the development of a new field of research centered on technology’s impact on democracy. In light of this furor, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center canvassed technology experts in the summer of 2019 to gain their insights about potential future effects upon democracy of people’s uses of technology. Overall, 979 technology innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded to the following query: Technology’s impact on democratic institutions/representation: Between now and 2030, how will use of technology by citizens, civil society groups and governments affect core aspects of democracy and democratic representation? Will they mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation, mostly strengthen core aspects of democracy and democratic representation or not much change in core aspects of democracy and democratic representation? Some 49% of these respondents say use of technology will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation in the next decade, 33% say use of technology will www.pewresearch.org 3 PEW RESEARCH CENTER mostly strengthen core aspects of democracy and democratic representation and 18% say there will be no significant change in the next decade. This is a nonscientific canvassing based on a non-random sample. The results represent the opinions of the individuals who responded to the query and are not projectable to any other population. The methodology underlying this canvassing is elaborated at the end of this report in a section titled “About The Canvassing.” The bulk of this report covers these experts’ written answers explaining their responses. In addition to the plurality view among these experts that democracy will be weakened, a large majority of the entire set of respondents – including both the pessimists and the optimists – voiced concerns they believe should be addressed to keep democracy vibrant. Their worries often center on the interplay of trust, truth and democracy, a cluster of subjects that have framed key research by Pew in recent months. The logic in some expert answers goes this way: The misuse of digital technology to manipulate and weaponize facts affects people’s trust in institutions and each other. That ebbing of trust affects people’s views about whether democratic processes and institutions designed to empower citizens are working. Some think the information and trust environment will worsen by 2030 thanks to the rise of video deepfakes, cheapfakes and other misinformation tactics. They fear that this downward spiral toward disbelief and despair also is tied to the protracted struggles facing truthful, independent journalism. Moreover, many of these experts say they worry about the future of democracy because of the power of major technology companies and their role in democratic discourse, as well as the way those companies exploit the data they collect about users. In explaining why he feels technology use will mostly weaken core aspects of democracy and democratic representation, Jonathan Morgan, senior design researcher with the Wikimedia Foundation, described the problem this way: “I’m primarily concerned with three things. 1) The use of social media by interested groups to spread disinformation in a strategic, coordinated fashion with the intent of undermining people’s trust in institutions and/or convincing them to believe things that aren’t true. 2) The role of proprietary, closed platforms run by profit-driven companies in disseminating information to citizens, collecting information from (and about) citizens, and engaging political stakeholder groups. These platforms were not designed to be ‘digital commons,’ are not equally accessible to everyone and are not run for the sake of promoting social welfare or broad-based civic participation. These companies’ profit motives, business models, data-gathering practices, process/procedural opacity and power (and therefore, resilience against regulation undertaken for prosocial purposes) make them poorly suited to promoting democracy. 3) The growing role of surveillance by digital platform owners (and other economic www.pewresearch.org 4 PEW RESEARCH CENTER actors that collect and transact digital trace data) as well as by state actors, and the increasing power of machine learning-powered surveillance technologies for capturing and analyzing data, threaten the public’s ability to engage safely and equitably in civic discussions.” Those who are more optimistic expect that effective solutions to these problems will evolve because people always adapt and can use technology to combat the problems that face democracy. Those who do not expect much change generally say they believe that humans’ uses of technology will continue to remain a fairly stable mix of both positive and negative outcomes for society. The main themes found in an analysis of the experts’ comments are outlined in the following two- page, two-part table. Themes About the Digital Disruption of Democracy in the Next Decade Concerns for Democracy’s Future Power Imbalance: Democracy is at risk because those with power will seek to maintain it by building systems that serve them not the masses. Too few in the general public possess enough knowledge to resist this assertion of power EMPOWERING THE Corporate and government agendas generally do not serve democratic goals and outcomes. They POWERFUL serve the goals of those in power. DIMINISHING THE Digitally-networked surveillance capitalism creates an undemocratic class system pitting the GOVERNED controllers against the controlled. EXPLOITING DIGITAL A lack of digital fluency and a high level of apathy among the public produces an ill-informed ILLITERACY and/or dispassionate citizenry, weakening democracy and the fabric of society. WAGING INFO-WARS Technology will be weaponized to target vulnerable populations and engineer elections. Trust issues: The rise of misinformation and disinformation erodes public trust in many institutions SOWING CONFUSION Tech-borne reality distortion is crushing the already-shaky public trust in the institutions of democracy. WEAKENING There seems to be no solution for problems caused by the rise of social media-abetted tribalism JOURNALISM and the decline of trusted, independent journalism. RESPONDING TOO The speed, scope and impact of the technologies of manipulation may be difficult to
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