Democratic Creative Destruction? The Effect of a Changing Media Landscape on Democracy

Abstract

The move to a more digital, more mobile, and more platform-dominated media environment represents a change to the institutions and infrastructures of free expression and a form of “democratic creative destruction” that challenges incumbent institutions, creates new ones, and in many ways empower individual citizens, even as this change also leaves both individuals and institutions increasingly dependent on a few large US-based technology companies and subjects many historically disadvantaged groups to more abuse and harassment online. That is the argument we advance in this chapter, where we will aim to step away from assessing the democratic implications of the Internet on the basis of individual cases, countries, or outcomes to focus on how structural changes in the media are intertwined with changes in democratic politics.