![]() To put the matter bluntly, if we had the polarized politics of today but the information technology of the 1950s, we almost certainly would not have seen the insurrection of Jan. The rise of cheap speech poses special dangers for American democracy and for faith and confidence in American elections. False information about Covid-19 vaccines meant to undermine confidence in government or the Biden presidency has had deadly consequences. Feeding people reassuring lies on social media or cable television that provide simple answers to complex social and economic problems increases demand for more soothing falsities, creating a vicious cycle. While some false claims spread inadvertently, the greater problem is not this misinformation but deliberately spread disinformation, which can be both politically and financially profitable. The economic model for local newspapers and news gathering has collapsed over the past two decades from 2000 to 2018, journalists lost jobs faster than coal miners. It is expensive to produce quality journalism but cheap to produce polarizing political “takes” and easily shareable disinformation. What Professor Volokh did not foresee in his largely optimistic prognostication was that our information environment would become increasingly “cheap” in a second sense of the word, favoring speech of little value over speech that is more valuable to voters. He was correct back then that the amount of speech flowing to us in formats like video would move from a trickle to a flood. Today we live in an era of “cheap speech.” Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment scholar at U.C.L.A., coined the term in 1995 to refer to a new period marked by changes in communications technology that would allow readers, viewers and listeners to receive speech from a practically infinite variety of sources unmediated by traditional media institutions, like newspapers, that had served as curators and gatekeepers. ![]() ![]() It’s going to take both legal and political change to bolster that foundation, and it might not be enough. There can be no doubt that virally spread political disinformation and delusional invective about stolen, rigged elections are threatening the foundation of our Republic. The same information revolution that brought us Netflix, podcasts and the knowledge of the world in our smartphone-gripping hands has also undermined American democracy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |