Is social media responsible for our democracy’s current crisis? An increasing amount of political information (and misinformation) gets disseminated online, and many Americans do not trust the media, do not trust Congress and do not trust the president. By many measures, voters are as polarized now as they have ever been in recent memory.
Many observers — even, before he left office, President Barack Obama — have tagged social media as a key driver of this crisis. …
But we risk giving too much weight to the newest and most frightening media technologies. CONT.
Levi Boxell (Stanford), Matthew Gentzkow (Stanford) & Jesse M. Shapiro (Brown), New York Times