Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media

279 Pages·2017·2.26 MB·English

by  Cass R. Sunstein

Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
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Jacket design by Amanda Weiss
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Sunstein, Cass R., author.
Title: #Republic : divided democracy in the age
of social media / Cass R. Sunstein.
Other titles: Hashtag republic
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2017. | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016038668 | ISBN 9780691175515 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Information society—Political aspects. | Internet—
Political aspects. | Social media—Political aspects. | Polarization
(Social sciences) | Political participation—Technological innovations.
| Democracy. | Political culture. | BISAC: POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Political Ideologies / Democracy. | POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Political Freedom & Security / General. | POLITICAL SCIENCE /
Censorship. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / General.
Classification: LCC HM851 .S869 2017 | DDC 303.48/33—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038668
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Adobe Text Pro and Gotham
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I think, when the people have chosen a representative, it is his duty to
meet others from the different parts of the Union, and consult, and agree
with them on such acts as are for the general benefit of the whole
community.
ROGER SHERMAN, 1789
It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of
human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons
dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike
those with which they are familiar. . . . Such communication has always
been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of
progress.
JOHN STUART MILL, 1848
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us
—the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics
of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal
America and a conservative America—there is the United States of
America. There is not a Black America and a White America and
Latino America and Asian America—there’s the United States of
America.
BARACK OBAMA, 2004
If you could look through thousands of stories every day and choose the
10 that were most important to you, which would they be? The answer
should be your News Feed. It is subjective, personal, and unique—and
defines the spirit of what we hope to achieve.
FACEBOOK, 2016
CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 THE DAILY ME 1
2 AN ANALOGY AND AN IDEAL 31
3 POLARIZATION 59
4 CYBERCASCADES 98
5 SOCIAL GLUE AND SPREADING INFORMATION 137
6 CITIZENS 157
7 WHAT’S REGULATION? A PLEA 176
8 FREEDOM OF SPEECH 191
9 PROPOSALS 213
10 TERRORISM.COM 234
11 #REPUBLIC 252
Acknowledgments 263
Notes 265
Index 287
PREFACE
In a well-functioning democracy, people do not live in echo chambers or
information cocoons. They see and hear a wide range of topics and ideas. They
do so even if they did not, and would not, choose to see and hear those topics
and those ideas in advance. These claims raise serious questions about online
behavior and uses of social media, and the astonishing growth in the power to
choose—to screen in and screen out.
Louis Brandeis, one of America’s greatest Supreme Court justices, insisted
that the biggest threat to freedom is “an inert people.” To avoid inertness, a
democratic public must certainly be free from censorship. But the system of
free expression must do far more than avoid censorship; it must ensure that
people are exposed to competing perspectives. The idea of free speech has an
affirmative side. It imposes constraints on what government may do, but it
requires a certain kind of culture as well—one of curiosity, openness, and
humility.
Members of a democratic public will not do well if they are unable to
appreciate the views of their fellow citizens, if they believe “fake news,” or if
they see one another as enemies or adversaries in some kind of war. Learned
Hand, a lower court judge from many decades ago, put his finger on the point
when he said that the “spirit of liberty” is “that spirit which is not too sure that
it is right.”
The English language has two enduring accounts of democratic dystopia.
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its omnipresent, choice-denying
Big Brother, is the most familiar vision of democracy’s defeat. Orwell’s novel
depicts a triumph of authoritarianism, symbolized by the boot in the face, and
reflected in Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Mao
Tse-tung’s China. His is a tale of the triumph of fascism or communism. Many
authoritarians are censors, and they silence those who disagree with them. To
them, the Internet can be a great threat, and they are nervous about social
media, which they also attempt to censor (except when it suits their purposes).
A much subtler and equally chilling vision is Aldous Huxley’s Brave New
World, with its pacified, choice-happy, formally free citizenry. Huxley’s world
lacks the most obvious authoritarians. People are controlled with pleasure, not
with prisons and guns. In a sense, people are allowed to do exactly what they
want—but the government succeeds in controlling people’s very desires.
Consider the plea of Huxley’s hero, John the Savage, who resists the pursuit of
pleasure: “But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real
danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”1
With the help of its constitution, the United States has not come close to
Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it has managed to avoid anything like Brave New
World. True, there have been authoritarian actions (such as the internment of
Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II), and pleasure
seeking plays a major role in American culture. But for the United States at
least, neither Orwell nor Huxley can be said to be prescient. Their novels are
instructive political nightmares, not depictions of a past or future reality.
What both authors missed is another kind of dystopia, produced by the
power to create one’s very own echo chamber: the power of personalization,
or gated communities, which can diminish individual freedom and endanger
self-government itself. For all its horrors, Brave New World was a community
of sorts, unified by shared activities and concerns. What is coming, and my
concern in this book, is quite different.
For a preview, consider the words of John Stuart Mill, speaking of the
value of international trade:
It is hardly possible to overrate the value, in the present low state of
human improvement, of placing human beings in contact with persons
dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike
those with which they are familiar. . . . Such communication has always
been, and is peculiarly in the present age, one of the primary sources of
progress. To human beings, who, as hitherto educated, can scarcely
cultivate even a good quality without running it into a fault, it is
indispensable to be perpetually comparing their own notions and
customs with the experience and example of persons in different
circumstances from themselves: and there is no nation which does not
need to borrow from others, not merely particular arts or practices, but
essential points of character in which its own type is inferior.2
It is now child’s play to compare notions and customs; learning is
instantaneous. For people all over the planet, that is good news. Actually it is
great news. For that reason, we might be celebrating what Mill rightly
identifies as a primary source of progress. In some ways, a celebration is very
much in order, and a book could easily be written about it.
That is not this book. My goal here is instead to explore contemporary
obstacles to achieving what Mill deemed “indispensable”—and to see what
might be done to remove them.