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03.02.2021

The Future Report on Social Media in the Democratic Space

Social Media as a Political Instrument

“The Year of Decisions” — The Future Institute (Zukunftsinstitut), international think tank for trend and future research, published the Future Report 2021 (Zukunftsreport) at the end of the year. Trend researchers and experts reveal the slowly developing new world (dis)order. The way we deal with social networks has also changed in the context of the pandemic. “Slowly, human culture is developing an immune system against the great overwhelming emotions of anger, hate and fear on the internet”, explains author Anja Kirig, political scientist and trend researcher.

Social networks have proven to be important communication tools in the democratic space (cf. Future Report 2021). In the past year, they produced two politically relevant phenomena: on the one hand, an increasing instrumentalisation of the channels aimed at disrupting democratic consensus-building. On the other hand, the spread of powerful social movements that demand a clear increase in democracy. The best example of this is, on the one hand, Donald Trump’s video of misinformation about Covid-19, which was deleted by Facebook. The “Big Socials” (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Google, Microsoft and LinkedIn) issued a joint statement in March 2020 to combat fraud and misinformation related to the pandemic. Likewise, social media is increasingly being used for civil “disobedience”. The Black Lives Matter protest movements launched in the US became a worldwide event within a few days thanks to social media.

“The tendency is clear: users no longer experience themselves as incapable of action, but rather make targeted use of the structures of social media for themselves, as an effective networking tool to advance social causes”, Kirig explains. The past year has shown: civil society mobilisation for democratic and social principles is gaining importance and rapid spread via social media. Anja Kirig explains in the Future Report: “Unlike populist waves of outrage, which work with changing themes that tend to be interchangeable and trigger rather short hypes, the global, social movements are united by long-term commitment to fundamental basic values: identity, shaping the future and quality of life.”

So, according to the author, a new era of social networking is beginning. Social platforms will continue to have to deal with fake news and hate speech, but the new generations of users will use these new communication spaces in a more enlightened way. “That’s what crises are about: they put an end to excesses”, summarises futurologist Matthias Horx in the foreword to the Future Report. “They confront us with our own decadence. They dissolve entrenched thought patterns and destroy the established. They force innovations that were previously stuck in the latent. The ‘new normal’ will look different from the old.”

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