Four challenges for the future of digital politics research

Abstract

In our post-2016 moment – after the inaccurate and misleading Facebook advertising in the Brexit referendum; after the disinformation and misinformation crisis of the 2016 United States presidential campaign; after revelations of the massive scale of automated social media activity designed to manipulate public attention during key political events, some of it sponsored by Russian intelligence agencies; after the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data breach scandal; after the live-streamed New Zealand terrorist massacre of March 2019 – the mood among digital media researchers is one of deep pessimism. So much has been lost of the optimistic visions for democratic change that once underlay scholarship in the field. Yet, even more troubling is the view that many of the pathologies of the post-2016 crisis have always been present in some form but were too often neglected. There is currently profound uncertainty about the long-term impact of all forms of digital media on civic life, but this is especially the case for social media platforms, which for many people have become the de facto Internet.