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A review by pbokelly
#republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media by Cass R. Sunstein
4.0
A timely and encouraging book. An excerpt, to provide a sense of the scope of the book (p. 20):
"POLITICS, FREEDOM, AND FILTERING In the course of the discussion, we will encounter many issues. Each will be treated in some detail, but for the sake of convenience, here is a quick catalog:
• the importance of chance encounters and shared experiences for democratic societies
• the large difference between pure populism, or direct democracy, and a democratic system that attempts to ensure deliberation and reflection as well as accountability
• the intimate relationship between free speech rights and social well-being, which such rights often serve the pervasive risk that discussion among like-minded people will breed excessive confidence, extremism, contempt for others, and sometimes even violence
• the potentially dangerous role of social cascades, including “cybercascades,” in which information, whether true or false, spreads like wildfire
• the enormous potential of the Internet and other communications technologies for promoting freedom in both poor and rich countries
• the utterly implausible nature of the view that free speech is an “absolute”
• the ways in which information provided to any one of us is likely to benefit many of us
• the difference between our role as citizens and our role as consumers
• the inevitability of regulation of speech, and indeed the inevitability of speech regulation benefiting those who most claim to be opposed to “regulation”
• the potentially destructive effects of intense market pressures on both culture and government"
"POLITICS, FREEDOM, AND FILTERING In the course of the discussion, we will encounter many issues. Each will be treated in some detail, but for the sake of convenience, here is a quick catalog:
• the importance of chance encounters and shared experiences for democratic societies
• the large difference between pure populism, or direct democracy, and a democratic system that attempts to ensure deliberation and reflection as well as accountability
• the intimate relationship between free speech rights and social well-being, which such rights often serve the pervasive risk that discussion among like-minded people will breed excessive confidence, extremism, contempt for others, and sometimes even violence
• the potentially dangerous role of social cascades, including “cybercascades,” in which information, whether true or false, spreads like wildfire
• the enormous potential of the Internet and other communications technologies for promoting freedom in both poor and rich countries
• the utterly implausible nature of the view that free speech is an “absolute”
• the ways in which information provided to any one of us is likely to benefit many of us
• the difference between our role as citizens and our role as consumers
• the inevitability of regulation of speech, and indeed the inevitability of speech regulation benefiting those who most claim to be opposed to “regulation”
• the potentially destructive effects of intense market pressures on both culture and government"