Author: Lisa Schirch

Opinion

Social Media Can Support Or Undermine Democracy – It Comes Down To How It’s Designed

Every design choice that social media platforms make nudges users toward certain actions, values and emotional states. It is a design choice to offer a news feed that combines verified news sources with conspiracy blogs – interspersed with photos of a family picnic – with no distinction between these very different types of information. It is a design choice to use algorithms that find the most emotional or outrageous content to show users, hoping it keeps them online. And it is a design choice to send bright red notifications, keeping people in a state of expectation for the next photo…

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