Social media has gotten a bad name in recent years, much of it deserved, as it has played a sizable role in spreading right-wing backwardness and even authoritarianism in much of the world. This includes, most prominently, the reach and especially staying power of the world’s most powerful politician in the world’s most powerful country, Donald J. Trump.
But first, to avoid exaggeration or a misleading picture, we must recognize that the problems of misinformation and disinformation that enable 21st century politics to “build a bridge to the 19th century” are bigger than Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok. The traditional media has also failed us in important ways.
For example, a poll by Data for Progress found that voters in West Virginia — one of America’s poorest states — supported the landmark Build Back Better legislation proposed by Democrats in 2021 by a margin of 43 percentage points. They supported its individual components by similar or larger margins: investing in long-term care, expanding Medicare coverage, paid family and medical leave, universal pre-K, extending health insurance subsidies, and clean energy investments. This bill would have changed the United States arguably as much as the New Deal, which put Democrats in power nationally for almost all of 1932 to 1980. And transformed the lives of West Virginians, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security did. But their senator, Joe Manchin, blocked it.
