Democracy, right wing populism and social media

In a very simplistic way, humankind can be said to have improved public conversation in society through two important inventions. The first dates back to the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg launched the printing press and thereby made it possible to spread ideas rapidly across Western Europe. Gutenberg’s invention also led to increased literacy among the population, often supported by Protestant churches that aimed for people to be able to read (though not necessarily to critically read) Luther’s Catechism.

Public conversation, however, also underwent rapid changes when the freedom of the press, radio, and television were introduced. In this paradigm, media was still controlled by groups able to pool resources, making it difficult for the average Joe to take part in public discourse. It was only at the dawn of the 21st century that this became fully possible with the rise of the internet, and in the twilight of the early 2000s this was further expanded through social media.

It is hard to argue that social media has not had a significant impact on society. Among the so-called techno-optimists, social media is seen as a new tool for direct democracy and public action. We have indeed witnessed this on numerous occasions, from the Arab Spring to the call for “Refugees Welcome” across Europe after the death of Alan Kurdi. Lastly, in a European context, campaigns such as #MeToo have also profoundly changed the way we think about women’s rights and gender.

However, there has also been a development where some platforms gain precedence over others. An important such platform in Sweden has been X, formerly known as Twitter. Large media houses often use X to discover what is important in public conversation and then report on it, thereby allowing platforms like X to partly set the agenda. This is despite the fact that only around 15 percent of Swedish internet users are active on the platform, compared to fifty percent using Facebook.

In recent years, we have also seen a trend of more and more Swedes leaving X. The reasons vary, but Elon Musk’s leadership is often cited as an important factor. I myself have left the platform due to the number of radical right-wing users who often maintain a harsh tone, making it impossible to have a fruitful conversation. Yet this is an aspect I find quite worrying if social media is to be seen as a tool for understanding the social climate.

Many Swedes perceive today’s world as highly polarized in a political sense. This is not least something that many politicians also highlight, but the problem might be that we rely too much on social media to take the temperature of public conversation. The most important public discussions may, after all, be the informed conversations taking place around workplace lunch tables, during breaks in various recreational organizations, and so forth. Perhaps the so-called techno-optimists were right that social media would transform public conversation — but when discussing polarization, we should also look beyond X, Threads, and Instagram. If we do so, we might actually find a democratic conversation that is thriving, quite contrary to social media’s harsh rhetoric.

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