Following the Hitler’s tyranny on the Germans, a wave of democracy surrounded the world. Democracy is termed as the best of the worst as no governing body has ever pleased its natives. Ask David Lazer what he thinks about the current state of American democracy, and he’ll show you a picture of a burning dumpster. He can tell you why: polarisation is on the rise, trust in the news media is just nil, and the disparity between rich and poor has intensified.
But unlike some, when Lazer peers into the fire, he sees an opportunity for change. Lazer, the distinguished professor of political science and computer and information sciences as well as the founding co-director of the NULab for texts, maps, and networks at Northeastern University, has written extensively on the topic of democracy. He co-authored with colleagues a book, ‘Politics with the people: building a directly representative democracy’, that offers a solution for remodelling representative government by directly interlacing citizens and elected officials.
He suggested some measures which could completely transform the dismal situation of American democracy. In the wake of a study which found that a colossal amount of fake news during the 2016 election was produced and consumed by a very small amount of users, David advocated that social media corporations should limit how intermittently its users are allowed to post. “We’ve found that sharing tons of content is correlated with sharing tons of garbage; this super-sharing disproportionately affects fake news and misinformation,” he said. “If you put a speed limit on how often you can share, it would dramatically cut down the spread of fake news.”
Harminder Singh