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      Disinformation and the Structural Transformations of the Public Arena: Addressing the Actual Challenges to Democracy

      1 , 2
      Social Media + Society
      SAGE Publications

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          Abstract

          Current debate is dominated by fears of the threats of digital technology for democracy. One typical example is the perceived threats of malicious actors promoting disinformation through digital channels to sow confusion and exacerbate political divisions. The prominence of the threat of digital disinformation in the public imagination, however, is not supported by empirical findings which instead indicate that disinformation is a limited problem with limited reach among the public. Its prominence in public discourse is instead best understood as a “moral panic.” In this article, we argue that we should shift attention from these evocative but empirically marginal phenomena of deviance connected with digital media toward the structural transformations that give rise to these fears, namely those that have impacted information flows and attention allocation in the public arena. This account centers on structural transformations of the public arena and associated new challenges, especially in relation to gatekeepers, old and new. How the public arena serves actually existing democracy will not be addressed by focusing on disinformation, but rather by addressing structural transformations and the new challenges that arise from these.

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          Most cited references44

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          Post-Broadcast Democracy

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            When the Press Fails

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              Gatekeeping Theory

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
                (View ORCID Profile)
                Journal
                Social Media + Society
                Social Media + Society
                SAGE Publications
                2056-3051
                2056-3051
                January 2021
                January 21 2021
                January 2021
                : 7
                : 1
                : 205630512198892
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany
                [2 ]University of Oxford, UK
                Article
                10.1177/2056305121988928
                41c03d13-7a91-4f9e-bdc2-39e99ff897af
                © 2021

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

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