Institutional values and information environments, Presentation, iSchool Student Conference
Date:
In this talk, I argued that emerging social media information environments such as Twitter, Instagram, Facebook erode the quality of public discourse, in consequence undermining democracy. Specifically, the presentation argued that the new social media platforms effectuate the disaggregation of information channels and sources, potentiating information siloes and favoring small and simple information units with the capacity for memetic dissemination, leading to a reduction of rational standards. Leveraging dual-process theory and reverse-adaptation theory, the presentation argues that because information units on social media platforms favor replication over epistemic merit, they undermine system which is indispensible and conductive to rational thought: the processing of sequential information for logical rigor, as well as consensus-building mechanisms that rely on social norms of civil discourse.