Social media has disrupted the institutional authority of the organisations that previously controlled the production and distribution of public information. The disruption is real, its governance consequences are significant, and its eventual equilibrium is not yet visible.
The Authority Disruption
The institutional authority of legacy news organisations, academic institutions, professional associations, and government agencies over public information was built on the control of production and distribution infrastructure that social media has largely displaced. The newspaper that previously determined which information reached the mass public, the professional association that credentialed the experts who public opinion treated as authoritative, and the government agency that provided the official account of public events — each derived significant authority from their control of information channels that are now bypassed by social media distribution. Social media has democratised information distribution in ways that have genuine value and that have also disrupted the accountability mechanisms through which false, misleading, and harmful information was previously moderated.
The disruption of institutional authority over information is not symmetrical in its consequences. The attenuation of authoritative institutions' gatekeeping role has reduced the influence of the information hierarchies that sometimes suppressed legitimate dissent and maintained the authority of institutions whose performance did not warrant it. It has also reduced the influence of the quality-control mechanisms that distinguished evidence-based claims from unfounded ones, expert knowledge from lay opinion, and verified information from fabrication. The governance consequence is an information environment in which the institutional authorities that provided the anchor for shared factual understanding have been weakened, and the information ecosystem that has replaced them has not yet developed adequate quality-control mechanisms.
Social media's disruption of institutional authority over information has produced the information environment in which democratic governance must now operate. That environment is more diverse and more accessible than its predecessor — and less anchored in the shared factual understanding that democratic deliberation requires. The governance challenge is not to restore the prior authority hierarchy but to build the new quality-control mechanisms that the new information ecosystem requires.
Discussion