After witnessing the last American general election and the furor around it, it’s become pretty obvious that American democracy is not really working. People are starting to see that, and lose faith in the democratic system. This is doubly unfortunate, as our system depends on the citizens having faith in the electoral process.
So what do we do? Ideally, we build a better democracy. Incrementally, that is. As much as angsty teenagers would disagree, it’s really not in anyone’s best interest to burn it down and start from scratch.
A lot has been said about the ‘social media bubbles’ of the modern online world. For those not familiar, the ‘bubble’ is in reference to the effects of the algorithms that Facebook, Google, and the like use to determine what to show you when you use their sites.
The term usually refers to the political echo chambers that these algorithms create. You watch a video/like a comment/click on a search result with a certain percieved political viewpoint and these sites decide that you must want more of that same viewpoint, since they are ‘similar’.