Platform democracy: polarization, information disorder and incivility in a connected society

The contemporary age of public debate is characterized by disintermediation shaped by online platforms. Talking about “platform shaping” means to highlight how platform make it possible to connect contexts that were previously separate, grafting on to structural changes that the politics has been facing – such as leaderization and democracy of the publics.

The dynamics of platform’s disintermediation feed - and in turn are shaped - by three cultural tensions that in online contexts seem to be exacerbated by the affordances of the platforms themselves: incivility, information disorder and polarization (especially in its expression of formation of echo chambers and information bubbles).

But are these causes or symptoms of the degeneration of public debate indicated by several parties indicated by journalists, politicians and observers of social reality?

And how do platform affordances facilitate or not tendencies towards partisanship, disinformation and discursive aggression? Are there public policies that should be adopted to moderate the effect of platform democracy? In an age of emerging platform society, we need to discuss what kind of public discourse and behavior we will accept and who we want to be as a society.