Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to examine the impact of global electronic screen culture on the legitimacy of democracies. The aspect of legitimacy that is considered here is centred on the personal autonomy of the citizen. The chapter examines the way in which engagement with screen-based popular culture can lead to a decline in personal autonomy through the release (deliberately or inadvertently) of personal information into the domain of the World Wide Web. The significance of this phenomenon as a threat to the legitimacy of democracy is considered by way of insights that can be gained from the futuristic novels of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four, both of which provide powerful and evocative metaphors, which serve as frameworks for comparison.
An earlier draft of this chapter benefitted from the comments by Barend Lutz, Nicola de Jager and Cindy Steenekamp, and is gratefully acknowledged. The end product, however, is the responsibility of the author alone.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Albrecht, Karl. 2014. The Information Revolution’s Broken Promises. The Futurist, March–April. http://www.wfs.org. Accessed June 2, 2017.
Avent, Ryan. 2017. Escape to Another World. The Economist 1843, April and May 2017.
Bostrom, Nick. 2014. Superintelligence. Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cadwalladr, Carole. 2016. Google, Democracy and the Truth About Internet Search. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-e-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook. Accessed April 23, 2017.
Castells, Manuel. 2008. Networks of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Cowan, Tyler. 2013. Average is Over. Powering America beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. New York: Penguin.
Diamond, Larry. 2010. Liberation Technology. Journal of Democracy 21 (3): 69–83.
Foa, Robert Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2016. The Democratic Disconnect. Journal of Democracy 27 (3): 5–17.
Foa, Robert Stefan, and Yascha Mounk. 2017. The Signs of Deconsolidation. Journal of Democracy 28 (1): 5–15.
Greenfield, Susan. 2008. Id. The Quest for Meaning in the 21st Century. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Huxley, Aldous. 1932/2006a. Brave New World. New York: Harper & Brothers. (Many subsequent editions. This edition Harper Perrenial Modern Classics, 2006).
Huxley, Aldous. 1958/2006b. Brave New World Revisited. New York: Harper & Row. (This edition Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 2006).
Kollanyi, Corvinus, Howard Philip, and Samuel Woolley. 2016. Bots and Automation Over Twitter During the Third U.S. Presidential Debate. http://politicalbots.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Data-Memo-US-Election.pdf. Accessed April 24, 2017.
Kranish, Michael. 2016. Trump’s Plan for a Comeback Includes Building a ‘Psychographic’ Profile of Every Voter. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-plan-for-a-comeback-includes-building-a-psychographic-profile-of-every-voter/2016/10/27/9064a706-9611-11e6-9b7c-57290af48a49_story.html?utm_term=.e47c68fab6f9. Accessed April 23, 2017.
Lutz, Barend, and Pierre Du Toit. 2014. Defining Democracy in a Digital Age. Political Support on Social Media. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken. Why Games Makes Us Better, and How they can Change the World. London: Jonathan Cape.
Orwell, George. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Secker & Warburg. (Many subsequent editions).
Packard, Vance. 1957. The Hidden Persuaders. New York: David McKay.
Partington, Angela (ed.). 1996. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Persily, Nathaniel. 2017. Can Democracy Survive the Internet? Journal of Democracy 28 (2): 63–76.
Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death. Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. London: Heineman.
Schlosser, Eric. 2013. Command and Control. Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. New York: Penguin.
Schmidt, Eric, and Jared Cohen. 2013. The New Digital Age. Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Scott, Mark. 2017. Facebook Aims to Tackle Fake News Ahead of U.K. Election. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com. Accessed May 10, 2017.
Snidal, Duncan. 1985. The Game Theory of International Politics. World Politics 38 (1): 25–57.
Stein, Joel. 2016. Why We Are Losing the Internet to the Culture of Hate. Time, August 29.
Stephens-Davidowitz, Seth. 2017. Everybody Lies. Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are. New York: Harper-Collins.
Taggart, Kendall. 2017. The Truth about the Trump Data Team that People Are Freaking Out About. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kendalltaggart/the-truth-about-the-trump-data-team-that-people-are-freaking?utm_term=.ueyjyQxD3#.egMk2dKBp. Accessed April 24, 2017.
Taplin, Jonathan. 2017. Move Fast and Break Things. How Facebook, Google and Amazon Cornered Culture and Undermined Democracy. New York: Little, Brown and Company.
The Economist, October 25–31, 2015.
The Economist, September 10–16, 2016a.
The Economist, September 17–23, 2016b.
Winner, Langdon. 1986. The Whale and the Reactor. A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
World Wide Web Foundation. www.webfoundation.org. Accessed May 10, 2017.
Yudkowsky, E. 2008. Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk. In Global Catastrophic Risks, ed. Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Cirkovic, 308–345. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
du Toit, P. (2019). Global Electronic Screen Culture: Legitimacy at Stake?. In: van Beek, U. (eds) Democracy under Threat. Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89453-9_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89452-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89453-9
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)