Guarding the gatekeepers: Trust, truth and digital platforms

Free to read on publisher website These are not optimistic times for how we understand the internet. After more than two decades of a mostly benign and optimistic take on where the enabling possibilities of digital technologies and social networks would take us, the late 2010s have been characterised by foreboding and dystopian visions. It now seems that everyone is a critic of digital platforms. Talk is rife of fake news, filter bubbles, misinformation, doxxing, trolls, electoral manipulation and the online alt-right. Getting your news from Twitter or Facebook, once a sign that you were part of the zeitgeist, now sounds like a sign of potential gullibility. A growing number of voices worldwide are now saying that it is now time for digital platforms to address the ethical dimensions of their mission and their social role, and that proposing greater transparency is necessary but not sufficient. The digital platforms have come – partly by accident and partly by design – to shape public conversations that can both facilitate and destroy trust among citizens in public institutions, the political process and, ultimately, trust in one another. The struggle to renew public trust will be at the core of any new measures to address the agenda-setting influence of these digital giants