Facebook Blog Series: “For the next topic of our Hard Questions series, we decided to confront an issue that has been top of mind for many of us here, including myself: What effect does social media have on democracy? As someone who has worked for over 14 years in digital civic engagement — the last four as Facebook’s policy lead for global elections — this question bears down heavily. For many years, the answer seemed easier. From the Arab Spring to robust elections around the globe, social media seemed like a positive. The last US presidential campaign changed that, with foreign interference that Facebook should have been quicker to identify to the rise of “fake news” and echo chambers. Now, we’re as determined as ever to fight the negative influences and ensure that our platform is unquestionably a source for democratic good. There is much to build on in this regard, from the powerful role social media plays in giving people a voice in the democratic process to its ability to deliver information on an unprecedented scale. Our role is to ensure that the good outweighs the forces that can compromise healthy discourse. That’s the subject that these essays address. We begin with a perspective from Samidh Chakrabarti, who leads Facebook’s civic engagement team. And for the first time since we launched Hard Questions, we’re publishing the views of three prominent outside contributors — not all of whom agree with Facebook’s perspective and offer some direct criticisms. We did this because serious discussion of these issues cannot occur without robust debate. And we asked them to take on a broader, and perhaps more blunt, question: Is social media good or bad for democracy? Among our writers is Harvard professor and author Cass Sunstein; Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia and social media scholar; and Ariadne Vromen, a professor of political participation at the University of Sydney. We begin with Sunstein and will publish the others in subsequent days.”

The Facebook Newsroom Series archive is here.