Media-Augmented Public Arenas of Citizenship

Media-Augmented Public Arenas of Citizenship

Ramzi Saim

McGill University

Social Context of Business

Doctor Glen Whelan

27 March 2018

INTRODUCTION

        There has been quite a bit of controversy over media-augmented public arenas of citizenship. Their impact on democracy has been disputed by many important figures and there has yet to be a consensus on whether or not the change in the levels of democracy has been positive or negative. The following essay will discuss, through an analysis of the recent Facebook data leak scandal, how public arenas of citizenship have in fact led to the scandal, but also help address it and put pressure on the Facebook corporation and executives. ^[a]

PUBLIC ARENAS OF CITIZENSHIP AT THE HEART OF THE PROBLEM

        Public arenas of citizenship have helped people increase their reach when it comes to discussing a large number of subjects. They differ from corporate arenas of citizenship in the width of concerns and interests that populate their platforms (Whelan et al., 2013). There have still been many Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) issues brought up within public arenas of citizenship, notably on social media platforms. The very corporations that create public arenas of citizenship enabled by social media platforms have an advantaged position within those specific arenas.  Furthermore, the increased participation of people in social media public arenas of citizenship has made immense amounts of information available to the firms. The ability corporations have to influence events of considerable importance is an increasingly worrying factor: “Although social media arguably contribute to the ‘‘decentralization of power away from government and large institutions and toward networks of people’’ (USDOS), they also contribute to power being centralized in the hands of those who own and/or control them.” (Whelan et al., 2013: 785).

        The phenomenon mentioned above can be witnessed when looking at how Cambridge Analytica has accessed the information of over 50 million Facebook accounts without permission (Greenfield, 2018). The fact that the information is even there for them to collect shows how public arenas of citizenship are at the heart of this very scandal. The malicious use of the information collected within these spheres is one of the main aspects scholars have criticized when analyzing the impact of social media on democracy (Whelan et al, 2013). Facebook’s data leak was allegedly used by Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 American presidency as they used the information to construct a targeted advertisement program that would influence voters based on their psychological profile (Greenfield, 2018). Even though Facebook has claimed that Cambridge Analytica had promised to destroy the data, the public was only made aware of the breach in the past few weeks (Murray et al) and was therefore left defenseless when it came to the illegal recruiting techniques used by the analytics company. All things considered, public arenas of citizenship within social media have undoubtedly left millions of people vulnerable to having every detail of their identities used in the most corrupt fashions.

PUBLIC ARENAS OF CITIZENSHIP AT THE CORE OF THE SOLUTION

        Media-augmented public arenas of citizenship have actually increased levels of democracy when compared to their old equivalents, even though Habermas and other entities have claimed skepticism ^[b]regarding the democracy-related advantages of technology (Whelan et al). In fact, Habermas believes “media influence becomes synonymous with a decline in the political public sphere or the disintegration of civil society” (Hjarvard, 2008: 114). The public has now access to an extremely large amount of resources online and can use them in order to voice their thoughts on a public platform. Social media has significantly reduced the financial costs as well as the time it takes any citizen to “produce and disseminate” information, concerns and rumors (Whelan et al, 2013: 782). The previous imbalance that existed between corporations, newspaper^[c] companies, governments and the rest of the population has therefore been partially reduced as a result of social media (Whelan et al, 2013). Individual citizens, even if they are still not levelled with powerful corporations such as Facebook, now enjoy a relatively enabling position. Such a position has led to movements created by individual citizens and adopted by a mass of followers that put extremely powerful corporations in positions in which they must take into account the message of their stakeholders in order to survive.  

        The Facebook data leaks have shown just how important social media is to increasing the power of every citizen inside public arenas of citizenship. Though data leaks have affected millions of people, their immediate answers through the very platform of Facebook has put a lot pressure on executives. Notably, Mark Zuckerberg is now willing to testify against accusations of his actions going against the regulations of the company he founded (Kuchler, 2018). Moreover, “#DeleteFacebook” has been trending on Twitter (Burch, 2018) leading to thousands of accounts being deleted. Here^[d], democracy has been exploited to its fullest through the use of social media. The pressure from different media-enabled platforms has even led Zuckerberg to sell 1.14 million Facebook shares (McKenzie, 2018), resulting in the company’s value chuting by just under 50 billion dollars (McKenzie, 2018). After there have been millions of Facebook posts criticizing the lack of security measures as well as the hypocrisy from Facebook executives, Zuckerberg has felt compelled to write a public letter to all Facebook users, taking out a full page in several American and British newspapers (McKenzie, 2018). The extent of the measures that have been taken by Zuckerberg are a product of the pressure inducted by the public arenas of citizenship through social media platforms. Undoubtedly, such actions by the Facebook CEO were a direct consequence of the increased democracy enabled by the use of social media.