Not everything in this “transcendent decade” is taking us toward a New Enlightenment. Governance and democracy face particular challenges from the election of populist leaders. The voices of dissent may speak in different languages, but they convey the same sets of messages, draw from the same range of sources, and articulate their outrage in similar ways, using rhetorical strategies that reject experts, excoriate the media, and demonize conventional policies, politicians, and parties. These dissenting voices, long isolated on the margins, now constitute an existential threat to the long-standing consensus on how to conduct politics and manage the economy in liberal democracies. They challenge the institutional commitments of political liberalism to tolerant, balanced governance and the ideational preferences of economic neoliberalism for open borders and free trade.
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The American media system has undergone significant transformations since the advent of new media in the late 1980s. During the past decade, social media have become powerful political tools in campaigns and governing. This article explores three major trends related to the rise of social media that are relevant for democratic politics in the United States. First, there is a major shift in how and where people get political information, as more people turn to digital sources and abandon television news. Next, the emergence of the political “Twitterverse,” which has become a locus of communication between politicians, citizens, and the press, has coarsened political discourse, fostered “rule by tweet,” and advanced the spread of misinformation. Finally, the disappearance of local news outlets and the resulting increase in “news deserts” has allowed social-media messages to become a primary source of information in places where Donald Trump’s support is most robust.
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Considering the recent increase of socioeconomic segregation in cities worldwide, scholars of urban technology Carlo Ratti and Yang Xu put forward a new metric with which to study and counter such a phenomenon. While past research has focused on residential segregation, this article argues that segregation needs to be tracked more dynamically: across the urban environment and not just at home; through time and not just space; and by monitoring its presence in social space and not just physical space. These methods require more dynamic data as well: Ratti and Xu argue for the greater cost-effectiveness and possibilities presented by mobile-phone data. They conclude by speculating on some design actions cities could take to encourage greater mixing between different groups.
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The degree of gravity with which we view the cyber threat is a matter of perspective, experience, interaction, and awareness. Whether we view it as a criminal act or terrorism or a hybrid is an important point for discussion. Resolving that question helps frame how we perceive those responsible for cyberattacks and facilitates resolution regarding punishment for their actions. That question has relevance for law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and the judiciary. Our focus, as the title suggests, is on cybersecurity cooperation in an effort to minimize the impact of an attack. Cooperation, as we shall come to see, raises concerns in different quarters. Some of that concern is legitimate. It needs to be addressed and compellingly responded to. A cooperation model is intended to offer institutionalized mechanisms for preventing—or at least minimizing—the harm posed by the mere threat of an attack, much less an attack itself.
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We are undergoing an era of social and political change that is, at the same time, the cause and effect of a state of perplexity, uncertainty and insecurity among citizens. At its foundations are a fear of the future of the economy and employment in the context of rapid technological change and progress. This article argues that the technological revolution will produce, in the medium term, more wellbeing, growth and employment, but only after a transition period that could be difficult for many. Appropriate economic policies would help to speed this transition and minimize its costs. Among these policies must be included the promotion of a digital transformation of the financial system that contributes to greater and more inclusive growth.
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The ongoing data revolution drives the establishment of a comprehensive cultural habitat that induces the framing of ordinary life issues in terms of data availability and the data permutations this encourages. These same developments are linked to the understanding of the process of knowledge creation as predominantly computational operations performed upon large data volumes. Placed in a wider historical purview, these trends seem to indicate a cultural transition of wider dimensions that attest to the rising importance which formal, data-based models of cognition acquire as a means of knowing and experiencing the world.
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The ongoing data revolution drives the establishment of a comprehensive cultural habitat that induces the framing of ordinary life issues in terms of data availability and the data permutations this encourages. These same developments are linked to the understanding of the process of knowledge creation as predominantly computational operations performed upon large data volumes. Placed in a wider historical purview, these trends seem to indicate a cultural transition of wider dimensions that attest to the rising importance which formal, data-based models of cognition acquire as a means of knowing and experiencing the world.
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The chapter [1] argues that populism should not be understood as primarily a form of anti-elitism. Rather, the hallmark of populists is that they claim that they, and they alone, represent the people (or what populists very often refer to as “the real people”). Populists deny the legitimacy of all other contenders for power and also suggest that citizens who do not support them can have their status as properly belonging to the people put in doubt. The chapter also analyzes the behavior of populists in power – arguing that we can see the emergence of a distinctive pattern of authoritarian governance where populists have large enough majorities and countervailing forces are too weak. Finally, the chapter suggests a number of strategies of how populism can be countered.
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Two phenomenon have merged from the political turmoil installed in advanced democracies since the financial crisis of 2008. Firstly, the discontentment of a big part of the population severely affected by a worsened social environment –perfectly valid and comprehensible– and secondly the transmutation of such discontentment into a political malaise, or to be more precise the emergence of a clear discontent within politics itself. In this article, we will review the nature and origins of this latter phenomenon to discover it goes back before the crisis and finds its roots in an old bitter resentment towards social democracy in its turn reawaken into a new form of “discontent policies” that dispute the legitimacy of the Rule of Law.
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The new media environment is dynamic and continues to develop in novel, sometimes unanticipated, ways that have serious consequences for democratic governance and politics. New media have radically altered the way that government institutions operate, the way that political leaders communicate, the manner in which elections are contested, and citizen engagement. This chapter will briefly address the evolution of new media, before examining in greater detail their role in and consequences for political life.
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