Rojas Publishes in Nature Human Behaviour on “Taming the Digital Information Tide”

Sebastián Valenzuela, Associate Professor in the School of Communications, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and Hernando Rojas, Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison published their commentary piece, “Taming the Digital Information Tide to Promote Equality,” in the August 2019 issue of Nature Human Behaviour.  They argue that Interactive technologies are changing the ways we learn facts, develop attitudes and participate in politics, with the ensuing risk of increasing pre-existing inequalities. Addressing this challenge is the duty of researchers, technology companies, governments, and news organizations. They write, “political stratification is a structural problem with many causes. Solving it necessarily demands a structural approach. This is certainly more challenging to achieve than individual-level prescriptions. Nevertheless, social media challenges require social solutions. Researchers, technology companies, governments, and news organizations need to find ways to harness the power of citizens as distributors and producers of information in their responses. Adopting a structural approach to tackle the democratic threats of social media should bring us closer to having more egalitarian democracies.”  The piece can be found via this link