Suchergebnisse

Last week's printed edition of Focus had a piece about how Germany's politicians are using social media. It made the dubious claim that 61% of Green top candidate Katrin Göring-Eckardt's Twitter followers could have been bought. Let's actually instead try to get to grips with what is going on here, and try to draw some conclusions. .

Views on how social media contributes to European democracy are mixed. On the one hand social media platforms are seen to offer a new way to democratise political debate and communicate politics to a wide range of people. On the other hand, questions have been raised around the quality of democratic debate and political communication fostered by social media, especially in the context of fake news, disinformation and how social media can be manipulated. In this video interview we talk to Jon Worth, a blogger and active social media commentator on EU affairs, about what democracy means in the context of European Union politics, and what role social media plays in contributing to European democracy.