Six key challenges resulting from the "high-choice media environment" that have implications for democracy. Flashcards
Challenge 1: Declining amount of political news
Impact: people are less informed about (and engage less with) politics
Challenge 2: Towards declining quality of news
Impact: people don’t have enough information about what’s going on in the political arena, and so cannot keep politicians in check
Challenge 3: Power concentration and decreasing diversity
Impact: If the media is only in the hands of a few organizations/ people, they may have a very strong (and unequal) influence in politics. In turn, people may not have access to enough variety of news and points of view, making it harder again to keep the political power in check.
Challenge 4: Towards increasing polarization and fragmentation
Impact: Increase attitude and affective polarization, making it harder for society and politicians to reach out policy consensus, to pass policy, and so to keep democracies afloat.
Challenge 5: Towards increasing relativism
Impact: It becomes harder for people to reach out policy consensus and build solutions for common problems if they don’t even agree on facts.
Challenge 6: Towards increasing inequalities
Impact: Inequalities in news consumption translate into political inequalities — So news seekers end up being much more politically engaged and in turn they have much more political influence.
