Social Media and Democracy

TL;DR

This paper examines how social media platforms with political agendas can manipulate information to influence voting outcomes, potentially undermining democratic processes and contrasting with traditional media influence.

Contribution

It demonstrates how social media manipulation can overturn the jury theorem, revealing complex strategies including biased information provision to sway elections.

Findings

Manipulation can overturn the jury theorem under certain conditions.

Platforms may provide biased information opposite to their preferred outcomes.

Social media manipulation can be more effective than traditional media in influencing votes.

Abstract

We study the ability of a social media platform with a political agenda to influence voting outcomes. Our benchmark is Condorcet's jury theorem, which states that the likelihood of a correct decision under majority voting increases with the number of voters. We show how information manipulation by a social media platform can overturn the jury theorem, thereby undermining democracy. We also show that sometimes the platform can do so only by providing information that is biased in the opposite direction of its preferred outcome. Finally, we compare manipulation of voting outcomes through social media to manipulation through traditional media.