Fake News and Big Data Media:Political Discourse as a Problem of Surveillance and Privacy in the Technologically Mediated Public Sphere

Abstract

Zoe Panagiota Nigianni

The collection and use of big data for the influence of public debate (Harper, 2017) has been recently associated with “fake news”, a term which has been used to describe the deliberate presentation of misinformation through a range of public media technologies (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2016; Chan et al., 2017; Gelfert, 2018; Kalsnes, 2018; McGonagle, 2017; Nelson & Taneja, 2018; Pennycook & Rand, 2018, 2019; Rubin et. al, 2015; Smith & Kollock, 1999; Zubiaga et. al, 2016). In this paper, I discuss the assumed effects of data extraction and the application of algorithmic processes (Mittelstadt et. al, 2016; Mittelstadt, 2017; Varian, 2014) on varying audiences for political objectives (Chan et al., 2017; Coleman, 2012, 2013; Kalsnes, 2018; Myers West, 2017, 2018; Shulte, 2013). In this scope, I evaluate the current state of affairs of political discourse in liberal democratic societies (Habermas, 1989; Habermas & Rehg, 2001) as a problem of surveillance and privacy (Harcourt, 2015; Harper, 2017; Murakami Wood, 2017), but also as a question of truth in the so-called post-truth era (Frankfurt, 2005; Olsson, 2008; Tuters, 2018), in order to offer suggestions in response to the given problem.

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