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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