421: Do Social Media Harm Democracy? And if so, Who Should Care and Why? (16674)

Saturday, August 10, 2024

14:30 – 16:00 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5)

Location: Marriott: Salon F

Session Number: 421
PDW (workshop)
Orientation: International,Theme,Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/YK4XXX

Organizer(s)

HT

Hannah Trittin

Leuphana U. Lüneburg, Germany
AS

Andreas Georg Scherer

U. of Zurich, Switzerland

Speaker(s)

CN

Cristina Neesham

Newcastle U., United Kingdom

Organizer(s)

IC

Itziar Castelló

Bayes Business School (formerly Cass), City, U. of London, United Kingdom

Speaker(s)

ME

Michael Andreas Etter

King's College London, United Kingdom
DC

Donato Cutolo

IE Business School, Spain
AG

Annabelle Gawer

U. of Surrey, United Kingdom

In recent years, social media platforms and their services have lead to emergent phenomena that are detrimental to collective decision-making and societal stability, including the proliferation of fake news, disinformation, social division and polarization, that threaten democratic societies. However, the conversation on how to fight the risk of social media is inconclusive and there is a variety of potential answers to or remedies of social media’s threat to democracy. Bringing together highly relevant lines of inquiry from management and organization studies, business and society research, and data and platform governance research, this PDW aims to a) allow for the provision of an overview of the scholarly debate on social media platforms and their social impact; and b) a debate as to which actors and what solutions are available to strengthen the resilience of democracies and to safeguard them against the detrimental effects of social media.