Democratic Opinion Formation Under Threat

This chapter takes stock of the transformations described in the previous two chapters and evaluates their consequences for democratic opinion formation in the public space. Due to the dominance of big platform and technology corporations, the new media system falls short on independence, reliability, accessibility and accountability. This has serious consequences for the democratic functions of media. In the online domain, findability and visibility of journalistic content is steadily decreasing, overall but especially on the local level—leaving local governments largely unmonitored. Online public debates may be more accessible than ever, at least in technical terms, the erosion of civilized discourse hinders a truly inclusive interactions and participation.