Social Media Republican Values

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The Digital Republic: Navigating Social Media's Influence on Republican Values Social media has changed the flow of information and created new ways of getting informed, discussing opinions, and misinforming. While it started as a means of communication between people, social media has become part of any individual's social life, if not more so than interacting in society itself: if social interaction used to happen through physical presence and discussions within society, it has become the opposite through social media, which has been replacing the traditional social interactions in society on all levels of human life, including communication and work. Another field where social media played a pivotal role in its evolution and organization …show more content…

Because republicanism takes a communitarian turn, it insists that "the common civic identity is primary over diverse and particular identities", emphasizing the importance of all citizens being "capable of self rule" and "of civic virtue and are obligated to cultivate it" (Patrick, 2017). This being said, the proper political functioning of a republic depends on the general will of its citizens, entailing that it is crucial for citizens to be politically active and able to practice civic virtue, with such principles dating back to Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic, which have ever since been significantly part of the political frameworks, which was seen during the French and American Revolution as well in the 18th century, where both "gave a prominent place (...) to the notion of rule of law - due process, natural justice, respect for rights - (...) it emphasized the importance of the republic's need for an electoral, contestatory democracy (...) in which any citizen would vote and stand for office (...) and where the people were expected to …show more content…

"Social media now provides individuals a low-cost means of sharing ideas as participants in citizen-centered communities" (Tran, 2013, p.400), enabling more transparent and open access to discussion and debates between citizens by interacting and sharing a post, allowing them to "critique and assess an unlimited variety of ideas and issues with expanding circles of communities" (Tran, 2013, p.401). In contrast to traditional media, where people have only been receivers of the information, with the emergence of social media, "people become spreaders of information and producers of political contents in a way that is much easier than in the past" (Calderaro, 2018, p.785). This allows a more democratic process of participating citizens in the political life of their nation-state, where they get to access the information while also circulating it and assessing it, in contrast to traditional media, which was solely transmitted from the government, increasing the chances of limiting people to propaganda and even autocratic practices. In parallel, social media encourages dialogue as well between the government and its citizens; for instance, "numerous government institutions, including administrative agencies, the White House, and the State Department, maintain Facebook pages, 3 Twitter accounts, 4 and blogs in which

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