The media and democracy in the digital era: is this what we had in mind?

In the mass media era, the role of the media was universally regarded as fundamental to the proper functioning of the democratic state: the media's capacity to provide information freely to all citizens ensured they had equal access to the democratic process. There were many, though, who registered concern at the top-down, government-led and highly concentrated structures of power embedded here; it was easy to demonstrate how the flow of information could be manipulated and the power of the media abused. Consequently, the arrival of the digital era seemed to radically modify that power relation for the better. The initial enthusiasm, though, has been challenged by what, a decade or two later, we have ended up with: a digital landscape that does indeed offer unprecedented access to information, in ways that have been transformative - but that is also awash with socially regressive content: fake news, hate speech revenge porn and so on. In this article, I want to discuss some aspects of what we have got from the digital era so far, with a particular focus on the changing relationship between the media and democracy - and within that, the role of news, information and the practice of journalism.