regulating new media, and addressing harmful content online, they need
to be able to draw on rigorous scientiﬁc research conducted with the
appropriate data. So much of
the research reviewed in this volume
concerns topics we might not even have imagined ﬁfteen years ago; it is
literally cutting-edge research. Yet it is also research that informs crucial
questions of public policy, meaning that the failure to move this research
agenda forward will have consequences that reverberate far beyond
academia. We hope this concluding chapter, as well as the entire
volume, represents a ﬁrst step on the path toward a future of greater
understanding of the challenges social media presents for democracy and,
by consequence, a future with better informed policies to address those
challenges.
Social_Media_and_Democracy