and personal fulﬁllment (Nielsen 2016b). If we start with this more minimalist
view of democracy, and consider the changes we have summarized, the systemic
implications for democracy in our view are likely to (1) be often indirect and
institutional through an (incessant) revolution of the institutions that enable
popular government (news media but also, by extension, interdependent other
institutions like political parties, etc.), (2) be limited in terms of short-term
impact on people’s attitudes and behaviors, and (c) leave most individuals and
many institutions simultaneously increasingly empowered by and increasingly
dependent on a small number of large, for-proﬁt, US-based platform companies
like Facebook and Google.
Social_Media_and_Democracy