Cracks in democracy

When an economy experiences a crisis and the ruling lose support to the opposition, that is the economic voting. In this way, the society is holding the politicians accountable for their economy-related decisions. However, this mechanism may be impaired by bias in assessing the state of economy, or partisan bias. In numerous countries, there is a tendency for the positive or negative outlook on the economic situation to be influenced not by subjective criteria but by teh support for a given political option. It contributes to the decisions at polls being less meritorically-based and more made as a result of polarisation. The latter has been gaining on significance in Poland over the last few years.

During the lecture, we will learn how the outlook on the state of economy has been shaped in our country over the last two decades and how the gap between the opposite sides of the political arena has been growing. We will also hear how the economic assessments translate into personal characteristics of the people making them as well as into macroeconomic factors. What is more, we will take a look at how the opinion dynamic is shaped in the election period, when the government and the opposition switch roles.

What lied at the root of thetechnological revolution related to the mass-scale spread of the first global medium, the Internet, was the desire to create a space free from the domination of mass media which imposed a specific set of values, a way of thinking and interpretation of reality, and provided a centralised control of production and distribution of content. Along with the development of social media, not only has the way in which we experience reality entirely changed, but also, on the rise, there have been phenomena undermining the foundations of democracy, such as information bubbles, polarisation, and disinformation. The speaker will talk about the so-called silicon democracy, to quote Morozov, promoted by technological giants from the Silicon Valley, and sins committed by them.