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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Comparative Governance
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpos.2024.1493883
This article is part of the Research Topic Exploring the Global Erosion of Democracy: Understanding Multicausal Threats and International Dynamics View all 3 articles

From Deliberation to Acclamation: How Twitter's Algorithms Foster Polarized Communities and Undermine Democracy in the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

Provisionally accepted
Gustavo Morales Gustavo Morales 1,2*Augusto Salazar Augusto Salazar 3Diego Puche Diego Puche 3
  • 1 Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Barranquilla, Colombia
  • 2 Department of Political Sciences and International Relations, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia
  • 3 Department of Systems Engineering and Computing, Barranquilla, Colombia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    This study explores the profound effects of information and communication technologies (ICT) on contemporary democracy, particularly through social media platforms like Twitter/X. The rise of these platforms has sparked debate over whether they are enhancing or undermining democratic processes. While some scholars argue that ICT fosters democratization by empowering marginalized voices and promoting participatory democracy, others contend that it exacerbates political polarization and enables the spread of misinformation, thereby threatening democratic stability. Rather than keep digging within these split conclusions, this work moves the focus of inquiring towards how ICT affects the very existence of subjects in democracy. This means transitioning from defining ICT solely by its utility as a separate technology that affects behavior to seeing how subjects are entangled in the virtual world created by ICT. Drawing on Heidegger's classic metaphor of the workman using a hammer, this juncture offers an apt opportunity to examine the political entanglement of democracy with ICT. Focusing on the 2020 US presidential election, this research investigates how Twitter/X facilitated the formation of homogeneous online communities, contributing to radicalization and the proliferation of alternative truths. By employing an interdisciplinary approach that combines political science with computational methods, the study aims to unravel the internal workings of machine intelligence and its role in shaping political realities. The analysis reveals how algorithmically driven virtual interactions create a "mixed reality," where virtual and real-world dynamics intersect, leading to increased polarization and the erosion of democratic deliberation. This work not only provides empirical evidence on the impact of ICT on democracy but also introduces innovative computational techniques for analyzing large-scale social media data, offering new insights into the challenges posed by digital platforms in democratic societies.

    Keywords: US democracy, US election, ICT - information and communication technologies, social networks, Critical Theory

    Received: 09 Sep 2024; Accepted: 03 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Morales, Salazar and Puche. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Gustavo Morales, Universidad del Norte, Colombia, Barranquilla, Colombia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.