Rethinking Democracy in the (Mis)Information Age

Harvard FAS

Liberal deliberative ethics often assumes that people with different perspectives can, through dialogue, come to agree—or at minimum, to understand one another. Yet recent phenomena, including rising polarization, the spread of bizarre conspiracy theories, and the proliferation of online misinformation, challenge this assumption. They raise the possibility of differences in perspective that are irreconcilable and non-eliminable. How should democratic societies respond to the proliferation of…