Democratic Frontiers: Algorithms and Society

Democratic Frontiers: Algorithms and Society explores the effects of digital platforms on societies, including subjectivity, self-reflection, data and measurement for the common good, public health, activism in social media, and AI technologies. It emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary research to address democratic values and governance in the rapidly expanding digital landscape.

Format: Hardback
Length: 116 pages
Publication date: 10 February 2022
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Democratic Frontiers: Algorithms and Society delves into the profound impact of digital platforms on societies across various critical domains, including subjectivity and self-reflection, data and measurement for the common good, public health and accessible datasets, activism in social media, and the import/export of AI technologies in relation to regime types. As digital technologies continue to evolve at an unprecedented pace, they challenge the very foundations of democratic governance that are traditionally rooted in timeless principles such as freedom, autonomy, and citizenship. Algorithms, capable of executing millions of calculations per second, operate without pause, raising concerns about their implications for upholding these values. The accumulation of vast private datasets used to train automated machine learning algorithms presents new challenges in maintaining transparency and accountability.

While social media platforms have become the driving force behind today's information disorder, they also offer new avenues for organized social activism. The United States and China, situated at opposite ends of an ideological spectrum, are the primary exporters of AI technology to both free and totalitarian societies. This volume explores the democratic stakes for societies grappling with the rapid expansion of these technologies, drawing upon research from diverse disciplines such as Sociology, Digital Humanities, New Media, Psychology, Communication, International Relations, and Economics.

Chapter 3 of this book is available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. It serves as an introduction to the key themes and arguments presented throughout the book, making it accessible to scholars, students, policy makers, journalists, and the general reading public.

Weight: 286g
Dimension: 142 x 223 x 15 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032002675