The Harm of Social Media to Public Reason

It is commonly agreed that some features of social media, like so-called echo chambers and filter bubbles, are detrimental to liberal democracies. One reason for this assessment is the claim these features are somehow causally responsible for a process of political polarization, fueling ignorance, hatred and hostility. However, social media has also huge potential in offering vivid channels of communication that overcome distances in space, time and social stratification, and thus might foster mutual understanding and social cohesion. With reference to John Rawls’s political liberalism, we offer an additional explanation of why some features of social media indeed can be seen as being responsible for the violation of necessary norms of liberal democracies, namely the norms connected to the ideal of public reason. The ideal of public reason requires that citizens are capable and disposed to justify their proposals for the arrangement of the basic structure of society to every other reasonable citizen. In other words, citizens must possess the civic virtue (CV) to use in political debates what Rawls called the method of (full) reflective equilibrium (RE). Thus, at least one reason why some features of social media are detrimental to liberal democracies is their negative impact on this important CV. With this explanation at hand, this paper aims to demonstrate why RE as a CV is a necessary condition to foster healthy epistemic participation among citizens of liberal democratic societies. The paper concludes by critically discussing the need for change to the design or regulation of social media platforms in order to mitigate the current negative effects impacting the CV of RE in public debates.