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Taming the digital information tide to promote equality

Nature Human Behaviour volume 3, pages 1134–1136 (2019)Cite this article

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Interactive technologies are changing the ways we learn facts, develop attitudes and participate in politics, with the ensuing risk of increasing pre-existing inequalities. Addressing this challenge is the duty of researchers, technology companies, governments and news organizations.

The empirical evidence regarding these threats, however, is definitely mixed. Rather than being distracted by the quality of news and disinformation and blaming algorithms, as a society we should focus on a much larger threat. The democratic conundrum raised by interactive technologies is that they are widening gaps in political information, perceptions and engagement across social groups. This problem is not new—political scientist Pippa Norris documented it nearly 20 years ago1—but it has become more acute in the era of social media. Tackling it will require the concerted action of researchers, technology companies, governments and the news industry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Communications, Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), Research Center for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (CIGIDEN), Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Sebastián Valenzuela

  2. School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, USA

    Hernando Rojas

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  1. Sebastián Valenzuela
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  2. Hernando Rojas
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Correspondence to Sebastián Valenzuela.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Valenzuela, S., Rojas, H. Taming the digital information tide to promote equality. Nat Hum Behav 3, 1134–1136 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0700-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0700-9

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