Democracy and the Internet

IRL: Online Life is Real Life

Part of celebrating democracy is questioning what influences it. In this episode of IRL, we look at how the internet influences us, our votes, and our systems of government. Is democracy in trouble? Are democratic elections and the internet incompatible?

Politico's Mark Scott takes us into Facebook's European Union election war room. Karina Gould, Canada's Minister for Democratic Institutions, explains why they passed a law governing online political ads. The ACLU's Ben Wizner says our online electoral integrity problem goes well beyond a few bad ads. The team at Stop Fake describes a massive problem that Ukraine faces in telling political news fact from fiction, as well as how they're tackling it. And NYU professor Eric Klinenberg explains how a little bit of offline conversation goes a long way to inoculate an electorate against election interference.

IRL is an original podcast from Firefox. For more on the series go to irlpodcast.org.

Early on in this episode, we comment about how more privacy online means more democracy offline. Here's more on that concept from Michaela Smiley at Firefox.

Have a read through Mark Scott's Politico reporting on Facebook's European election war room.

For more from Eric Klinenberg, check out his book, Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life.

And, find out more about Stop Fake, its history, and its mission here.