When trust in institutions is lacking, we have a problem

Phot courtesy of Henrik Müller

This was my starting point in the book. I follow it, then, with a question: Why do we even have institutions such as the state? As an economist, I would argue that institutions are an insurance against uncertainty. However, our political systems are now experiencing signs of serious destabilisation. Traditional democratic institutions are becoming diminished and, in some cases, are even becoming partially dissolved. The most illustrative cases of this trend were the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, both in 2016. It was hard to believe that things like these could take place in the world’s oldest and most influential democracies and that their citizens would favour a choice against their own interests.

In a similar vein, France also almost elected Marine Le Pen as president. As a result, the traditional French party system, which existed throughout the Fifth Republic, came to an end with the 2017 election. It was replaced by new movements: Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) on the right, Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche in the centre, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise on the left. Modern movements are based on social media; only later some of them stage street protests. However, these groups haven’t turned into political parties in the traditional meaning of the term. They are not organisations with long-term commitments, meant to channel interests and unite different groups.

Thankfully in Germany we still have such structures. Parties can be held accountable and that’s a major difference. They have programmes; if they get elected, they govern. If they make severe mistakes, they get voted out. As a result, traditional democratic parties think for the long term, an important feature since it tends to their stances. They are designed to stay. In contrast, the new movements, which are based on volatile social media, are very different. As a rule, they rise in opposition to something. In Germany we have had two movements which brought issues to the mainstream political agenda that have generated huge discomfort in the party system. I am talking about Pegida and the anti-TTIP movement (TTIP refers to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, an agreement that was meant to create broader free trade between the United States and the European Union but was never finalised – editor’s note). While the former is hard-core right-wing, radically anti-immigration and anti-globalisation, the latter is left-wing, but also anti-globalisation. Both movements emerged from social media; however, they later expanded, especially Pegida, thanks to mainstream media which presented their demonstrations as mass events.

The whole world is now mostly talking about the coronavirus. In Germany, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets in recent months to demonstrate against the lockdown measures introduced by the government. However, the vast majority of Germans, according to the polls, agree with the steps taken by the government. Why does such a small minority dominate the media’s messaging?

We saw similar things in the past. Large demonstrations always attract media attention, especially on television. Just think about the peace demonstrations of the early 1980s. The difference with today’s demonstrations is that now we have social media which has a wider reach than traditional demonstrations. The pacifist movement was based on traditional organisations and was linked to left-wing parties or to the churches. Today, these institutions are no longer needed. All you need is a considerable number of followers on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. It is enough to spread narratives that have nothing to do with truth or facts. Take the QAnon movement, for instance. These abstruse narratives have taken on a life of their own. They are spawned on social media, but traditional media report on them, increasing their exposure and popularity. That’s the new dynamic we have to deal with now in a public sphere that remains largely unregulated. While before there were some agents of moderation, today we have these large platforms that have partially captured public debates, those that were once moderated by journalists. Social media operate based on their largely profit-driven logic. More than anything else, they strive for attention. The coronavirus has created an unprecedented situation. The pandemic is a new threat that affects everything, including our civil liberties. This has ignited a counter-movement, that has not been initiated by traditional interest groups. We’ve seen this dynamic several times in recent years: ad hoc groups form mass movements which are bound to disappear after a while. While they exist, though, they can dominate political debates and seduce entire societies.

However, we can also hear the argument that the dream of the democrats has finally come true. Citizens can now directly express themselves and have an impact. People are told that every vote counts. They see no need for intermediaries as anyone with access to the internet and the ability to connect with like-minded people can gain publicity.

Exactly. I am not suggesting that we should get rid of social media. They have the potential of breaking the old oligopolistic opinion leadership and of bringing new perspectives to political discourse. This is a good thing, because people who were earlier unable to get their messages out can now express themselves publicly. What a blessing this can be, we can see it in authoritarian countries. The Arab Spring of 2011-2012 was the first social media movement that led to rebellion and change in Arab countries, at least for a while; it was a freedom movement. However, we can only have meaningful political debates when we have a common basis of knowledge, if we agree on the facts, which cannot be taken as given anymore. What if there is no such stable knowledge base? Which issues should be prioritised? What solutions should be implemented? In an orderly discourse the facts and the problems are agreed upon, then we can argue about priorities and possible remedies. If facts no longer matter, societies are lost. The awful notion of “alternative facts”, that the Trump administration popularised, is destroying our democracy. Think about it: if we are unable to recognise the state of our societies and the world, and instead are only repeating some lies, how are we going to solve problems together?

Insane and crazy things attract attention, that was always the case, but in social media-driven public spheres moderating counter-forces are largely missing. By focusing on dangerous nonsense, such as QAnon, we are not addressing the truly important issues, the ones that really affect people’s well-being, such as the quality of healthcare or education. Instead, a lot of people are preoccupied with alternative facts or believe in destructive myths that circulate on the internet, and all this prevents us from dealing with the really important issues.

In this context, we cannot avoid the question why so many people have lost trust in institutions and politics. Maybe the project of the Western Enlightenment and its faith in continuous progress, for example through education, has reached a turning point. Do you think people have changed over the past 10-15 years, or has the model of life, which consists of maximising pleasure at all costs, always existed, but was only inhibited by certain mechanisms?

The problems we face today are complex, abstract and often detached from everyday life. To be able to substantively participate in discussions, you need to know much more today than, say three decades ago. When I think about my youth in the 1980s, I can say that the world was a much simpler place. A case in point are the agendas of the first global economic summit in 1975, which focused on a handful of macroeconomic issues: exchange rates, inflation, and economic growth. Today, these meetings deal with many more issues, including social inequality, financial stability, climate change, gender-based discrimination, public health, to name just a few. Citizens in democracies participate in the collective decision-making process, so they need to have at least some basic understanding of the major issues at stake. If you don’t know what’s going on in this complex world, you can still trust institutions and experts. Trust, therefore, is a fundamental precondition in a society based on the division of knowledge. Scientists, public institutions, private companies, and the media that do not enjoy broad public trust anymore, have a  problem. Yet, in many countries, trust in institutions has diminished. This may be less so in Germany, but even here this decay is glaring. We are experiencing a mind-numbing expansion of the virtual sphere. We live in a mediatised world – but unfortunately our media are full of irrelevant nonsense: TikTok videos, streaming, gaming, pictures of cats or our “friend’s” meal on Facebook, you name it. We are overwhelmed by banality and nonsense. This type of entertainment is time-consuming, but attractive. It is a standard finding in communication science that people often avoid complicated content whenever they can. Even educated people may turn to overly simplistic answers or interpretations. What populists and conspiracy theorists offer, is exciting and easy-to-understand at the same time. They offer simple stories that sometimes contain identity-creating components. 

The segmentation of society is probably unstoppable. We should rather think how to counteract it. In your book, you propose some steps that could be taken in this regard, and not limiting your analysis to negative aspects, you present positive solutions. For example, while you defend indirect democracy you also call for its modification…

People want to participate in the media sphere, which is why social media are so popular. People now feel that they have a voice and want to be heard. This is actually a positive trend. Democratic societies should embrace it. However, at the same time, they must ensure that citizens get to decide on matters they are knowledgeable of. In Germany, we now have a nation-wide movement supporting citizens’ committees or councils of lay judges. The President of the Bundestag, Wolfgang Schäuble, supports this project. It’s actually an interesting proposal. Perhaps the members of such committees would enjoy greater credibility and would come up with better solutions than members of parliament. I also wonder why we do not have more referenda. Obviously, referenda should be organised around the issues people really understand and have stakes in, that is, at the local level. As the Brexit referendum showed us, national or European referenda run the risk that people may not understand the implications of the questions being asked, leading to erratic results.

Citizen councils and referenda are just the two ways that could be used to augment and enhance parliamentary democracy. However, they will not solve the polarisation problem caused by modern media. Let us take the model of citizens’ committees mentioned before. They, too, will not operate in complete isolation from the public. In other words, there will be attempts to influence them. And it is probable that some of their members will be leaking internal deliberations on social media. These are not hermetically closed bodies and their members will be confronted with a galaxy of external opinions. Of course, there will be internal confrontations in such committees. For this reason, we also need better management of our democratic public opinion. We cannot leave it to the big social networks. Facebook, Google or Twitter run platforms that are of systemic importance to the functioning of democracy today. As an economist, I’d say these are natural monopolies. And this means that they must be properly regulated, so that filter bubbles are pricked and people are exposed to a broader spectrum of opinions.  

What can journalists do in these regards?

I worked as a journalist for a long time, and I teach journalism today, so I’ve been thinking hard about your question. Back in time, journalism was the sole channel to the public sphere. Things that were not written in the newspaper or broadcasted on television did not exist in the public discourse. Whoever wanted to address a wider audience had to be recognised by the media and have access to journalists. They had a powerful position. Back then, the political and media systems could be characterised as a twin-oligopoly, with just a few influential media organisations and a few large parties and mass organisations, such as churches and trade unions, on one side, and public media and a number of large print outlets on the other side. This was how media systems were structured before the 2000s, which is difficult to imagine today.

Journalism is currently looking for a new role. When it comes to online and social media, which today are an important channel for narratives, it is clear that journalists and editorial teams face the risk of adopting the attention-grabbing logic of social media. Look at how much media coverage focussed on Donald Trump ever since he ran for the Republican candidacy. Why? Because Trump aroused emotions. He was a “Twitter president” who masterfully played with such emotions as outrage. Traditional media, which these days feel that they have no choice but to play by the social media book, make a mistake. Journalism is about drawing public attention to important social issues and about establishing an agenda – on the foundation of solid facts. Only then can liberal societies organise lively, but reasonably civil disputes. Yet, this requires adequate competence from media makers, who should focus on their job and not succumb to some internet movements or celebrities. Possibly today, more than ever before, we need independent journalism.

Are you suggesting that journalists should act like the guides who lead public opinion?

The traditional model of the gatekeeper who filters out the really important things from the entire garbage dump and then presents them to the public no longer works. We need journalists who guide citizens through the cracks of diverse public spheres and provide them with orientation – so, yes, they should perform the role of scouts. You need people to explain to the public what is important, what is or what is not a threat. 

Do you believe the COVID-19 crisis, which started in early 2020, will change something in this regards on a global scale? Or will we return to the media model that prevailed before?

Actually, the first weeks of the crisis were like a return to the “good old days”. People were sitting at home, spending time with their families again. Life was like it used to be: you ate three meals a day together and watched the news in the evening, which in our country enjoyed an audience increase by 50 per cent. In a way, it was like going back to the 1980s. The system of public radio and television broadcasters experienced a revival. Trust in scientists and more technocratic politicians increased drastically. In Germany, chancellor Merkel’s popularity rose sharply, as well as the support for her Christian Democrats. At first, people believed the government was making the right choices. But this rebound to the past is not here to stay. As of now, we see conspiracy theories spreading again. Social media are reinforcing radical-fundamentalist tendencies. I cannot imagine that we will eventually return to the “good old days”. The first phase of the lockdown in spring 2020 was something of a temporary flashback. But this has not lasted for long. The structural changes in public spheres are here to stay. We have to deal with them, or else, our democracies and our livelihoods will suffer great harm.

Translated by Magdalena Grzybecka-Szczepańska (from German to Polish) and Iwona Reichardt (from Polish to English).  

Henrik Müller teaches political and economic journalism at the Technical University in Dortmund. He holds a PhD in economics and worked as a deputy editor-in-chief of Manager Magazin. He is an author of numerous books and writes a weekly column on Spiegel Online.

Markus Krzoska is a German historian and translator, specialising in Polish history and a senior researcher at the chair for Eastern European history at the Historical Institute of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen.

democracy, journalism, media, populism, social media