Social media and democracy

This is an interesting study by The Economist and resonates to our research on newsproviders competing in contests. While these authors argue that it is random things that get important topics emerge from the chaos (e.g. the personality of the person posting) much like it is the case for entertainment content in general, we argue that it is the contest nature of competition between suppliers of "hot news" that makes topics emerge in a random fashion. What is clear from both processes is that there is much less consensus on what the "agenda" is, or should be and that may or may not be good for democracy. The debate just gets started.....