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The virtual public sphere
There has been an academic debate about how social media impacts the public sphere. The sociologists Brian Loader and Dan Mercea give an overview of this discussion : They argue that social media offers increasing opportunities for political communication and enable democratic capacities for political discussion within the virtual public sphere. The effect would be that citizens could challenge governments and corporations’ political and economic power. Additionally, new forms of political participation and information sources for the users emerge with the Internet that can e.g. be utilised in online campaigns. However, the two authors point out that social media’s dominant uses are entertainment, consumerism, and content sharing among friends. Loader and Mercea point out that “that individual preferences reveal an unequal spread of social ties with a few giant nodes such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube attracting the majority of users”. They also stress that some critics have voiced the concern that there is a lack of seriousness in political communication on social media platforms. Moreover, lines between professional media coverage and user-generated content would blur on social media.

The authors conclude that social media provides new opportunities for political participation, however they warn users of risks to access unreliable sources. The Internet impacts the virtual public sphere in many ways but is not a free utopian platform as some observers argued at the beginning of its history.