Over the holidays, this column will explore next year\u2019s urgent issues. Today we look at the crisis in western democracy, Donald Trump\u2019s victory and the role played by digital media<\/p>\n
In November 2020, shortly after Donald\u00a0Trump\u2019s defeat\u00a0in the US presidential election, Barack Obama<\/a> observed that America risked entering \u201can\u00a0epistemological crisis\u201d. The prospect of Mr\u00a0Trump\u2019s return to the White House in January validates his predecessor\u2019s premonition.<\/p>\n Mr Obama was talking about media fragmentation and polarisation: different segments of society existing in discrete information spaces; arguments no longer drawn from a common reservoir of facts; no shared reality, no foundation of truth. \u201cThen by definition the\u00a0marketplace of ideas doesn\u2019t work,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd\u00a0by definition our democracy doesn\u2019t work.\u201d<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over the holidays, this column will explore next year\u2019s urgent issues. Today we look at the crisis in western democracy, Donald Trump\u2019s victory and the role played by digital media In November 2020, shortly after Donald\u00a0Trump\u2019s defeat\u00a0in the US presidential election, Barack Obama observed that America risked entering \u201can\u00a0epistemological crisis\u201d. The prospect of Mr\u00a0Trump\u2019s return … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}