ABSTRACT
The democratizing potential of the internet, once heralded broadly, has turned out to be a mixed bag. While some once-marginalized voices have been able to make themselves heard, the stronger tendency has been to reinforce existing power structures. Following a path similar to other communication technologies such as radio and television, the internet has become an increasingly closed, commercial system dominated by a few powerful giants—Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft—that consume most of the revenue available online. Critical news literacy requires an understanding of this political economy of the internet and social media, including the role of mass customization and algorithmic sorting that influence and control news content. This must also be considered in the context of the tendency toward monopoly capitalism—and the neoliberal policies that make it possible—that has come to dominate much of the global economy. Finally, the rise of digital and social media and the increase in online participation can be linked to the rise of political polarization and partisanship, which contributes to positive gains for the attention economy even as it fails to serve the public.
