ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the concerns raised by commercial social media are significant and structural, which means the commercial model we have developed is not salvageable solely through education and self-regulation. It identifies in pioneering work on the filter bubble the resources for considering the overarching question of the formation of a civic disposition and the conditions that threaten it. In the face of social media’s problems with fake news and political polarisation, the ready response has been to propose economic, technical, and educational fixes. Many of the proposed solutions to the pathologies of commercial media platforms assume a shared understanding of the problem and the civic will to solve it. Further consideration of the filter bubble arguments provides resources for considering the ways in which increased exposure to diverse content might coincide with increasing political polarisation. The insight resulting from arguments is that diversity of media content and perspectives is an outmoded proxy for meaningful deliberation.
