Digital Vulnerabilisation of Democracy and Educational Action

Abstract

This article studies the dynamics of the vulnerabilisation of democracy in the context of a new order, the algorithmic digital order, and seeks to ascertain how education can help mitigate this phenomenon. The article, presenting new conceptualizations and using interpretative analysis to achieve its purposes, characterizes the algorithmic digital order in which the most advanced societies in digitalization and algorithmization are located and, within this framework, develops an inquiry into the possible role of social media platforms in making structural elements of democracy vulnerable, based on recent research on the matter. This investigation attests that digital social networks effectively threaten democracy in some dimensions, leading us to ask whether this is an inevitability or whether we can respond to it by resorting to education, considering primarily the education of young age groups who attend schools. The article's line of argument concludes in this regard that actually existing democracies, consolidated and emerging, are not condemned to wither under the pressure of this vulnerabilisation and that education, by stimulating a democratic care or concern, can help to contain this phenomenon.