Conversations with Sergei Guriev - Emiliano Grossman on Governing Well Under Social Media

Social networks pose very complex challenges to governments. Those who want to sell news have become very good at creating clickbaits on negative news, knowing that we are naturally more sensitive to this kind of news. Social media discourse also contributes to exaggerating minority positions. Even scientific knowledge, which is one of the factors informing good government policy, can be challenged that way, as we have seen during the pandemic. Even more worrying, social media has a feedback effect on traditional media and mainstream politicians are tempted to join in the populist drive. What can be done to counter this trend? Answers by Emiliano Grossman.

Conversations with Sergei Guriev is a podcast by Sciences Po. Hélène Naudet supervised the production of this series, with the help of Blanca Gonzalez Martinez, Sciences Po Master student in Political Science. The Sciences Po audio department produced and mixed it.