SNF Ithaca Research Scholars
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Item Reinvigorating Local News through a Digital Advertising Tax(SNF Ithaca Initiative, 2024-08) Young, Dannagal G.Independent local journalism is the backbone of a healthy democracy: it informs citizens, holds local leaders accountable, and fosters social cohesion. Local newspapers focusing on community matters help dilute political mega-identities and reduce polarization. Unfortunately, industry consolidation and the economics of social media have undermined local journalism's availability, focus, and democratic utility. Social media platforms, particularly Facebook, often emphasize national over local news and culture wars over public policy, neglecting crucial civic needs. Local news organizations have become increasingly "platform dependent," relying on social media for audience reach and adopting its logics to compete. Despite Meta's claims of "reinvigorating" local news through donations, internal memos from 2022 reveal a shift away from news towards videos and content creators. This shift has exacerbated misinformation and political divisiveness, as users' desire for community aligns with the dynamics of Facebook pages and groups. This white paper documents how social media, especially Meta, contributes to the decline of local journalism. It highlights the lack of financial transparency, allowing tech companies to promote their investments in local news without accountability. The paper proposes a digital advertising tax (DAT) on social media ads targeting users based on online data. The revenue would fund robust independent journalism through a non-profit consortium of local news organizations, researchers, non-profits, and funding entities. As journalism scholar Victor Pickard notes, "the journalism crisis is a policy problem." This paper outlines a policy approach to addressing it.Item From Waves to Ecosystems: The Next Stage of Democratic Innovation(SNF Ithaca Initiative, 2024-06) Lerner, JoshAnti-democratic movements are surging around the world, threatening to undermine elections and replace them with oligarchy. Pro-democracy movements mainly focus on defending elections, even though most people think that elections alone are inadequate. While elections dominate current thinking about democracy, the history and future of democracy is much broader. For over 5,000 years, people have built up competing waves of electoral, direct, deliberative, and participatory democracy. We are now seeing a transition, however, from waves to ecosystems. Rather than seeking one single solution to our ailing democracy, a new generation of democracy reformers is weaving together different democratic practices into balanced democratic ecosystems. This white paper provides a roadmap for this emerging next stage of democratic innovation. It reviews the limitations of elections, the different waves of democratic innovation and efforts to connect them, and key challenges and strategies for building healthy ecosystems of democracy.