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what do you need to know to be a good democratic citizen

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you can't just know nothing

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this will lead you to make sub-optimal democratic choices

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democracy is essentially a combination of four things

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1. people have the ability to vote or in some way make their voices heard

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2. some kind of equal representation

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3. non-tyranny measures which make sure majorities that build up do not coerce others

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4. deliberation, discussion and debate

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you can't just have people individually thinking in their own bubbles

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what they need to be doing is engaging with others to figure out what's good for the society as a whole

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involves discussion and dialogue

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for this conversation to be substantive, citizens need to be informed

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where does this information come from

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news is central to the democratic process

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news is the core way that individuals get information about what's happening in society, what needs to be addressed, what problems there are to deal with

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

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a notion of the general will of the people

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what it is that the people really want

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you need a way for the government to determine what people want in their most informed state, since that is going to be the policy that will be ideal

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we generally think of people behaving as what we call a Bayesian updater

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someone who takes in information

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considers how this information relates to what they already know

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comes to a decision on what we should be doing

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as you learn more, you should ideally update what you know in line with the new things you are learning

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there are many personal and cultural aspects that impede our ability to act as Bayesian updaters

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psychologically, this is not what we were designed to do

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democracy was never a goal of evolution

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what people end up doing in practice is not updating in a rational, Baysian way

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they encounter a variety of pieces of information

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they use low information shortcuts called heuristics

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often use cues such as someone's partisanship, rather than the issue at hand

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heuristics are also used when we shop at a supermarket

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we buy the product we know

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we buy the product which has the lettering which appeals to us

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these are low information cues

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they don't tell us much between the difference between product A and product B

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but they help us a lot in making a decision quickly

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if you are being a good news consumer

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if you're being a Bayesian updater

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when you encounter a story that doesn't seem entirely credible

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you're going to go out and do extra work to figure the degree to which you can believe the story is accurate and why

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and to make sure that you're no encountering something that happens to be inaccurate