Angertainment and the Missing Democratic Infrastructure
Ed Coper explains how social media monetises grievance and distorts democracy. VoteWrap asks what kind of civic infrastructure could allow society to hear itself instead.
Abstract
In Angertainment, Ed Coper explains how social media platforms turn genuine anger and grievance into entertainment, engagement and political power. Their algorithms do not give us a representative picture of what society thinks. They reward the material most likely to hold our attention, particularly content that provokes fear, outrage and conflict.
This article argues that regulation and media literacy, while necessary, cannot solve the whole problem. Democracy also needs an alternative civic space designed for a different purpose: not maximising engagement, but enabling citizens to understand issues, consider evidence, deliberate with others and make their collective judgement visible.
VoteWrap is being developed as that missing democratic infrastructure.
The grievances are real
Coper’s argument is important because it does not begin by dismissing angry people as ignorant, irrational or morally defective. The grievances being expressed are often real. Housing has become unaffordable for many Australians, living costs have risen, secure employment has declined, public services are under pressure, and governments frequently appear more responsive to wealthy donors, lobbyists, corporations and media campaigns than to ordinary citizens.
People are not imagining the sense that something is wrong. The problem is what happens to that legitimate anger once it enters social media systems designed to maximise attention.
These platforms have discovered that anger, fear and conflict keep people watching, commenting and sharing. The people and organisations most skilled at provoking those emotions therefore gain disproportionate influence. A grievance about housing can be redirected towards migrants. A grievance about insecure employment can be redirected towards minorities. A grievance about political powerlessness can be redirected towards whichever cultural enemy is most useful at the time.
The original problem remains unresolved, but the anger it created has been captured, monetised and politically redirected. The more conflict the redirection produces, the more valuable it becomes to the platform and to those who have learned how to exploit its incentives.
The algorithm is not trying to inform us
A social media feed can feel like a public square, but it is not a neutral or representative picture of public opinion. It does not show us what the community collectively considers most important, how informed opinion is distributed, or whether a concern is broadly shared rather than driven by a small but highly active campaign. Nor does it reward the most accurate explanation or the most workable solution. It rewards whatever is most likely to hold our attention.
That is the commercial purpose of the system. The most alarming, insulting or emotionally charged contribution is therefore likely to travel further than the most careful one. A complex explanation of housing policy struggles to compete with a short video blaming a visible group. A detailed proposal for reform struggles to compete with a stunt designed to make people furious.
The consequences extend far beyond unpleasant arguments online. A small and unrepresentative group can generate the appearance of overwhelming public outrage. Traditional media then reports the social media reaction, giving it greater credibility and reach. Politicians see the resulting noise, assume it reflects the electorate, and become reluctant to pursue difficult reforms.
A handful of angry posts can therefore begin to stand in for the judgement of an entire population. The people creating the most noise are not necessarily representative. They may simply be the people, organisations, coordinated campaigns or automated accounts best equipped to produce the kind of content the algorithm rewards.
Angertainment conceals as much as it reveals
Social media makes anger highly visible, but it often conceals what society actually thinks.
Millions of Australians discuss public issues every day. They talk at home, at work, in community groups, sporting clubs, schools, businesses, churches, online forums and friendship circles. Society is already having the conversation, but that conversation is scattered across millions of disconnected fragments. There is no reliable way to assemble those fragments into a visible picture of the community’s considered judgement.
Governments instead rely on elections every few years, occasional opinion polls, submissions, public meetings, lobbying, focus groups, media coverage and social media reactions. Each provides some information, but none allows society to continuously see where it agrees, where it disagrees, which issues it considers most important, or how its judgement changes as new information and arguments emerge.
This is the democratic gap that angertainment exploits. When society cannot see itself clearly, those with money, media power, organisational reach or mastery of the algorithm can claim to speak for it.
Angertainment makes society’s anger visible while concealing what society actually thinks.
Regulation is necessary, but it is not enough
Governments can require greater transparency from social media companies. They can regulate political advertising, automated accounts, data harvesting, coordinated deception and harmful recommendation systems. Schools can improve media literacy, and journalists can become more disciplined about distinguishing representative public opinion from manufactured online reaction.
These measures would help, but even a better-regulated social media platform would remain a commercial platform. Its fundamental purpose would still be to capture attention and generate revenue. It would not become a democratic institution merely because some of its most damaging practices had been restrained.
Nor should governments attempt to solve the problem by deciding which opinions citizens are permitted to express. That would risk replacing manipulation by commercial platforms with control by political authorities.
The missing piece is therefore not simply better moderation of the existing public conversation. It is a civic process designed from the beginning for democratic purposes, with incentives that reward understanding, participation, evidence and accountable collective decision-making rather than conflict and attention.
A different kind of civic space
VoteWrap is intended to provide that missing democratic infrastructure. It is not another social media platform competing for people’s attention, and it does not need users to remain angry, addicted or permanently engaged. Its purpose is different.
VoteWrap would allow verified citizens to see the issues and legislation being considered, examine evidence and competing arguments, declare and explain their current position, and see how positions are distributed across their community. People could identify what they regard as important and urgent, participate directly when they wish, and choose trusted representatives or proxies when they do not have the time, knowledge or inclination to investigate every matter themselves.
Citizens would be able to change their position as the discussion and evidence developed. They would also be able to see whether elected representatives were acting in accordance with the demonstrated will of those they represented.
The objective is not to eliminate disagreement. A healthy democracy will contain disagreement because people have different experiences, interests, values and understandings. The objective is to make that disagreement visible in a form that can be understood, examined and resolved where possible, rather than exaggerated and manipulated for engagement.
From attention to judgement
Commercial social media measures attention. VoteWrap is intended to reveal judgement. Those are not the same thing.
A post may receive thousands of angry reactions without representing the majority view. An issue may dominate social media for several days while being considered relatively unimportant by most people. A position may be highly visible because it is backed by a wealthy campaign, not because it has broad community support.
VoteWrap would allow the public conversation to be viewed through a different set of signals. It could show what proportion of the community currently supports each position, how important and urgent people consider the issue, what evidence and arguments are influencing each side, where agreement has emerged, what remains unresolved, and how the community’s judgement changes through deliberation.
This does not tell people what to think. It gives society a way to see what it collectively thinks.
That distinction is crucial. Social media shows us what has generated the greatest reaction. Democratic infrastructure should show us what people have concluded after they have had the opportunity to consider the issue.
The role of representatives
Angertainment rewards political figures who can attract attention, provoke opponents and maintain a permanent state of conflict. A properly functioning democracy should reward a different set of abilities.
Representatives should help people understand complex issues. They should identify evidence, test arguments, explain consequences, listen to competing perspectives and help the community reach an informed position. They should not be able to substitute their personal ideology, party loyalty or political ambition for the clearly demonstrated judgement of those they represent.
Under the direct and representative model supported by VoteWrap, citizens can participate directly when they choose and rely on trusted representatives when they do not. Representatives contribute knowledge, time and judgement to the deliberative process, but their authority ultimately comes from the people.
Their role is not to decide what the community ought to want. It is to help the community understand the choices before it and then faithfully carry its demonstrated judgement into the institutions of government.
This would make political influence depend less on the ability to manipulate attention and more on the ability to earn and retain informed public support.
VoteWrap is not another ideology
VoteWrap does not seek to replace one ideology with another. It seeks to provide democratic infrastructure through which no ideology can prevail unless it earns the informed support of the community.
If the community changes its mind, the system should reflect that change. The infrastructure has no preferred position on housing, taxation, migration, climate, energy or any other policy question. Its purpose is to give citizens the information, relationships and democratic processes needed to reach and express their own collective judgement.
That is what distinguishes democratic infrastructure from both political campaigning and social media. Campaigners seek support for a preferred outcome. Social media platforms seek attention. Democratic infrastructure should seek an accurate and continuously updated expression of the informed will of the people.
This does not mean all outcomes will be wise or that majorities will never make mistakes. It means that public decisions should arise from an open and accountable democratic process rather than from whichever political, commercial or ideological interest has the greatest capacity to dominate the information environment.
Building somewhere else for democracy to happen
Coper’s diagnosis raises an uncomfortable question. If our main public conversation now takes place inside systems designed to monetise outrage, why would we expect that conversation to produce a healthy democracy?
We cannot simply ask commercial platforms to stop behaving commercially. Nor can we withdraw from modern communication and pretend the problem will disappear. What we can do is build a civic space with different purposes, incentives and measures of success.
That means building somewhere anger can be heard without being exploited, where grievances can be connected to their underlying causes, and where proposed solutions can be tested rather than shouted down. It means creating a process where minority views can be heard without being mistaken for majority opinion, where people who lack time can still participate through trusted relationships, and where representatives can see what their communities actually want.
Most importantly, it means giving society a way to hear itself.
That is the democratic infrastructure VoteWrap is intended to provide.
Angertainment helps explain why it is becoming urgently necessary.
Sources and further reading
- Ed Coper, Angertainment: How the Internet Uses Our Anger to Manipulate Us.
- Ed Coper interview discussing grievance, algorithmic incentives, outrage-based political influence and the effects of unrepresentative social media reactions on public policy.
- Vote4Democracy, The Day Society Learned to Hear Itself.
- Vote4Democracy, information on VoteWrap and the proposed direct and representative democracy model.