Exemple épreuve concours sciences po

ESSAY

1)Do you believe that conspiracy theories, lies and distortions spread via social media undermine democracies? Discuss  

Conspiracy theories can be defined by a willingness to question certain events by proposing a different version of the facts and that assumes that everything is controlled by a small group of people hiding the truth.  In the contemporary world, these theories are growing thanks to social media which allow distortions of truths to be disseminated across countries. Can this kind of theory and their dissemination be a danger to democracy ?

First of all, it seems obvious that this kind of misinformation could be dangerous for the democratic system, because of the doubt they put in place in the minds of citizens. Indeed, the public’s confidence in the system in place is severely degraded by these distortions of truths, which in my view, allows the detractors of democracy to question it. By way of illustration, we can take the case of the election of Donald trump, who was helped by Russian hackers who spread false information about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton through social media. American citizens could have been influenced by these "hoax" and changed their votes at the last minute. In the same way, the decline in Barrack Obama’s popularity can partly be explained by the misinformation circulating about his place of birth that turned out to be false.

To conclude, it is important to remember that this erroneous information finds in social networks a very effective way of spreading itself, allowing to make believe to many internet users that a false version of the story is relayed by the State, or ,for the case of the United States, to influence (even slightly) presidential elections, which poses a serious threat to democracy.

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