The Policy Sciences of Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, and other social media are increasingly touted as platforms not merely for networks of friends and for private diversion, but as vehicles that allow ordinary people to enter and influence the many arenas of public life. On the surface, the disparate and shapeless population of “i-reporters,” policy “tweeters,” and anonymous news web site “commentators” would appear to challenge the comparatively well-defined cast of professional diplomats, journalists, and propagandists that Harold D. Lasswell identified as policy-oriented communicators. However, to illuminate the roles and impacts of social media in politics and policymaking, insights from Lasswell's “science of communication” must be embedded in Lasswell's broader lessons on value assets and outcomes. A closer look at the so-called democratizing functions of social media in politics reveals the influence of powerful intermediaries who filter and shape electronic communications. Lasswell's insights on the likelihood of increased collaboration among political elites and skilled, “modernizing intellectuals” anticipates contemporary instances of state actors who recruit skilled creators and users of social media—collaborations that may or may not advance experiments in democracy. Lasswell's decision process concept is deployed to discover social media's strengths and weaknesses for the practicing policy scientist.