Social media held out the promise of a more enlightened politics, as accurate information and effortless communication helped good people drive out corruption, bigotry and lies.

Role played by social media during Arab Spring for instance Twitter played a major role in the awakening process of the general public, and then the nations like Tunisia, egypt protested to bring democracy to their country..

In the recent years modern nation-state is best understood as an “imagined community” partly enabled by the rise of social media. The degree to which people could be considered part of a national community was one that was both artificial and facilitated by social media.

However Social media networks reach is extraordinarily wide and fast, but the messages conveyed through them need relentless repetition, suggesting ephemeral value. This disbalance gets magnified in social media such as Facebook and Twitter. These platforms excite the public space on a constant basis. This duality explains the attraction they exercise despite the risk their users face of being manipulated.

Democracy is based on the idea of participation of the largest number of people, even if that slows down decision-making. On the face of it, social media creates the illusion of maximal participation, but in reality it promotes the culture of mass ‘following’. This model of communication has smoothly pushed American democracy towards an unfamiliar wilderness. Its electoral process compromised by manipulation of voters’ minds.

There is never any independent verification of that news as people live with in a filter bubble where the views they do not agree with are not even showed to them and the biases they have are further  strengthened. It is this pair of features of filter bubbles, preselection and confirmation bias  that fake news exploits with precision breaking the essence of democracy.

The rise of these social media companies has coincided with major changes in the nature of the state and its duties towards citizens. Surveillance as a means of providing safety has gained acceptability even legitimacy in many parts of the world. Advances in communication technology have encouraged systems of governance to concentrate decision-making power at the higher rungs, leaving compliance and implementation to people placed at the lower rungs.

Social media is being abused. But, with a will, society can harness these platforms through effective checks, accountability mechanisms .The stakes for liberal democracy are definitely higher.