Liberal Society Entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship for the strengthening of democracy

 Extract from

Winfried Weber, Die Purpose-Wirtschaft, 2024, eBook (Amazon Kindle, http://tiny.cc/9eznzz ) (Translation by the author)

Those who use entrepreneurial means to develop and implement solutions for the preservation and strengthening of democracy and promote civil courage contribute to strengthening the foundations of an open society and are part of a counter-movement against fake news, conspiracy narratives and authoritarian tendencies. Let's call them Liberal Society Entrepreneurs here and explain their social potential from the perspective of possible self-reinforcement processes to stabilize an open society.

Could entrepreneurship be a relevant solution to the threats to democracy posed by anti-democratic forces? What innovations could such start-ups create to preserve democracy? Could start-ups that focus on the preservation and further development of liberal democracy fulfill another cross-party function alongside non-party initiatives, NGOs, associations and lobbyists?

This outline aims to discuss Entrepreneurship for a Liberal Society on a practical level. We have already discussed democratic theory elsewhere. Nevertheless, with the epochal change identified by Niklas Luhmann, the introduction of the computer, we can see an overtaxing of the well-established functional areas of society. Luhmann's final work, The Society of Society (1998), sees a massive change due to the transformation of social dissemination media such as the introduction of writing (Babylon), printing (Johannes Gutenberg) and now the digital computer (Konrad Zuse). It is precisely during these transitions that new structures emerge and, according to Dirk Baecker, "there is a fundamental lack of clarity about who says what when about whom (and truthfully at all)" (Baecker 2007). Whether a source is reliable or not is more difficult to judge during upheavals. There were already significant social upheavals during the last epochal change brought about by printing. In the 17th century in London, for example, the liberal press policy of King Charles I gave rise to over 300 gazettes and bulletins, which led to a fragmentation of public opinion. A media landscape had emerged that led readers to take a popular side depending on whose bias and propaganda they were currently exposed to.

We know from personality psychology and psychometrics that temporally stable characteristics of a person change little or slowly. The data traders of the global internet platforms have developed a business model from this. As early as 2011, Kosinski and Stillwell showed in a study that personality traits could be identified via Facebook likes. Using the Big Five of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism, people can be described with five numerical values that lie between 0 and 100 and can be checked for average values using data from millions of people. On Facebook and elsewhere, people share likes, pictures and leave comments. "Privacy is dead" is the pointed statement of Stanford professor Michal Kosinski, who researches human behaviour in a digital environment using computer methods, AI and big data (Kosinski 2020).

Algorithms can be used to identify patterns that can then be marketed or, in the anti-liberal case, even used to manipulate elections (see the Cambridge Analytica case, Hern 2018).  Which clothes people like, which music they listen to, which used car they are looking for or which news channels with which political opinions they click on allow conclusions to be drawn about their expected behaviour, which can never be calculated in full, but to a certain percentage depending on their personality.

This is where the Liberal Society Entrepreneurs come into play, who are convinced that the manipulation of people can be prevented and that the spread of authoritarian social models does not have to be a foregone conclusion. Entrepreneurs who develop methods to help consolidate the foundations of an open society through workshops in educational institutions, companies and civil society. In workshops, people learn to check the authority of the source and its trustworthiness, to develop their own judgment and to develop a healthy distrust of conspiracy narratives. It is important that children and young people learn how to deal with the media and develop their own attitude from an early age. The journalist and Spiegel founder Rudolf Augstein once described his magazine's self-image as: "Say what is." (Augstein 2023).

The task of liberal society entrepreneurs would then be to go beyond the code of the media profession to help citizens improve their judgment. Entrepreneurs in this area help citizens to recognize that certain news is disseminated in such a way that it says what the audience in its own bubble wants to hear (populism), that and when there is talk of "alternative facts" (Donald Trump), that it is often about polarization ("flood the zone with shit") or that something is to be believed with massive media conformity (dictatorship). The "indifferent citizens" or people who tend towards "news avoidance", whose milieus reach far into the center of society, are also target groups for entrepreneurial approaches and start-ups with the purpose of "strengthening democracy". These start-ups want the majority of voters in a democracy to observe things more carefully again and "perceive what is".

Perhaps the last "social bonfire" in a differentiated society can be seen as the world of work and smaller and larger companies in particular, where social milieus mix. Some initiatives start here.

The Business Council for Democracy (#BC4D) under the umbrella of the non-profit Hertie Foundation, for example, enables employers to expand their commitment to democracy with a networking program and training for their employees. BC4D offers training courses for employees to learn more about the spread of hate speech, targeted disinformation and conspiracy narratives and to do something about it - interactively and using concrete examples and exercises. What can I do if I am exposed to hate attacks myself? How does digital counter-speech work? What advice and legal options are available? How can I recognize conspiracy narratives and suspicious sources? And what makes people susceptible to digital manipulation? What consequences does digital polarization have for our society? Experienced trainers will answer these and other questions in several online sessions. With each new season, the number of employers committed to liberal democracy in this network increases. (Becker 2023)

A whole series of other start-ups by liberal society entrepreneurs focus on changes in civil society.

For example, the Zentrum Liberale Moderne, which was founded by former Green Party parliamentarians Marie-Luise Beck and Ralf Fücks in 2017, has developed a model for analyzing opponents of the new right. The aim of the project is to reappraise the long lines of anti-liberal thinking for today's debate. At www.gegneranalyse.de, the debate with the thought leaders of the new right is bundled together. There is a glossary of basic anti-liberal patterns and current contributions to the debate. Further projects will focus on a more detailed analysis and examination of the right-wing populist and cross-front media, which have an enormous reach on

YouTube, Facebook and other social media, but are hardly noticed by the public. DemoSlam brings people with different opinions together instead of dividing them into camps and provides them with the appropriate tools. The project helps to get people out of their filter bubbles, build empathy and define common values and strengthen democracy. Forum X is developing an app for audio discussions and organizing democracy tours in various cities. The VOTO app provides the necessary overview during elections, especially for first-time voters, reduces complexity and makes participation in elections more accessible for everyone, because "democracy thrives on people getting involved - and making informed decisions." The Worldlab develops tools for schools, strengthens democratic skills and extends over several weeks or up to a school year. Exploring Worldwide Democratic Innovations creates case studies on new innovative participation models from all over the world. These studies will be used to develop recommendations for strengthening democracies.