Digital Utopia vs. Disinformation Dystopia: Digital Media at a Crossroads

Wolfgang Fritz has been a valued collaborator of the University of Rhode Island (URI) for over three decades, both with the College of Business and the Department of Communication Studies in the Harrington School of Communication and Media at URI. In this contribution, honoring the long service of Professor Wolfgang Fritz at the Technical University of Braunschweig (TUBS), we will review some of the highlights of the URI–TUBS collaborative work in the context of global changes in communication and information technology. The first part of the contribution, Digital Utopia, focuses on the rising tides of digital connectivity that benefited most humans on the planet. Our review highlights the small but significant part that URI–TUBS joint efforts played in these beneficent developments. In the second (and shorter) part, on Disinformation Dystopia, our focus is on the recent post-2015 period, a period in which the salutary impacts and effects of digital technologies and media are coming under some very dark clouds of sinister, conspiratorial, dystopic tendencies enabled by these very same digital technologies and media. The internet and digital media are at a crossroads. One turn would continue to take humanity further on the path of beneficial effects that would improve the lives of billions. A different turn could launch us on a dystopian path of mistrust, misinformation, mayhem—ultimately resulting in the death of democracy. We end the contribution with a strong plea and suggestions to fight, reverse and defeat the dystopic trends.