Abstract Claims have been made that the advent of social media and its assumed ability to fuel social strife and organize anti-government protests has empowered people around the world to successfully challenge repressive authorities. However, in an era in which several issues ranging from digital colonialism to digital exclusion among other challenges, have become so dominant, it is our role as researchers to question some of these claims especially when they seem unsubstantiated. Sharing or finding solidarity is something that can be done on social media platforms but nothing is as critical as being part of the digital community. In that regard, questions surrounding digital exclusion are critical especially when discussing the extent to which social media influences democracy, questions that several scholars from every corner of the world are currently seized with. In this article, we not only identify social media’s potential but we also probe problems associated with beliefs that digital networks have the capacity to support democratization. Contemporary societies should be asking what the real gains of the fall of the Berlin Wall are in the work of these fundamental digital shifts, which have left both negative and positive outcomes on all countries including established Western democracies.

中文翻译：

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数字排斥是否会破坏社交媒体的民主化能力？

摘要 有人声称，社交媒体的出现及其引发社会冲突和组织反政府抗议活动的假定能力，使世界各地的人们能够成功挑战专制当局。然而，在一个从数字殖民主义到数字排斥以及其他挑战等多个问题变得如此重要的时代，我们作为研究人员的职责是质疑其中一些主张，尤其是当它们似乎没有根据时。分享或寻求团结是可以在社交媒体平台上完成的事情，但没有什么比成为数字社区的一部分更重要了。在这方面，围绕数字排斥的问题至关重要，尤其是在讨论社交媒体对民主的影响程度时，来自世界各个角落的几位学者目前正在关注的问题。在本文中，我们不仅确定了社交媒体的潜力，而且还探讨了与数字网络有能力支持民主化的信念相关的问题。当代社会应该问，柏林墙倒塌的真正收益是这些根本性的数字化转变的工作，这些转变给包括成熟的西方民主国家在内的所有国家带来了消极和积极的结果。