Book Review: ‘Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information in the Digital Age’ by Martin Moore

Abstract

The Chief of the Air Staff’s reading list has contained several books about digital technology’s influence over social systems and politics and for good reason - this phenomenon shouldn’t remain the preserve of the specialist - it should concern us all as citizens with ‘galumphing digital footprints’ (p. 64). Martin Moore’s Democracy Hacked joins books such as Wired for War (by P. W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking) and Sandworm (by Andy Greenberg) in this important canon of work and, like these books, is aimed at a broad audience. Moore is intimately familiar with the subject area as director of the Centre for the Study of Media, Communication and Power and founding director of the Media Standards Trust; he makes a convincing case for the ‘fragile state’ of democracy (p. 253) and warns us about where this might lead in his very readable (if unsettling) book.