Ctrl Alt Delete : How Politics and the Media Crashed Our Democracy

Something has gone badly wrong: people loathe politicians, distrust the press and increasingly fear each other. It's easy to blame Russian trolls, Facebook news feeds, or the sinister manipulation of 'big data' -- but these are all symptoms of an abusive thirty-year relationship between politics, the media, and a new information age. Interviewing everyone from Tony Blair to Michael Gove, top journalists to Russian bloggers, and tech giant execs to online activists, Tom Baldwin describes a vicious battle for control of the news agenda, at the expense of public trust and the value of truth. He shows how technological change has hollowed out space for virulent new populist alternatives, including the so-called 'alt-right' and 'alt-left'. And he warns that not only extremists, but also the progressive centre, may now decide to press 'delete' on liberal democracy altogether. Ctrl Alt Delete is a brutally honest and sometimes funny account of how our democracy was crashed -- and whether we can still re-boot it.

We all know something has gone wrong: people hate politics, loathe the media and are now scared of each other too. Journalist and one-time senior political advisor Tom Baldwin tells the riveting--often terrifying--story of how a tidal wave of information overwhelmed democracys sandcastle defences against extremism and falsehood. Control Alt Delete exposes the struggle for control between a rapacious 24-hour media and terrified politicians that has loosened those leaders grip on truth as the internet rips the ground out from under them. It explains how dependency on data, algorithms and digital technology brought about the rise of the Alt Right, the Alt Left and a triumphant army of trolls driving people apart. And it warns of the rise of those threatening to delete what remains of democracy: resurgent populists in Westminster, the White House and the Kremlin, but also--just as often--liberals fearful of mob rule. This is an explosive, brutally honest and sometimes funny account of what we all got wrong, and how to put it right again. It will change the way you look at the world--and especially the everyday technology that crashed our democracy.