Mistrust and Polarization in the Media
Annotated Bibliography
Cuffley, A. (2022, November 21). Social media misinformation and the prevention of political instability and mass atrocities • stimson center. Stimson Center.
https://www.stimson.org/2022/social-media-misinformation-and-the-prevention-of political-instability-and-mass-atrocities/
The key idea of this article is how social media misinformation worsens political instability, and it describes it in detail. It also goes into the psychological factors that increase the impact of social media misinformation. I chose this source because it was reliable, and it provided specific details on social media misinformation that will help to answer my research question.
Globig, L. K., Holtz, N., & Sharot, T. (2023, June 6). Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation. eLife.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10259455/
The key ideas in this article are the causes of the spread of misinformation, and how it impacts the increase in polarization and resistance to government actions like climate change. This journal article helps build a full understanding on where the spread of misinformation started and how it impacts almost everything around it. I chose this source because it is reliable, and it uses tests and experiments to back up its information, which also helps to fully understand all of its content.
Julian Jacobs, F. T., Viselli, T., & Paul Barrett, J. H. (2023, June 24). How social media platforms can reduce polarization. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how social-media-platforms-can-reduce-polarization/
The key idea of this article is how to reduce polarization through social media. It goes into detail about how to correct the process and turnaround the procedures to create a positive impact of polarization through social media. I chose this article because it is reliable, and it provides changes to the system and gives recommendations on how to help fix this issue.
Lindsey Barrett, L. M., MacCarthy, M., Wheeler, T., Lee, N. T., & Rozenshtein, A. Z. (2023, June 27). How tech platforms fuel U.S. political polarization and what government can do about it. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-tech-platforms-fuel-u-s political-polarization-and-what-government-can-do-about-it/
The key ideas of this article are what polarization is and how it relates to society and politics. This article also goes into detail about the declining trust in institutions. I chose this article not only because it is a reliable source for information, but it helps build a better understanding of the positive and negative impact of social media on polarization.
Medzerian, D. (2023, December 8). Study reveals key reason why fake news spreads on social media. USC Today. https://today.usc.edu/usc-study-reveals-the-key-reason-why-fake news-spreads-on-social-media/
The key idea of this article is how and why fake news is spread on social media. This article goes into detail on research done to find why and how the misinformation spreads on social media, and how it’s not explicitly from the users but from the structure of social media sites itself. I chose this source because it is reliable and uses real life experiments to help better understand its findings of how misinformation spreads on social media.
Mont’Alverne, C., Badrinathan, S., Arguedas, A. R., Toff, B., Fletcher, R., & Nielsen, R. K. (2022, September 22). The Trust Gap: How and Why News on digital platforms is viewed more sceptically versus news in general. Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/trust-gap-how-and-why-news-digital-platforms viewed-more-sceptically-versus-news-general
The key idea of this article is why there is a trust gap between people and media platforms, including both social media and news outlets. This article goes into depth to explain the levels of trust people have in news and social media, and their opinions on it. I chose this article because it is reliable, and provides statistics, real life examples and surveys, and uses diagrams to properly illustrate the information provided.
Muhammed T, S., & Mathew, S. K. (2022, February). The disaster of misinformation: A Review of Research in social media. International journal of data science and analytics. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8853081/
The key ideas of this article are how social media spreads misinformation and theoretical perspectives of social media misinformation. It goes into detail on the impact of misinformation from social media and provides future recommendations to slow the misinformation down. I chose this source because it was reliable, and it shows diagrams which helps me to better understand and visually see the information I read.
Otieno, P. (2024, February). (PDF) the impact of social media on political polarization. Research Gate .
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/378295200_The_Impact_of_Social_Media_on_ Political_Polarization
The key ideas of this journal are how social media platforms and algorithms directly affect polarization. It goes into a lot of detail on theories that relate to the effect of social media algorithms affecting polarization. I chose this source because it is reliable, and it provides evidence and research to support all of its findings.
Roscini, F. (n.d.). How the American Media Landscape is polarizing the country. How The American Media Landscape is Polarizing the Country | The Pardee Atlas Journal of Global Affairs. https://sites.bu.edu/pardeeatlas/advancing-human-progress initiative/back2school/how-the-american-media-landscape-is-polarizing-the-country/ The key ideas of this article are what media polarization is and how it has affected polarization in the U.S. cable news networks. It also relates it to how social media is now affecting polarization and compares the two. I chose this source because it was reliable and it gives background to polarization and how it has been around for a while, which helps me to effectively answer my research question.
Tucker, J., Guess, A., Barberá, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D., & Nyhan, B. (2018, March). Social media, political polarization, and … hewlett.
https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Social-Media-Political Polarization-and-Political-Disinformation-Literature-Review.pdf
The key idea of this article is how social media affects political polarization. It goes into detail about social media use, the effect on politicians, and disinformation in politics. I chose this source because it was reliable, it shows diagrams to help visualize the processes, and shows a different perspective of social media polarization.
Wilson, R. A., & Land, M. (2018). Hate speech on social media: Content moderation in context. UCONN Library .
https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1535&context=law_pa pers
The key ideas in this article are regulation of hate speech in the United States and explains how social media policies do not help keeping these regulations in place. This article goes into detail about how harmful online hate speech is, and how social media increases it. I chose this article because it was reliable, and it gives detail into real life cases that have taken place for hate speech and how the laws are trying to change to reduce this issue.
Reflection
This project allowed me to open my eyes to learn more about Mistrust and Polarization in the media. Mistrust and Polarization have been issues that have been around for a while, and I think it’s time for improvement. In the beginning of making this project, I started out by developing my research question. I went back to the textbook and re-read chapter 9 to get a better understanding of what I should be doing my research about. I then created my research question and went to search for my sources. Once I finished finding my sources, I created my annotations and completed the annotated bibliography. After that, I started my research and used my notes from the annotations to guide me through all of my sources. I went through research experiments, studies, and real life cases to further my knowledge and background before answering my research question. I then used all of the information to create my presentation and video.
Through the process of my project, I have done extensive research, and used all of the information I learned to answer my research question effectively and accurately. In addition to this, it has allowed me to educate myself more on this topic, and I can now use this knowledge in my everyday life. Completing this project made me learn that in my research, I am very observant, and I have to go through every part of each source to effectively take notes. It definitely took longer than I expected to complete my research, but now I know for the future to just start it a little earlier and be better with time management. I also learned that this topic is more intriguing than I thought it would be. Once I started learning more about mistrust and polarization in the media, it made me want to continue to learn more. I then realized that this topic affects me more than I realized. With everything I learned, I am able to look out for these aspects of social media to protect me from false information and influence.
As I dove deeper into the topic of mistrust and polarization in the media, I question if there is going to be improvement in the future. The topics are big issues that are especially relevant today, as technology and media continue to evolve. I wonder if all of this research and testing done will be put to use to come up with changes in these systems to alleviate these issues. Even if there is a little decrease in these issues and there’s noticeable change, that is better than none at all. It will definitely take doing more research, specifically into these platforms themselves, in order to improve the issues, but I think that with more knowledge and studies done, it is very possible to help solve these issues.
