What’s the connection between social networks and gaslighting?

US publisher Merriam-Webster, best-known for its dictionaries, has chosen “gaslighting” as its word of the year 2022, based on the number of searches for the term, which it says was not related to a single event, as is usually the case, and instead was “pervasive”

The term comes from a 1938 play by British writer Patrick Hamilton, and was made into a film in 1944 by George Cukor in which a sadistic husband attempts to drive his wife mad by literally turning down the gas light at certain moments in their London mansion. Since then it has taken on a wider meaning referring to psychological manipulation to make others think they are in the wrong or the problem, due to their own circumstances or actions.

The link to current affairs is clear, and Merriam Webster cites it in the context of an era disinformation, fake news, conspiracy theories, Twitter trolls and deepfakes made possible by technology and the spread of social networks and, above all, their exploitation through a particular business model.

The use of an online tool to store our relationships and social interactions in the form of a database has its origins in the first forums and Usenet groups in the early days of the Internet, and was consolidated through initiatives such as Friendster in 2003, and subsequently many others both…