Democratic participation
It’s hard to believe that ten decades ago social networking was nothing but a trend. There were some small networks such as MySpace in the early days, but it is almost unrecognizable in regards of the social media we know today. Human interactions including debates, political discussion, finding a job, are just a few examples of things we no longer do physically, but online. Due to the massive information thrown online, there is new opportunities for manipulation to occur. In other words, social media is a pseudo-public and a completely manufactured public sphere (Fuchs, 2013). That is because the public online no longer engage in debates about issues, as profile accounts on users’ networks are filled with ads concerning entertainments. That however, has not completely vanished protests and those who are interested in politics as there are other ways to get access to them. Nonetheless, online-based protests can be ignored unlike old-fashioned street protests.
Before the digital era, people or the public sphere, would join and circle ideas, need of free speech, and issues of their own time. A public sphere tries to appeal for those in power and keep them in check. Nowadays, this occurs online, but it’s quite hard to access due to the echo-chambers the platforms people were using have created for their users. An echo-chamber in media is description of a situation in which beliefs are amplified by repetition inside the user’s personal platform. Living in a democracy means that all voices can be heard. However, with the ability to curate our own news and limit those we don’t agree with, we end up completely missing out on the opposing side. Instead of embracing a vibrant public conversation, we end up in an online echo chamber.
Social networks see users as numbers to take advantage of whenever seen fit, and the most popular example has been Trump’s win in 2016. After Trump’s presidential win, the internet and broadcast news was insisting that the Russian interference on social media was the reason, which Trump shut down with his now famous “Fake News” label. Ironically, researchers from Ohio State University found that Trump’s win was significantly influenced by fake news putting his then-candidate in the bad (Blake, 2018). Fake news became popular during the 2016 election campaigns flooding YouTube videos, articles, memes, and ads anti-Clinton. Around 4% of Obama supporters did not vote for Clinton due to the fake news that they believed (Blake, 2018). That doesn’t come as a surprise as 2.6% of the articles found online in 2016 were based off of fake news. (Blake, 2018).
There are a lot of negativity that comes with the internet public discussions that outweigh the positive. Media is no longer the same as it was when broadcasted in newspapers and television. People had the choice to see both sides of a story, to take their time choosing what they believe in. Media on social networks give users no privacy and no time, and the news on their news feed are manipulated to follow a certain path. Taking Facebook as an example, in which the posts on individual news feeds are not due to relevance, but a proprietary Facebook algorithm (Lee, 2016). And Facebook hasn’t told the public much about their algorithm. Through Facebook, the most famous breech of privacy occurred due to Cambridge Analytica’s unethical role, taking information from facebook profiles without their consent in order to advance political targeting models based on psychological profiling (Nadler, Crain, & Donavan, 2017).
Fake news has been a big part of news distribution, and it doesn’t look like it’s about to stop any time soon. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have certainly aided its growth. Until today, fake news is harming people’s trust in online news, however, it could be helpful for me bigger News such as New York Times, and the New Yorker to name a few, by gaining them more viewers since people’s trust in online news has significantly decreased. Nonetheless, this doesn’t diminish the fact that due to social media more people are aware of political issues happening, thus more likely to engage in protests. The downfall in that is the manipulation that occurs behind the scenes without the users knowledge making the users networking companies’ puppets.
References:
- Blake, A. (2018, April 3). A new study suggests fake news might have won donald trump the 2016 election. Washington Post.
2. Fuchs, C. (2013). Social Media: A Critical Introduction. SAGE.
3. Lee, T. B. (2016). Facebook is harming our democracy, and Mark Zuckerberg needs to do something about it. Vox.
4. Nadler, A., Methew, C., & Joan, D. (2017). Weaponizing the Digital Influence Machine: The Political Perils of Online Ad Tech. Date & Society .
