The Overlaying Realities
Social norms have radically changed ever since the introduction of social media into the public sphere. The impact of social media innovation has revolutionised the communication and information exchange among people globally and has helped in transmitting new ideologies all across the globe. For instance, the western impact has been clear on mobilising the Arab world through social media on different occasions among which the most prominent and famous event is the Arab Spring. Interestingly, the power of social media seems to pertain social reformations through political directions solely. For example, a power such as social media that proved efficient in reforming complete societies, is still considered relatively inefficient for feminist scholars in promoting equality, eradicating harassment and promoting gender rights. Signifying that the social media impact might be controlled to serve specific objectives drafted by capitalist and political economy authorities.
Truth is liberating for most of the social accounts and affairs, however, when the conveyed truth is a lie itself, then the depiction of its implications on the public sphere is paradoxical. The main paradox lies within the theory of Marx where Habermas stressed the role of political and capitalist authorities in exploiting the public sphere resources and skill while excluding the interest of the public itself (Fuchs, 2013 pp 181). In another words, Fuchs is attempting to explain how the bourgeois class manipulates the whole society for its interest. For instance, Boyd (2018) explains the manipulative power of the political economy through exploring and integrating contemporary extremism as a tool of bias polarisation that gives advantage to toxic norms prominence such as white supremacy, masculinity, sexism and racism over the social media platforms and transmits subliminally to the oblivious audience. Nadler, Crain & Donovan (2018, pp 8- 19) explain how the ad generated content has impacted the public sphere dimensions through the tactics of employing the digital media influence for data colonialism.
Nadler, Crain & Donovan (2018, pp 8- 13) explore the data colonialism strategies of the political and capitalists’ economy through illustrating the integrated role of surveillance, targeting and decision making as a main tool of influence that is contributing to a radical change in the political and social context. The automation of directed communication channels is mainly conducted through the microblogs such as twitter and Facebook which are the most prominent and powerful tools of social media platforms in shaping and reshaping ideologies. Considerably, Boyd (2018) highlights how the social media manipulators are affecting the goodwill of people through trolling in crisis situations. For instance, the value of death is scared for people and they intend sharing condolences messages with people who passed away through posting on their social media accounts. However, trolls are automated to mock and radicalize these incidents to impact the overall public sphere perception.
Some may question the role of social media developers in incidents related to trolls. Significantly, Lee (2016, pp 3), explained that despite the misconception of a systemic algorithm derived and drive to impair the human judgement, the intelligence of social media platforms mainly Facebook is fundamentally human. In other sense, Lee (2016, pp 3) is highlighting the fact that social media feeds are controlled by human intelligence based on the analysis of the data that allows for the creation of situated materials that is planned to reach the specific target audience. This human intelligence algorithm is intended for data collection aimed at commercial and political objectives that can only be attained through data colonialism
Take for example, browsing your own Facebook considering you have 1000 friends and only the news updates of 20 are mainly highlighted. Similar, the data colonialism and control can be better understood when searching google for a certain topic and suddenly you are bombarded with advertisements about the same topic on social media platforms. This example is a mere explanation on the notion suggested by Couldry and Mejias (2018, pp 2) on data relations where the extraction of human information is mainly parallel to the users’ commodification modification across the diverse open sources of information.
Social media platforms are empowered by analytic tools, bots and algorithms that are intended for capitalism and political objectives. However, despite the proliferation of fake news, trolls and commodification cues, the social media impact on improving and empowering the public sphere can be initiated through independent media platforms. Especially that social media has had a prevalent role in promoting women rights and social reformation in campaigns such as Me-too and You Stink. Therefore, it is critical to differentiate between the tool and the intention behind it.
