Does social media favour Populism and Demagoguery??
It’s obvious that for most North American’s, social media consumes us. There are many platforms of social media all around the internet: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to name a few. Smart phones, computers, Ipads, and even on television; social media platforms consume our daily lives. These outlets are gateways for many people to express themselves and see the world through various people’s eyes, getting enormous amounts of biased and unbiased opinions that we need to understand and make sense of. Social media is a place to voice concerns, follow celebrities, and give your uncensored opinions; whether someone agrees with your opinions are up to the individual and popularity and demagoguery come into play.
We can express our thoughts and feelings through the agents of social media, exploring and communicating personal interests and ideas. Popularity and demagoguery are displayed and inherited with the ability to interact with others: commenting, sharing, liking and following who and what we have interests in as well as “jumping on the bandwagon” of what others find important, creating popularity and importance. The idea of following someone who is “popular” becomes the norm. For many they become consumed in the online world of social media and just “like” to like. Another example of this would be the use of hashtags. If a celebrity is using a hashtag, one may find a way to fit the hashtag into their post to fit in, or create “likes”. A large example of this would be the phrase Drake made popular “#YOLO” spawning many other hashtag creations to fit in with the idea that it’s cool to use this language of letters that represent a meaning or idea. This sort of “follower style” is even given a name when you decide to “follow” someone on Instagram, you almost become a lemming in their own cyber world.
The idea that someone now has control of what you see and hear based on your contribution to following them on the internet, behind a screen is where the demagoguery fits perfectly. Now, someone can have control of your emotions, and subliminally put ideas and thoughts into your head. Social media is the perfect place to find weak people and pray on their inability to make decisions based on their own ideas and thoughts. One may think they are an individual and set apart from the world of social media’s popularity contest possessing their own ideas, but it is just a breeding ground for just that!
Being a social media celebrity is all the rage. People get paid by brands based on number of followers that they have and that’s their job… but what is their job really? They pose on a social media outlet expressing their opinion, most of the time these people are ill informed or have googled information and by mass following anything they like seems to catch on and this is all based-on popularity. The job is to be popular. This whole popular vote style and appeal to the masses plays in on demagoguery. Humans want to be liked, it makes us feel good when others acknowledge our accomplishments, in the case of social media that being one’s family, political style or personal choice in fashion. The more likes, the better one feels and the less someone likes you, or makes a negative comment, the worse others feel.
Social media can be a breeding ground for bullies; This is a place where people can hide behind their screens and say whatever they want. Although people have negative feelings, they are usually altered or restricted based on the idea of not just saying whatever we want in the fear of other judging us. Human beings are driven through feelings and we can feel great on social media because of popularity and “likes” but, also can become victims. Not only of personal attacks, where someone may not agree with your choices, bringing in a “gang” of others to follow suit. These types of attacks create an uproar and you are forced to choose a side and take a stance. Social media can become very political, hence popularity, it is all about saying the right thing. When Facebook first came out it was an popularity contest to see who could dwindle up the most friends. It also became the place to make and break friendships and behave a certain way that one wouldn’t in real-life. Social media is the place where the nerd can be cool, the quiet one can be heard and the loud mouth can attack whoever they feel like. Social media can be a gateway for a plethora of fake and real stories, people and lives that we are all spun into. We must decide and take part carefully. Popularity and demagoguery go hand in hand with social media and therefore social media would not have become as big as it did without these ideas.
