Is social media to blame for out post-truth world?
Here’s the thing. I missed class last week and I didn’t really know where to begin. I know it seems irrelevant and to some degree it is. But it’s mainly the irony of it. I was reading over the questions given to us this week and saw this question. The words “post-truth world” jumped out at me. It seemed powerful, serious, and angry in some way. So I looked it up, and ironically, this term is about emotions (I will be approaching this emotionally since I feel like it just fit the election ironically).
I discovered that it was Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year in 2016 (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/word-of-the-year/word-of-the-year-2016). To think that I finally had a word for the mess that was last year.
Post-truth world, by definition is, “elating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. It couldn’t be any more accurate then that. My mind jumped immediately to the man with the blonde hair and orange skin, Donald Trump.
I believe that in many cases, social media, from different outlets, helped the success of Trump for this year’s election. Looking at Trump’s supposed demographic, white middle class workers, his win was a way of them pushing back. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not here to criticize or patronize different groups for their actions and such, but this is simply how I view what is happening.
Obviously, as everyone knows, race played a big factor in this election. Movements like Black Lives Matter or individuals who were Islamic that terrorized the Americans were some of the things blown up by the media this year; Black Lives Matter protesters were deemed violent and Islamophobia took front and centre stage. What did this have to do with Trump? He played off those fears. He stood up on stage with presence and spoke to those who were supposedly feeling pushed down by “social justice” and who were supposed to fight for equality. Unfortunately, a lot of those were white.
Just to interject, I, personally, feel like people were fighting back against these movements because they were quite forceful with their message. People don’t like change and when those who were comfortable are kicked out of their bubbles, they tend not to be too happy with that.
Trump took advantage of this anger that was starting to grow in the white communities. Giving them a way out. His tweets were driven by anger and disgust, strong claims that boasted the opposite effects of what Barack Obama had been preaching. Many viewed it as taking one step forward and one step back. Trump’s Twitter account was very much like his words in the election. He spoke with power, anger and confidence, his word implying that he would change and suppress the chaos that is America today.
Now, I don’t know how much he reads tweets or who he even follows, but his words were hitting a chord with the right people. They began to believe that the world would be right again if he were President. Minorities fought back even harder to try to show people that Trump was not the way to go.
By the time Trump and Hillary Clinton went up for debates, the direction of Trump was clear. Stir the crowds up with wild claims, don’t worry about the numbers, just reach the people though emotions. He was flinging out numbers that didn’t make sense. No one cared if Clinton got her facts right by the end. Everyone, including myself, was tuning in to see Trump and his out-of-this-world claims.
When looking at the reaction of the people, the idea that everyone thought Trump was crazy and wouldn’t be voted for permeated all avenues of social media quite quickly and easily. A lot of people were already okay with the idea of equality and those who spoke often about it, already had a vocal following. Those who were deemed racist either stayed in their part of the internet or were force to stifle their words. But, their numbers were vast.
I’m not sure if I am right with this, but I have a hunch that most communities that are smaller in America might happen to have a larger white community then those in big cities like New York or Los Angeles. Their communities are different I can imagine. It is a little like that in Canada.
People, as minorities know all too well, don’t like to stifle their words or be stifled. So, Trump became an avenue out. Their way to vent. Of course there are other factors to his winning, like industries voting for him and such for reasons that are more political rather then on race, but I am speaking mainly from the idea of race and the anger that was quite prominent at the time, and still kinda is today.
By the end, those who looked at him, Republican or Democrat, were either charged with anger or beaming with joy. No one cared about the numbers, or who had more experience. Neither candidate seemed well liked by their own opposing teams, but it still didn’t matter about the numbers. People started to get into fights against race, bully those below them because their candidate look like they would do the same.
Everyone in the world watched the election, but for a different reason then back in 2009 when we watched to see if they would get a black president or a woman. Many watched in fear and anticipation, hoping that America wouldn’t step backwards. But sadly, the map was red. Now, there is a whole political system that made the map red, that I don’t even fully understand. But despite Clinton getting the popular vote, she lost.
The world cringed, a portion of America celebrated while many followed through with threats to leave. Even the ending was emotional. We believed Clinton would win because everyone was saying on social media that she would. This probably made some people not go out and vote and they thought it was an easy win and a lot of people did go out and vote, the highest numbers in years, but I don’t know if many accounted for what goes on under the hood. Either way, the end was just as emotional as the whole fiasco. Now other political figures are acting on emotions rather then on logic. Cancelling visits because they got offended, becoming quick to blame the Russians for everything…
I have gotten so emotionally exhausted by the whole thing. I feel like, by the end of the day, social media did play a role, especially in manipulating the emotions of readers, but not the biggest. Emotions and what was already being stirred was the main contribution. Social media was just an outlet. So, let’s see how the next four years end… I just hope that Trump will prove me wrong and be at least a decent President, but his signing of the executive orders recently… they already make me nervous.
