The Trump Effect
From the beginning of his presidential campaign in 2015 to the current day, President Trump has effectively stirred the pot internationally with his unfiltered comments and controversial opinions. Unlike the good ol’ days where people were only able to find their political information in the 5:00 pm news and the daily paper, the internet now provides people with readily available information and direct communication channels to their influencers through social media platforms. This means that the media can’t control our information and provide us with, as Trump would call it, FAKE NEWS anymore.
Though I find the development of social media to be a generally progressive step in our future, these multi-useful platforms often feel like they are flooded with negativity. Trump has made Twitter his platform of choice to connect with his audience, barking his thoughts at us in a quite unprofessional tone.
I certainly don’t follow Trump, yet his erratic tweets seem to end up on my timeline everyday. So what has made Trump so popular on Twitter? Why are his sometimes hateful remarks allowed to punctuate our social feeds? Where’s our digital knight in shining armour, swooping in with positive tweets, to save the minds of the people in our nation from this demagogue’s cynicism!!???
To answer this I took to my own social platforms and I noticed a few trends. Trumps tweets appeared on my timeline because:
a) Someone just retweeted it (whether this was done to show approval or disapproval is unclear)
OR
b) Someone quote tweeted it to comment on it (usually criticizing its merit and sometimes making a joke of its tone)
Sweeping through the rest of my feed, a significant portion of the other tweets that I noticed were Trump related. The people I follow often used his name as a headline to a news article link or as the set up to a sarcastic joke.
Switching my focus to more uplifting tweets, I did notice some inspirational ones mixed amongst the political nonsense. A good portion of these tweets, however, were displayed as a liked or retweeted tweet from a user I don’t follow.
So what does this mean? Is my algorithm-informed social feed telling me that I WANT to see negative content all the time or are the people I choose to keep in my social circle downers? Based on the nature of these algorithms, it might be ME who’s the downer.
Our personal filter bubbles are informed by our search and click patterns and I do find myself clicking on news headlines I find to be absolutely outrageous quite often. I like to keep myself informed of the social, political, and cultural, happenings in the world which, recently, seem to be quite disappointing. But this may be because I will only click on really unsettling headlines, half to inform myself on these topics and half to get constructively angry and motivated to contribute to the better parts of society. For this reason, I may be part of the problem on social media as a user who enables demogogues like Trump by actively viewing their unsettling content.
Between the negativity and reminders to “self-love”, my timeline is mainly composed of sarcasm and humour in the form of memes. This would be because I actively seek out new memes to share with friends and genuinely enjoy their ability to remind me not to take this world too seriously.
Do I find that social media platforms allow demogogues like Trump to thrive? Yes. Do i find that social media platforms also allow inspirational figures to thrive? Yes! The content people find on their social feed will be informed by the interests they display online and whichever of the two aforementioned categories those interests fall under will vary per user. Therefore I believe that we, as users, are in fact the enablers of negative and/positive content.
After analyzing my feed and finding an unnecessary amount of content that negatively affects my mood, I think I will begin ignoring “click-bait” headlines about the circus-like antics of politicians and seek out more uplifting and humorous content. Changing my filter bubble begins now!!
