People’s political views and beliefs have always been shaped, even unconsciously, by their consumption of politics. In other words, where they get their politics from.
If your media diet consists of nothing but right-wing TV pundit shows, your political views will probably skew in that direction. Vice versa for Guardian readers. Of course, this raises the circular-type question: do we seek out certain political media channels because we already agree with those views, or are our views shaped by the channels themselves? Which comes first: the news or the views?
And into this swirling political maelstrom in 2007 came social media, with its slick user interface and middle finger directed firmly at the mainstream news establishment. Specifically, we’re talking about Facebook. Facebook was founded in 2004, but in 2007 the platform made some tweaks to its ‘News Feed’, positioning information itself as the grease in the wheels of social media.
And after that, well, things pretty much went haywire.
The catalytic role of social media in modern politics
These days it’s hard to separate social media and politics. The two are basically one and the same. Social media has morphed from a platform for distributing political news into a catalyst for political change – the good and the bad.
Today, about half of American adults get at least some of their news from social media. Facebook accounts for about 30% of this group, with 26% getting their news from YouTube. After that it gets more segmented: Instagram (16%). TikTok (14%). X-formerly-known-as-Twitter (12%). Reddit (8%). The majority of regular news consumers on mainstream social media lean left, which perhaps isn’t surprising when you take into account the rise of niche extremist sites like Truth Social, Parler and Gab.
Now all this isn’t inherently bad, in the same way that television or newspapers aren’t inherently bad. Studies suggest that social media can be an effective political equalizer, giving smaller candidates and unconventional views a cheap, effective platform. Young elected officials, like America’s AOC, are also using social media to connect with constituents and promote various community causes.
Viewed in a vacuum, social media is just another information tool, and it has been very effective in spreading and popularizing grassroots political movements like Black Lives Matter, climate justice, Arab Spring and Occupy Wallstreet (to name a few).
But unfortunately, we don’t live in a vacuum.
Navigating the minefield of misinformation
Here are some statistics that should probably concern you. 64% of Americans report being confused about basic political facts due to fake news on social media. 32% of people say they often see political news stories on social media that are completely made up. Over 500,000 deepfake videos circulated on social media in 2023 alone. And false reporting can spread up to 10 times faster than true reporting on social platforms.
And guess what’s coming? Just, you know, the ability to mimic any voice saying anything.
The end result is that a huge percentage of the voting public now gets their political views shaped by information that is literally not real. And for the rest, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to filter political fact from bot-crafted junk.
You don’t have to be a political science major to understand how that can become a problem. Just look at the Russian bot program that targeted the 2016 US Presidential election, or the COVID-19 pandemic, where studies have shown that misinformation on social media “perpetuated beliefs that led to vaccine avoidance, mask refusal, and utilization of medications with insignificant scientific data, ultimately contributing to increased morbidity”. In other words, social media misinformation directly caused people to die who otherwise probably wouldn’t have died.
And this is just the beginning. With 75% of consumers now concerned about misinformation from artificial intelligence, social media has arguably contributed more than anything else to the fracture of political norms and discourse. Increasingly, we’re not spending our time debating the virtues of various political arguments, and moving (as a society should) towards some sort of equitable ideal. Nope, we’re just trying to wade through the algorithmic sludge. Distracted, outraged, misled, confused and alone.
Misinformation isn’t new, of course. Propaganda has always existed. But social media has fundamentally changed the speed and growth of misinformation, in ways we’re still trying to figure out.
“Previous attempts to influence public opinion relied on ‘one-to-many’ broadcast technologies,” says US research on digital disinformation, Claire Wardle. “But social networks allow ‘atoms’ of propaganda to be directly targeted at users who are more likely to accept and share a particular message. These ‘atoms’ then rocket through the information ecosystem at high speed, powered by trusted peer-to-peer networks.”
The echo chamber effect and political polarization
You’ve probably heard of the echo chamber effect by now: social media’s tendency to prioritize engagement and clicks, which means users get fed more of the political content they already agree with, exposing people to fewer and fewer disparate views, and leading to an overall more polarized, hostile political environment. It’s pretty well documented by now.
Most people would agree that one of social media’s more insidious traits is to encourage our tendency towards tribalism. Particularly when it comes to politics. Studies have shown that social media users show a tendency to favor information adhering to their beliefs and join groups formed around a shared narrative. It’s like the opposite of cell division: society’s political views become more entrenched and condensed, running together and forming tighter and more insular communities.
These communities give people a sense of purpose and belonging, but they make genuine political discourse much harder. If social media has achieved anything, it’s the neat division of Us and Them. And stats back that up. After 15-odd years of social media influence, the Pew Research Centre has found that political divisions in America are deeper now than at any time since the American Civil War. And we all know how that turned out…
Regulating social media: better discourse, or censorship?
So, what’s the answer here? Already governments around the world are looking to curb some of social media’s more toxic features. In Australia, the Labor government has proposed the Combating Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, which, when it was announced, ironically triggered its own wave of misinformation.
Legislative attempts to control social media platforms are often well-intentioned, but critics say they can have a chilling effect on public discourse. It all comes down to your definition of ‘fake news’. When does someone’s political view become ‘fake’? Who gets to make that determination? And what’s to stop governments targeting views they simply don’t like, throwing out free speech with the bathwater?
These issues are still being hashed out in various countries, and the truth is we’re no closer to figuring out how to ‘solve’ social media. These platforms were built to make money, not to distribute truth and even-handed social justice. And those two aims may be fundamentally irreconcilable. The worry is that, without adequate oversight and control, social media will erode the political ideals we take for granted, the stuff that actually keeps society functioning: progression, tolerance, reasoned debate, respect for opposing views, curiosity and, well, democracy.
Carl Sagan said it best: “I have a foreboding of an America in my children or grandchildren’s time – when…no-one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness…”
