TechLash: Social Media & Its Effect on Democracy

POLITICAL DIVISIVENESS & SOCIAL MEDIA

The initial idealism of social media – democracy, friction-free communication, one-button socializing –  has vanished. Now America is embroiled in political turbulence and has suffered the largest-ever-recorded drop in government trust. (Edelman, 2018) Experts believe that the root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse resulting from new technologies in media.  Obama succinctly summed up the opinions of many when he stated:

 “One of the biggest challenges we have to our democracy is the degree to which we don’t share a common baseline of facts…We are operating in completely different information universes. If you watch Fox News, you are living on a different planet than you are if you listen to NPR….this pervasive divisiveness is a condition which is only further exacerbated by social media.”

Our society no longer has a shared reality, and this is compounded by the fact that many people, overwhelmed by the sheer amount of knowledge now available and the pace of change, are quickly retreating to media echo chambers. And, when they find them, they simply don’t want to leave. Studies have indicated that familiarity with repeatedly shared content (highly common and expected in echo-chambers) increases the perceived accuracy of the content, irrespective of its credibility. (Kumar et al., 2018)  In an attempt to address this, Facebook rolled out its “related articles” feature in 2017 to expose viewers to alternate views, but users continued to ignore information that undermined their favored narrative. (Botsun, 2018). It is human nature to retreat to the familiar when overwhelmed, yet that tendency in this paradigm has already had strong reverberating effects on our democracy.

POLITICAL INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA

 In the hands of politicians, social media is a powerful tool and one that can be abused. For example, Cambridge Analytica developed an app called, “This is Your Digital Life” which harvested the data of up to 87 million Facebook profiles and was used to provide analytical assistance to the 2016 presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. (Wikimedia, 2021)  While the big data company has since filed bankruptcy due to the resulting scandal, this may just be the beginning of voter influence.  For example, Michal Kosinski who describes himself as a computational psychologist and big data scientist, recently demonstrated an algorithm he created to reporter Jamie Bartlett. Using innocuous information, like his fondness for The Sopranos and Kate Bush, the algorithm was able to accurately predict Bartlett’s job and religious background. Bartlett and many others now believe that politicians, being able to use big data in this way, have fundamentally changed the integrity of the electoral process.  (Munro, 2018)

EVOLVING TECHNOLOGY & TRUTH PERCEPTION

The possibility of being influenced, makes involved citizens question credibility.  Many believe that the information and trust environment will worsen by 2030 thanks to the rise of video deepfakes, cheapfakes and other misinformation tactics. (Anderson, 2020) AI and augmented reality will make us question everything we read, hear or see to determine if its real or clever fakery. (Botsun, 2018).   For example, a team of computer scientists at the University of Washington generated some fake yet highly convincing videos using machine-learning techniques to realistically mimic how a person moves his/her mouth and duplicate his tics and mannerisms perfectly. Thus, a video can conceivably be concocted to completely dupe the public. While this may be a very interesting technological advancement, one must wonder what kind of effect this will have on truth perception. According to a recent study, 63% of 33,000 respondents said they no longer knew how to tell good journalism from rumor or falsehoods and that was before this technology was created.  If this doesn’t make you crawl back into the comfy abode of your echo chamber, I don’t know what will.

DEMOCRACY & ECHO CHAMBERS

Democracy is centered on the exchange of views.  George Krimsky, the former head of news for the Associated Press’ World Services explains, “A self-governing society, by definition, needs to make its own decisions. It cannot do that without hard information, leavened with an open exchange of views.” (Krimsky, n.d.)  With everyone locked in an echo chamber, that simply doesn’t happen. However, some continue to champion social media, stating that this new technology can penetrate any censorship system in the world and asking us to notice how readily accessible information is today.  Krimsky notes, “Yes, the choices may be larger, but a case can be made they are not deeper — that big money is replacing quality products and services with those of only the most massive appeal. The banquet table may be larger, but if it only contains “junk food,” is there really more choice?”. (Krimsky, n.d.)  John Goff, a renowned digital strategist, further explains, “Because of algorithms, social media has never really been a forum for the best ideas to rise organically to the top … what’s been shown in the past several years, is that … these platforms are engineered to be vulnerable to propaganda campaigns, among other interventions.” (Botsun, 2018).  This means that the 71% of Americans who rely on social media for their news are unwittingly being fed, not the most reliable information, but rather content which increases their engagement level. (Hutchinson, 2021)