essay on social media and politics

• Campus News
• Campus Events
• Devotionals and Forums
• Readers’ Forum
• Education Week
• Breaking News
• Police Beat
• Video of the Day
• Current Issue
• August 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023
• The Daily Universe Magazine, December 2022
• The Daily Universe, November 2022
• The Daily Universe Magazine, October 2022
• The Daily Universe Magazine, September 2022 (Black 14)
• The Daily Universe Magazine, March 2022
• The Daily Universe Magazine, February 2022
• The Daily Universe Magazine, January 2022
• December 2021
• The Daily Universe Magazine, November 2021
• The Daily Universe, October 2021
• The Daily Universe Magazine, September 2021
• Hope for Lahaina: Witnesses of the Maui Wildfires
• Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial
• The Black 14: Healing Hearts and Feeding Souls
• Camino de Santiago
• A Poor Wayfaring Man
• Palmyra: 200 years after Moroni’s visits
• The Next Normal
• Called to Serve In A Pandemic
• The World Meets Our Campus
• Defining Moments of BYU Sports
• If Any of You Lack Wisdom

How social media impacts political views

Leer en español: Cómo las redes sociales impactan las opiniones políticas

Social media platforms have recently facilitated the organization of protests around racism across the country and even prompted teenagers and K-Pop fans to register for a Trump rally in June with no intention of attending.

But social media use affects young users’ political views and involvement in other ways like exposing users to certain views or determining their understanding of current events.

Different viewpoints or echo chambers?

According to a report from the Pew Research Center , the majority of surveyed teens said they felt social media exposed them to people with different backgrounds and views and helped them show support for causes and issues important to them.

For BYU students, the results of the report mirror their thoughts on how social media platforms influence their political views.

In an informal Instagram poll on The Daily Universe’s account, 89% of the 273 respondents said they believe social media has affected their political views and involvement. When asked for specifics, the majority of commenters said social media has exposed them to different viewpoints and a few said social media can create echo chambers.

BYU student Abby Bjorkman said social media has helped her see views beyond her own community, which is predominantly white. “Especially with the Black Lives Matter movement, I have been able to educate myself on others’ experiences in America besides my own, which is the perspective of a white female.”

While Bjorkman acknowledged it can be easy to fall into an echo chamber and only see posts from those with similar views, she feels she has followed a wide enough variety of people to hear opposing opinions.

“Some users can feel extreme on both sides and can almost be intimidating, but it is up to the user to manipulate how much they want to see,” Bjorkman said.

BYU public relations professor Pamela Brubaker said social media users sometimes only interact with content that reflects their own views, which then leads to the apps suggesting other similar content.

“News and information are pushed to us based upon the content we engage with and the people we engage with online,” Brubaker said. “As a result, if your friends are more politically active on Facebook or Instagram, you are more likely to have higher levels of exposure to political content.”

Social media as a primary news source

Another recent Pew Research Center study shows that people who turn to social media to stay up to date about current events generally pay less attention to and are less knowledgeable about the news and politics. The study found that 48% of young adults age 18-29 fall into this category and primarily get their news from social media.

The study used data from five different surveys conducted from October 2019 to June 2020. During this time major news and political events like the impeachment and the outbreak of the coronavirus occurred. Researchers asked respondents questions to measure their understanding of these events.

The results show that 57% of people who rely on social media for news had low political knowledge and only 17% had high political knowledge. The only group with a larger percentage of low political knowledge was individuals who get their news from local TV stations.

According to the study, those who primarily get news from social media are “more likely than other Americans to have heard about a number of false or unproven claims.”

Brubaker said the increased reliance on social media could stimulate more political discussions both online and offline, but it also might limit the political views and information users are exposed to. “To stay politically informed, it’s important to expand our sources. We should rely on more than the news that’s pushed to us. We should also actively seek to be informed.”

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Lazy triathlon lets students exercise at their own pace, what byu students living with disabilities want you to know, byu tunnel singing brings students together.

Parasite Chromosomes: 100 Years to Solve the Enigma

The periodic table, the crystal ball of chemistry, openmind books, scientific anniversaries, a loop towards the extinction of species,the other ‘butterfly effect’, featured author, latest book, the past decade and future of political media: the ascendance of social media.

The American media system has undergone significant transformations since the advent of new media in the late 1980s. During the past decade, social media have become powerful political tools in campaigns and governing. This article explores three major trends related to the rise of social media that are relevant for democratic politics in the United States. First, there is a major shift in how and where people get political information, as more people turn to digital sources and abandon television news. Next, the emergence of the political “Twitterverse,” which has become a locus of communication between politicians, citizens, and the press, has coarsened political discourse, fostered “rule by tweet,” and advanced the spread of misinformation. Finally, the disappearance of local news outlets and the resulting increase in “news deserts” has allowed social-media messages to become a primary source of information in places where Donald Trump’s support is most robust.

The political media system in the United States has undergone massive transformations over the past three decades. The scope of these new media developments is vast, encompassing both legacy sources as well as entirely novel communication platforms made possible by emerging technologies. The new media era began with the infotainment trend in the 1980s when television talk shows, talk radio, and tabloid papers took on enhanced political roles. Changes became more radical when the Internet emerged as a delivery system for political content in the 1990s. Digital technology first supported platforms where users could access static documents and brochures, but soon hosted sites with interactive features. The public gained greater political agency through technological affordances that allowed them to react to political events and issues, communicate directly to candidates and political leaders, contribute original news, images, videos, and political content, and engage in political activities, such as working on behalf of candidates, raising funds, and organizing protests. At the same time, journalists acquired pioneering mechanisms for reporting stories and reaching audiences. Politicians amassed news ways of conveying messages to the public, other elites, and the press, influencing constituents’ opinions, recruiting volunteers and donors, and mobilizing voters (Davis and Owen, 1998; Owen, 2017a).

The evolution of social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, from platforms facilitating networks among friends to powerful political tools has been an especially momentous development. The political role of social media in American politics was established during the 2008 presidential election. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s social-media strategy revolutionized campaigning by altering the structure of political organizing. Obama’s campaign took on the characteristics of a social movement with strong digital grassroots mobilization (Bimber, 2014). The campaign exploited the networking, collaborating, and community-building potential of social media. It used social media to make personalized appeals to voters aided by data analytics that guided targeted messaging. Voters created and amplified messages about the candidates without going through formal campaign organizations or political parties (Stromer-Galley, 2016). The most popular viral videos in the 2008 campaign, BarelyPolitical.com’s “Obama Girl” and will.i.am’s “Yes, We Can,” were produced independently and attracted millions of viewers (Wallsten, 2010). In this unique election, the calculated strategies of Obama’s official campaign organization were aided by the spontaneous innovation of voters themselves. Going forward, campaigns—including Obama’s 2012 committee—would work hard to curtail outside efforts and exert more control over the campaign-media process (Stromer-Galley, 2016).

The new media era began with the infotainment trend in the 1980s when television talk shows, talk radio, and tabloid papers took on enhanced political roles

Since then, social media’s political function in campaigns, government, and political movements, as well as their role in the news media ecosystem, has rapidly broadened in reach, consequence, and complexity. As political scientist Bruce Bimber points out: “The exercise of power and the configuration of advantage and dominance in democracy are linked to technological change” (2014: 130). Who controls, consumes, and distributes information is largely determined by who is best able to navigate digital technology. Social media have emerged as essential intermediaries that political and media actors use to assert influence. Political leaders have appropriated social media effectively to achieve political ends, ever-more frequently pushing the boundaries of discursive action to extremes. Donald Trump’s brash, often reckless, use of Twitter has enabled him to communicate directly to the public, stage-manage his political allies and detractors, and control the news agenda. Aided by social media, he has exceeded the ability of his modern-day presidential predecessors to achieve these ends. Social-media platforms facilitate the creation and sustenance of ad hoc groups, including those on the alt-right and far left of the political spectrum. These factors have encouraged the ubiquitous spread of false information that threatens to undermine democratic governance that relies on citizens’ access to quality information for decision-making.

Social media have low barriers to entry and offer expanded opportunities for mass political engagement. They have centralized access to information and have made it easier for the online population to monitor politics. Growing numbers of people are using social media to engage in discussions and share messages within their social networks (Owen, 2017b). Effective use of social media has contributed to the success of social movements and political protests by promoting unifying messages and facilitating logistics (Jost et al., 2018). The #MeToo movement became a global phenomenon as a result of social media spreading the word. Actress Alyssa Milano sent out a tweet encouraging women who had been sexually harassed or assaulted to use the #MeToo hashtag in their social-media feed. Within twenty-four hours, 4.7 million people on Facebook and nearly one million on Twitter had used the hashtag. The number grew to over eighty-five million users in eighty-five countries on Facebook in forty-five days (Sayej, 2017).

Still, there are indications that elite political actors have increasingly attempted to shape, even restrict, the public’s digital influence in the political sphere. Since 2008, parties and campaign organizations have sought to hyper-manage voters’ digital engagement in elections by channeling their involvement through official Web sites and social-media platforms. They have controlled voters’ access to information by microtargeting messages based on users’ personal data, political proclivities, and consumer preferences derived from their social- media accounts. Further, a small number of companies, notably Google and Facebook, have inordinate power over the way that people spend their time and money online. Their ability to attract and maintain audiences undercuts the ability of small firms, local news outlets, and individuals to stake out their place in the digital market (Hindman, 2018).

The political role of social media in American politics was established during the 2008 presidential election. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s social-media strategy revolutionized campaigning by taking on the characteristics of a social movement with strong digital grass-roots mobilization

This article will focus on three major trends related to the rise of social media over the past decade that have particular significance for democratic politics and governance in the United States. First, the shift in audience preferences away from traditional mass media to digital sources has changed how people follow politics and the type of information they access. Many people are now getting news from their social-media feeds which contributes to rampant political insularity, polarization, and incivility. Next, the emergence of the political “Twitterverse” has fundamentally altered the way that politicians, citizens, and the press convey information, including messages of significant import to the nation. The “Twitterverse” is comprised of the users of the microblogging platform as well as those exposed to its content when it is disseminated through other media, such as twenty-four-hour news channels. Twitter and other social media in the age of Trump have advanced the proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, “alternative facts,” and “fake news.” Importantly, Donald Trump’s presidency has ushered in an era of “rule by tweet,” as politicians make key pronouncements and conduct government business through Twitter. Finally, the spread of “news deserts”—places where local news outlets have disappeared—has compromised the institutional media’s ability to check false facts disseminated by social media, hyper-partisan sources, and bots propagating computational propaganda.

Shifting Audience Media Preferences

The number of options available to news consumers has grown dramatically as content from ever-increasing sources is distributed via print, television, radio, computers, tablets, and mobile devices. More Americans are seeking news and political information since the 2016 presidential election and the turbulent times that have followed than at other periods in the past decade. At the same time, seven in ten people have experienced news fatigue and feel worn out from the constant barrage of contentious stories that are reported daily (Gottfried and Barthel, 2018). This is not surprising when the breaking news within a single day in September 2018 featured Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony that she had been sexually assaulted by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a nominee for the US Supreme Court; the possibility that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, head of the investigation into Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election, could be fired by President Donald Trump for suggesting in a private meeting that steps be taken to remove Trump from office; and comedian Bill Cosby being sentenced to prison for sexual misconduct and led away in handcuffs.

Where Americans Get Their News

One of the most notable developments in the past decade has been the shift in where and how Americans get their news and information about politics. There has been a marked transition in audience preferences away from traditional media, especially television and print newspapers, to online news sources and, more recently, news apps for smartphones. Social media have become major sources of news for millions of Americans, who either get political information deliberately through subscriptions or accidentally come upon it in their newsfeed. Trends in the public’s media use become most apparent during periods of heightened political awareness, such as during political campaigns. Thus, Table 1 presents the percentage of adults who frequently used specific types of media to get information about the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential elections.

Table 1 . Percentage of American adults using media often in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 presidential elections. (Source: Pew Research Center, data compiled by the author.)

The excitement surrounding the 2008 election, largely attributed to the landmark candidacy of Barack Obama, coupled with digital breakthroughs in campaigning, caused regular online news use to escalate to 37% of the public from 9% in 2006. Attention to news online dwindled somewhat in 2012 to 31%, as voters were less interested in the 2012 presidential campaign where President Obama sought reelection against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. However, the public’s use of news delivered online and through apps surged to 43% during the 2016 election that pitted Democrat Hillary Clinton against Republican Donald Trump.

When cable, network, and local channels are considered together, television was the main source of campaign information throughout this period for a majority of the public. Network TV news had seen a precipitous decline in viewership prior to 2008, and its regular audience remained consistently around 30% of the population across the three election cycles, then falling in 2017 to 26%. Cable TV news’ popularity declined somewhat from around 40% in 2008 and 2012 to 31% in 2016 and 28% in 2017. Like network news, local TV news has dropped in popularity over the past two decades. This decline may in part be attributed to the disappearance of independent local news programs that have been replaced by shows operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative media organization. At its peak, local news was viewed regularly by more than 70% of the population. Local news attracted the largest regular TV audience in 2008 (52%), dropped precipitously in 2012 (38%), climbed again in popularity in 2016 (46%), and fell to 37% in 2017 (Matsa, 2018).

In 2016, 57% of the public often got news on television compared to 38% who used online sources. From 2016 to 2017, television’s regular audience had declined to 50% of the population, and the online news audience had grown to 43%

In a relatively short period of time, the public’s preference for online news has made significant gains on television news as a main source. In 2016, 57% of the public often got news on television compared to 38% who used online sources. From 2016 to 2017, television’s regular audience had declined to 50% of the population, and the online news audience had grown to 43%. The nineteen-percentage point gap in favor of television news had closed to seven percentage points in a single year (Gottfried and Shearer, 2017). If current trends continue, online news may eclipse television news as the public’s main source in the not-so-distant future.

As the public’s preference for online news has surged, there has been a major decline in print newspaper readership. In 2008, 34% of the public regularly read a print paper. By 2012 the number had decreased to 23% and continued to fall to 20% in 2016 and 18% in 2017. Radio news has maintained a relatively stable audience share with occasional peaks when political news is especially compelling, such as during the 2008 presidential campaign when 35% of the public regularly tuned in. The radio news audience has remained at around 25% of the public since 2012. Talk radio, bolstered by the popularity of conservative hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, and community radio reporting on local affairs consistently attracts around 10% to 12% of the population (Guo, 2015).

Social Media as a News Source

The American public’s use of social media increased rapidly in the period following the 2008 presidential election. Reliance on social media for news and political information has increased steadily over the past decade. According to the Pew Research Center, 68% of American adults in 2018 got news from social media at least occasionally, and 20% relied often on social media for news (Shearer and Matsa, 2018). Table 2 presents data from the Pew Research Center indicating the percentage of Americans who regularly used at least one social-media site like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn over time. Few people were active on social media between 2005 and 2008. Even during the watershed 2008 campaign, only 21% of the public was on social media. By 2009, however, the number of people online had spiked to 42% as social media took hold in the political sphere in the run-up to the 2010 midterm elections. The Tea Party, a loosely-organized populist movement that ran candidates who successfully attained office, relied heavily on social media as an alternative to the mainstream press which they regularly assailed. The mainstream press was compelled to cover the Tea Party’s social-media pronouncements, which helped digital platforms to gain in popularity among voters. Social-media users who remained loyal to the Tea Party were prominent among supporters who actively worked on behalf of Donald Trump’s campaign by mobilizing voters in their networks (Rohlinger and Bunnage, 2017). By 2013, over 60% of the public was using social media. The percentage of social-media users has leveled off at near 70% since the 2016 presidential election.

Table 2 . Americans’ social-media use 2005–18. (Source: Pew Research Center, Social-Media Fact Sheet, 2018.)

The shift in the public’s media allegiances toward digital sources has rendered social media a far more viable and effective political tool. A decade ago, only the most interested and tech-savvy citizens used social media for politics. Young people were advantaged in their ability to leverage social media due to their facility with the technology and their fascination with the novelty of this approach to politics. The age gap in political social-media use has been closing, as have differences based on other demographic characteristics, such as gender, race, education, and income (Smith and Anderson, 2018), which has altered politicians’ approach to these platforms. In the past, elites employed social media primarily to set the agenda for mainstream media so that their messages could gain widespread attention. Today, political leaders not only engage social media to control the press agenda, they can also use these platforms effectively to cultivate their political base. In addition, elites use social media to communicate with one another in a public forum. In 2017, Donald Trump and North Korean president Kim Jong Un traded Twitter barbs that escalated tensions between the two nations over nuclear weapons. They exchanged personal insults, with Trump calling Kim “little rocket man” and Kim labeling Trump a “dotard” and “old lunatic.” Trump also engaged in a bitter Twitter battle with French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about tariffs and trade that prompted the American president to leave the G7 summit early in 2018 (Liptak, Kosinski, and Diamond, 2018).

The Political Twitterverse

The emergence of the political “Twitterverse” has coincided with the rise of social media over the past decade. Social media are distinct from other digital channels in that they host interactions among users who set up personal profiles and communicate with others in their networks (Carr and Hayes, 2015). Participants use social media to create and distribute content, consume and interact with material posted by their connections, and share their views publicly (Ellison and Boyd, 2013). Social-networking sites can help people to maintain and develop social relationships, engage in social surveillance and voyeurism, and pursue self-promotion (Alhabash and Ma, 2017). Users often employ social media to seek out and follow like-minded people and groups which promotes social bonding, reinforces personal and political identities, and provides digital companionship (Jung and Sundar, 2016; Joinson, 2008). These characteristics are highly conducive to the adaptation of social media—especially Twitter—for political use. Donald Trump’s Twitter followers identify with him on a personal level, which encourages their blanket acceptance of his policies (Owen, 2018).

Origins of Social Media

The current era of networked communication originated with the invention of the World Wide Web in 1991, and the development of Weblogs, list-serves, and e-mail that supported online communities. The first social-media site, Six Degrees, was developed in 1997 and disappeared in 2000 as there were too few users to sustain it. Niche sites catering to identity groups, such as Asian Avenue, friendship circles, including Friendster and MySpace, professional contacts, like LinkedIn, and public-policy advocates, such as MoveOn, also emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The advent of Web 2.0 in the mid-2000s, with its emphasis on participatory, user-centric, collaborative platforms, coincided with the development of enduring social-media platforms, including Facebook (2004) and YouTube (2005) (van Dijck, 2013; Edosomwan et al., 2011), which have become staples of political campaigning, organizing, and governing.

When Twitter was founded in 2006, it was envisioned as a microblogging site where groups of friends could send short messages (tweets) to their friends about what was happening in their lives in real time in a manner akin to texting. Users could also upload photos, GIFs, and short videos to the site. Twitter initially imposed a 140-character constraint on tweets which was the limit that mobile carriers placed on SMS text messages. The limit was increased to 280 characters in 2017 as the popularity of the platform peaked and wireless carrier restrictions on the amount of content users could send were no longer relevant. Users easily circumvent the character limit by posting multiple tweets in sequence, a practice used frequently by Donald Trump. Twitter’s user base quickly sought to expand the functionality of the platform by including the @ symbol before a username to identify other users and adding #hashtags to mark content, making it easier to follow topics and themes. While the actual number of Twitter followers is difficult to verify as many accounts are dormant or controlled by bot software, it is estimated that there were 335 million active monthly users worldwide in 2018 (Statista, 2018). Still, it took Twitter twelve years to turn a profit for the first time when it increased attention to ad sales (Tsukayama, 2018).

Twitter in the Age of Trump

Standard communication practices for American politicians have been upended by Donald Trump’s use of Twitter. Trump was on Twitter seven years prior to his quest for the presidency. His signature Twitter style was established during his days on the reality TV program  The Apprentice , and it has changed little since he launched his political career. Trump’s Twitter pronouncements are superficial, which is well-suited to a medium with a word limit on posts. His messages are expressed conversationally using an accessible, informal, fourth-grade vocabulary. Trump’s tweets have the tone of a pitchman who is trying to sell a bill of goods (Grieve and Clarke, 2017; Clarke and Grieve, 2017). They are often conflicting, confusing, and unclear, which allows users to interpret them based on their own preconceptions. His posts are repetitious and have a similar cadence which fosters a sense of believability and familiarity among his loyalists (Graham, 2018).

Social-media users often employ social media to seek out and follow like-minded people and groups which promotes social bonding, reinforces personal and political identities, and provides digital companionship

Trump has bragged that his control over Twitter paved his path to the White House (Tatum, 2017). As a presidential candidate, Trump effectively engaged Twitter to publicize his thoughts, attack his long list of enemies, and hijack political discourse. His supporters became ardent followers of his Twitter messages during the campaign. Trump’s campaign social-media style contrasted with Hillary Clinton’s more controlled approach, which had been the pre-Trump norm (Enli, 2017). Clinton’s social-media posts were measured in tone, rarely made personal attacks, and provided reasons and facts supporting her issue positions. In contrast, Trump made broad, general declarations that lacked evidence (Stromer-Galley, 2016) and claimed credit for the accomplishments of others (Tsur et al., 2016).

Since the election, Twitter has become Trump’s connection to the world outside the White House. He engages in “rule by tweet,” as his Twitter feed substitutes for regular presidential press conferences and weekly radio addresses that were the norm for his predecessors when making major policy announcements. Trump regularly produces nasty and outlandish tweets to ensure that he remains at the center of attention, even as political and natural disasters move the spotlight. Twitter changes the life cycle of news as developing reports can be readily overtaken by a new story generated by a provocative tweet. A digital communications strategist for the Trump campaign named Cassidy asserted that this strategy has been intentional: “Trump’s goal from the beginning of his candidacy has been to set the agenda of the media. His strategy is to keep things moving so fast, to talk so loudly—literally and metaphorically—that the media, and the people, can’t keep up” (Woolley and Guilbeault, 2017: 4). Trump’s Twitter tirades often sideline public discussions of important policy issues, such as immigration and health care, distract from embarrassing personal scandals, and attempt to camouflage the mishaps of his administration.

Amplification, Incivility, and Polarization

The power of social media to influence politics is enhanced due to their ability to amplify messages quickly through diverse media platforms. Social media have become a steady source of political content for news outlets with large audiences, especially cable news. Trump supporters regularly tune in to Fox News to cheer his latest Twitter exploits. Talking heads on media that view Trump more negatively, like CNN and MSNBC, spend countless hours attempting to interpret his tweets as the messages are displayed prominently on screen. Supporters who interact with, annotate, and forward his messages lend greater credence to Trump’s missives within their networks. Trump’s individual messages are retweeted 20,000 times on average; some of his anti-media screeds have been retweeted as many as 50,000 times (Wallsten, 2018). The perception that Trump is powerful is enhanced simply by virtue of the amount of attention he draws. Politicians can use the amplification power of social media to galvanize public opinion and to call people to action. These benefits of Twitter amplification have been shown to empower men substantially more than women. Male political journalists have a greater audience on Twitter than their female peers, and they are more likely to spread the political messages of men than women (Usher, Holcomb, and Littman, 2018).

The power of social media to influence politics is enhanced due to their ability to amplify messages quickly through diverse media platforms. Social media have become a steady source of political content for news outlets with large audiences, especially cable news

Social media host discourse that is increasingly incivil and politically polarizing. Offhanded remarks are now released into the public domain where they can have widespread political consequences (van Dijck, 2013). Trump’s aggressive Twitter pronouncements are devoid of filtering that conforms to cultural codes of decency. He makes expansive use of adjectives, typically to describe himself in positive terms and to denigrate others. He constantly refers to himself as “beautiful,” “great,” “smartest,” “most successful,” and “having the biggest brain.” In contrast, he refers to those who fall out of favor as “lying Hillary Clinton,” “untruthful slime ball James Comey” (a former FBI director), and “crazy Mika” (Brzezinski, a political talk-show host). As of June 2018, Trump had used the terms “loser” 246 times, “dummy” 232 times, and “stupid” 192 times during his presidency to describe people he dislikes (Armstrong, 2018).

Politicians have engaged in partisan Twitter wars that have further divided Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals. On a day when the  New York Times  revealed that the Trump family had dodged millions of dollars in taxes and provided Donald Trump with far more financial support than he has claimed, Trump sought to shift the press agenda by tweeting his anger at “the vicious and despicable way Democrats are treating [Supreme Court nominee] Brett Kavanaugh!” Research conducted at the University of Pennsylvania found that the political use of Twitter by the general public is concentrated among a small subset of the public representing polar ideological extremes who identify as either “very conservative” or “very liberal.” Moderate political voices are rarely represented on the platform (Preotiuc-Pietro et al., 2017).

The Twitterverse is highly prone to deception. Twitter and other social media have contributed to—even fostered—the proliferation of false information and hoaxes where stories are entirely fabricated. False facts spread fast through social media. They can make their way onto legitimate news platforms and are difficult to rebut as the public has a hard time determining fact from fiction. Many people have inadvertently passed on “fake news” through their social-media feeds. In fact, an MIT study found that people are more likely to pass on false stories through their networks because they are often novel and generate emotional responses in readers (Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral, 2018). President Barack Obama has referred to the confusion caused by conspiracy theories and misleading information during the 2016 election as a “dust cloud of nonsense” (Heath, 2016).

Misinformation is often targeted at ideological audiences, which contributes the rise in political polarization. A  BuzzFeed News  analysis found that three prominent right-wing Facebook pages published misinformation 38% of the time and three major left-wing pages posted false facts 20% of the time (Silverman et al., 2016). The situation is even more severe for Twitter, where people can be completely anonymous and millions of automated bots and fake accounts have flooded the network with tweets and retweets. These bots have quickly outrun the spam detectors that Twitter has installed (Manjoo, 2017).

Trump supporters regularly tune in to Fox News to cheer his latest Twitter exploits. Talking heads on media that view Trump more negatively, like CNN and MSNBC, spend countless hours attempting to interpret his tweets as the messages are displayed prominently on screen

The dissemination of false information through Twitter is especially momentous amidst the uncertainty of an unfolding crisis where lies can spread much faster than the truth (Vosoughi, Roy, and Aral, 2018). Misinformation and hoaxes circulated widely as the shooting of seventeen students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida in February of 2018 was unfolding. Conspiracy theories about the identity of the shooter pointed in the wrong direction. False photos of the suspect and victims were circulated. Tweets from a reporter with the  Miami Herald  were doctored and retweeted to make it appear as if she had asked students for photos and videos of dead bodies. Within an hour of the shooting, Twitter accounts populated by Russian bots circulated hundreds of posts about the hot-button issue of gun control designed to generate political divisiveness (Frenkel and Wakabayaski, 2018). In the weeks after the shooting, as Parkland students became activists for stronger gun control measures, conspiracy theories proliferated. A widespread rumor asserted that the students were “crisis actors” who had no affiliation with the school. A doctored conspiracy video attacking the students was posted on YouTube and became a top trending clip on the site (Arkin and Popken, 2018).

The Emergence of News Deserts

The consequences of the rise of social media and the spread of false information have been elevated by the disappearance of trusted local news organizations from the media landscape. The proliferation of “news deserts”—communities where there are no responsible local news organizations to provide information to residents and to counter false stories—has meant that misinformation is often taken for fact and spread virally through people’s social networks unchecked (Bucay et al., 2017). Facebook and Twitter have been reluctant to deal effectively with the flow of misinformation through their platforms and have even refused to remove demonstrated false stories from their sites (Hautala, 2018). In 2018, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, and YouTube permanently banned alt-right radio host Alex Jones and his site,  InfoWars , after failing to take any disciplinary action for years against his prolific spread of abusive conspiracy theories. But this move by big media companies was an exception. These circumstances have raised the potential for misinformation to unsettle the political system.

The proliferation of “news deserts”—communities where there are no responsible local news organizations to provide information to residents and to counter false stories—has meant that misinformation is often taken for fact and spread virally through people’s social networks

Local news historically has been a staple of Americans’ media diets. Less than a decade ago, local newspapers were responsible for approximately 85% of fact-based and investigative news (Jones, 2011). However, their importance for informing and shaping opinions of people in small towns and suburban communities has often been underestimated. Community newspapers have been far more consequential to their millions of readers than large newspapers of record, such as  The New York Times  and  The Washington Post , whose stories are amplified on twenty-four-hour cable news programs. People tend to trust their local news outlets, and to have faith that the journalists—who are their neighbors—will report stories accurately. Citizens have relied heavily on local news outlets to keep them informed about current happenings and issues that are directly relevant to their daily lives. Local news stories influence the opinions of residents and routinely impact the policy decisions made by community leaders. Importantly, audiences rely on local journalists to provide them with the facts and to act as a check on misinformation that might be disseminated by outside sources, especially as they greatly distrust national news (Abernathy, 2016).

Trump’s tweets have become more relevant to his base in an era when local news sources have been disappearing from the media landscape. His tweets can substitute for news among people living in news deserts. The influence of his social-media messaging is enhanced in places where access to local media that would check his facts, provide context for his posts, and offer alternative interpretations is lacking The dearth of robust local news outlets is especially pronounced in rural, predominantly white areas of the country where Donald Trump’s political base is ensconced (Lawless and Hayes, 2018; Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, 2017). With the counterbalance of trusted local news sources, Trump’s attacks on the mainstream media resonate strongly, and the public’s political perspective is heavily influenced by relentless partisan social-media messages that masquerade as news in their feed (Musgrave and Nussbaum, 2018).

The concentration of media ownership in the hands of large corporations has further undermined truly local news. As independent media organizations have disappeared, they have been replaced in an increasing number of markets by platforms owned by news conglomerates. Sinclair Broadcast Group is the largest television news conglomerate in the United States and has bought out local stations across the country, including in news deserts. The company has strong ties to the Trump administration and has pushed its reporters to give stories a more conservative slant. An Emory University study revealed that Sinclair’s TV news stations have shifted coverage away from local news to focus on national stories, and that coverage has a decidedly right-wing ideological perspective (Martin and McCrain, 2018). On a single day, Sinclair compelled their local news anchors to give the same speech warning about the dangers of “fake news,” and stating that they were committed to fair reporting. Many anchors were uncomfortable making the speech, which they described as a “forced read.” A video of anchors across the country reciting the script was widely reported in the mainstream press and went viral on social media (Fortin and Bromwich, 2018).

The digital revolution has unfolded more rapidly and has had broader, deeper, and more transformative repercussions on politics and news than any prior transition in communication technology, including the advent of television. Over the past decade, the rise in social media as a political tool has fundamentally changed the relationships between politicians, the press, and the public. The interjection of Donald Trump into the political media mix has hastened the evolution of the media system in some unanticipated directions. As one scholar has noted: “The Internet reacted and adapted to the introduction of the Trump campaign like an ecosystem welcoming a new and foreign species. His candidacy triggered new strategies and promoted established Internet forces” (Persily, 2017).

The political media ecology continues to evolve. Politicians are constantly seeking alternatives to social media as a dominant form of communicating to the public. Candidates in the 2018 midterm elections turned to text messages as a campaign tool that is supplanting phone-banks and door-to-door canvassing as a way of reaching voters. New developments in software, such as Hustle, Relay, and RumbleUp, have made it possible to send thousands of texts per hour without violating federal laws that prohibit robo-texting—sending messages in bulk. Texts are used to register voters, organize campaign events, fundraise, and advertise. The text messages are sent by volunteers who then answer responses from recipients. The strategy is aimed especially at reaching voters in rural areas and young people from whom texting is the preferred method of digital communication (Ingram, 2018). Much like Trump’s Twitter feed, texting gives the perception that politicians are reaching out personally to their constituents. The tactic also allows politicians to distance themselves from big media companies, like Facebook and Google, and the accompanying concerns that personal data will be shared without consent.

The digital revolution has unfolded more rapidly and has had broader, deeper, and more transformative repercussions on politics and news than any prior transition in communication technology, including the advent of television

Great uncertainly surrounds the future of political communication. The foregoing discussion has highlighted some bleak trends in the present state of political communication. Political polarization has rendered reasoned judgment and compromise obsolete. The rampant spread of misinformation impedes responsible decision-making. The possibility for political leaders to negatively exploit the power of social media has been realized.

At the same time, pendulums do shift, and there are positive characteristics of the new media era that may prevail. Digital media have vastly increased the potential for political information to reach even the most disinterested citizens. Attention to the 2018 midterm elections was inordinately high, and the ability for citizens to express themselves openly through social media has contributed to this engagement. Issues and events that might be outside the purview of mainstream journalists can be brought to prominence by ordinary citizens. Social media has kept the #MeToo movement alive as women continue to tell their stories and form online communities. Further, there is evidence of a resurgence in investigative journalism that is fueled, in part, by access to vast digital resources available for researching stories, including government archives and big data analysis. These trends offer a spark of hope for the future of political media.

Bibliography

—Abernathy, Penelope Muse. 2016.  The Rise of a New Media Baron and the Emerging Threat of News Deserts . Research Report. Chapel Hill, NC: The Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media, School of Media and Journalism, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

—Alhabash, Saleem, and Ma, Mangyan. 2017. “A tale of four platforms: Motivations and uses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat among college students?”  Social Media and Society , January-March: 1–13.

—Arkin and Popken, 2018. “How the Internet’s conspiracy theorists turned Parkland students into ‘crisis actors’.”  NBC News , February 21.  https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/how-internet-s-conspiracy-theorists-turned-parkland-students-crisis-actors-n849921 .

—Armstrong, Martin. 2018. “Trump’s favorite Twitter insults.”  Statista , June 28.  https://www.statista.com/chart/14474/trump-favorite-twitter-insults/ .

—Bimber, Bruce. 2014. “Digital media in the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012: Adaptation to the personalized political communication environment.”  Journal of Information Technology & Politics  11(2): 130–150.

—Bucay, Yemile, Elliott, Vitoria, Kamin, Jennie, and Park, Andrea. 2017. “America’s growing news deserts.”  Columbia Journalism Review , spring.  https://www.cjr.org/local_news/american-news-deserts-donuts-local.php .

—Carr, Caleb T., and Hayes, Rebecca, 2015. “Social media: Defining, developing, and divining.”  Atlantic Journal of Communication  23(1): 46–65.

—Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media. 2017.  Thwarting the Emergence of News Deserts . Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina School of Media and Journalism.  https://www.cislm.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Symposium-Leave-Behind-0404finalweb.pdf .

—Clarke, Isobelle, and Grieve, Jack. 2017. “Dimensions of abusive language on Twitter.” In  Proceedings of the First Workshop on Abusive Language Online . Vancouver, Canada: The Association of Computational Linguistics, 1–10.  http://www.aclweb.org/anthology/W17-3001 .

—Davis, Richard, and Owen, Diana. 1998.  New Media in American Politics . New York: Oxford University Press.

—Edosomwan, Simeon, Prakasan, Sitalaskshmi Kalangot, Kouame, Doriane, Watson, Jonelle, and Seymour, Tom. 2011. “The history of social media and its impact on business.”  The Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship  16(3).  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simeon_Edosomwan/publication/303216233_The_history_of_social_media_and_its_impact_on_business/links/57fe90ef08ae56fae5f23f1d/The-history-of-social-media-and-its-impact-on-business.pdf .

—Ellison, Nicole B., and Boyd, Danah. 2013. “Sociality through social network sites.” In  The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies , William H. Dutton (ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 151–172.

—Enli, Gunn. 2017. “Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider: Exploring the social media campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election.”  European Journal of Communication  32(1): 50–61.

—Fortin, Jacey, and Bromwich, Jonah Engel. 2018. “Sinclair made dozens of local news anchors recite the same script.”  The New York Times , April 2.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/business/media/sinclair-news-anchors-script.html .

—Frenkel, Sheera, and Wakabayashi, Daisuke. 2018. “After Florida school shooting, Russian ‘bot’ army pounced.”  The New York Times , February 2.  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/19/technology/russian-bots-school-shooting.html .

—Gottfried, Jeffrey, and Shearer, Elisa. 2017. “Americans’ online news use is closing in on TV news use.”  Fact Tank . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/07/americans-online-news-use-vs-tv-news-use/ .

—Gottfried, Jeffrey, and Barthel, Michael. 2018. “Almost seven-in-ten Americans have news fatigue, more among Republicans.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/05/almost-seven-in-ten-americans-have-news-fatigue-more-among-republicans/ .

—Graham, David A. 2018. “The gap between Trump’s tweets and reality.”  The Atlantic , April 2.  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/04/the-world-according-to-trump/557033/ .

—Grieve, Jack, and Clarke, Isobelle. 2017. “Stylistic variation in the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account and the stylistic typicality of the pled tweet.” Research Report. University of Birmingham, UK.  http://rpubs.com/jwgrieve/340342 .

—Guo, Lei. 2015. “Exploring the link between community radio and the community: A study of audience participation in alternative media practices.”  Communication, Culture, and Critique  10(1).  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cccr.12141 .

—Hautala, Laura. 2018. “Facebook’s fight against fake news remains a bit of a mystery.”  c/net , July 24.  https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-says-misinformation-is-a-problem-but-wont-say-how-big/ .

—Heath, Alex. 2016. “OBAMA: Fake news on Facebook is creating a ‘dust cloud of nonsense.’”  Business Insider , November 7.  https://www.businessinsider.com/obama-fake-news-facebook-creates-dust-cloud-of-nonsense-2016-11 .

—Hindman, Matthew. 2018.  The Internet Trap: How the Digital Economy Builds Monopolies and Undermines Democracy . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

—Ingram, David. 2018. “Pocket partisans: Campaigns use text messages to add a personal touch.”  NBC News , October 3.  https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/sofas-ipads-campaign-workers-use-text-messages-reach-midterm-voters-n915786 .

—Joinson, Adam N. 2008. “‘Looking at,’ ‘looking up’ or ‘keeping up with’ people? Motives and uses of Facebook.”  Proceedings of the 26th Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . Florence, Italy, April 5–10: 1027–1036.

—Jones, Alex S. 2011.  Losing the News: The Future of the News that Feeds Democracy . New York: Oxford University Press.

—Jost, John T., Barberá, Pablo, Bonneau, Richard, Langer, Melanie, Metzger, Megan, Nagler, Jonathan, Sterling, Joanna, and Tucker, Joshua A. 2018. “How social media facilitates political protest: Information, motivation, and social networks.”  Political Psychology  39(51).  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pops.12478 .

—Jung, Eun Hwa, Sundar, Shyam S. 2016. “Senior citizens on Facebook: How do they interact and why?”  Computers in Human Behavior  61: 27–35.

—Lawless, Jennifer, and Hayes, Danny. 2018. “As local news goes, so goes citizen engagement: Media, knowledge, and participation in U.S. House elections.”  Journal of Politics  77(2): 447–462.

—Liptak, Kevin, Kosinski, Michelle, and Diamond, Jeremy. 2018. “Trump to skip climate portion of G7 after Twitter spat with Macron and Trudeau.” CNN June 8.  https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/07/politics/trump-g7-canada/index.html .

—Manjoo, Farhad. 2017. “How Twitter is being gamed to feed misinformation.”  The New York Times , May 31.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/technology/how-twitter-is-being-gamed-to-feed-misinformation.html .

—Martin, Gregory J., and McCrain, Josh. 2018. “Local news and national politics.” Research Paper. Atlanta, Georgia: Emory University.  http://joshuamccrain.com/localnews.pdf .

—Matsa, Katerina Eva. 2018. “Fewer Americans rely on TV news: What type they watch varies by who they are.” Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, January 5.  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/05/fewer-americans-rely-on-tv-news-what-type-they-watch-varies-by-who-they-are/ .

—Musgrave, Shawn, and Nussbaum, Matthew. 2018. “Trump thrives in areas that lack traditional news outlets.”  Politico , March 8.  https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/08/news-subscriptions-decline-donald-trump-voters-505605 .

—Owen, Diana. 2017a. “The new media’s role in politics.” In  The Age of Perplexity: Rethinking the World We Know , Fernando Gutiérrez Junquera (ed.). London: Penguin Random House.

—Owen, Diana. 2017b. “Tipping the balance of power in elections? Voters’ engagement in the digital campaign.” In  The Internet and the 2016 Presidential Campaign , Terri Towner and Jody Baumgartner (eds.). New York: Lexington Books, 151–177.

—Owen, Diana. 2018. “Trump supporters’ use of social media and political engagement.” Paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, August 30–September 2.

—Persily, Nathaniel. 2017. “Can democracy survive the Internet?”  Journal of Democracy  28(2): 63–76.

—Pew Research Center. 2018. “Social media fact sheet: Social media use over time.” February 5, 2018. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.  http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ .

—Preotiuc-Pietro, Daniel, Hopkins, Daniel J., Liu, Ye, and Unger, Lyle. 2017. “Beyond binary labels: Political ideology prediction of Twitter users.”  Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics . Vancouver, Canada: Association for Computational Linguistics, 729–740.  http://aclweb.org/anthology/P/P17/P17-1068.pdf .

—Rohlinger, Deana A., and Bunnage, Leslie. 2017. “Did the Tea Party movement fuel the Trump train? The role of social media in activist persistence and political change in the 21st century.”  Social Media + Society  3(2).  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305117706786 .

—Sayej, Nadja. 2017. “Alyssa Milano on the #MeToo movement: ‘We’re not going to stand for it any more.’”  The Guardian , December 1.  https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/dec/01/alyssa-milano-mee-too-sexual-harassment-abuse .

—Shearer, Elisa, and Matsa, Katerina Eva. 2018.  News Across Social Media Platforms 2018 . Research Report. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, September 10.  http://www.journalism.org/2018/09/10/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2018/ .

—Silverman, Craig, Hall, Ellie, Strapagiel, Lauren, Singer-Vine, Jeremy, and Shaban, Hamza. 2016. “Hyperpartisan Facebook pages are publishing false and misleading information at an alarming rate.”  BuzzFeed News , October 20.  https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/partisan-fb-pages-analysis#.wdLRgawza .

—Smith, Aaron, and Anderson, Monica. 2018.  Social Media Use in 2018 . Research Report. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.  http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/03/01/social-media-use-in-2018/ .

—Statista. 2018. “Number of monthly active Twitter users worldwide from 1st quarter 2018 (in millions).”  https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/ .

—Stromer-Galley, Jennifer. 2016.  Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age . New York: Oxford University Press.

—Tatum, Sophie. 2017. “Trump on his tweets: ‘You have to keep people interested.”  CNN Politics , October 21.  https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/20/politics/donald-trump-fox-business-interview-twitter/index.html .

—Tsukayama, Hayley. 2018. “Why Twitter is now profitable for the first time.”  The Washington Post , February 8.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/02/08/why-twitter-is-now-profitable-for-the-first-time-ever/?utm_term=.d22610b684af .

—Tsur, Oren, Ognyanova, Katherine, and Lazer, David. 2016. “The data behind Trump’s Twitter takeover.”  Politico Magazine  April 29.  https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/donald-trump-2016-twitter-takeover-213861 .

—Usher, Nikki, Holcomb, Jesse, and Littman, Justin. 2018. “Twitter makes it worse: Political journalists, gendered echo chambers, and the amplification of gender bias.”  International Journal of Press/Politics  1–21.  http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1940161218781254 .

—Van Dijck, José. 2013.  The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media . New York: Oxford University Press.

—Vosoughi, Soroush, Roy, Deb, and Aral, Sinan. 2018. “The spread of true and false news online.”  Science  359(6380): 1146–1151.

—Wallsten, Kevin. 2010. “‘Yes We Can’: How online viewership, blog discussion, campaign statements, and mainstream media coverage produced a viral video phenomenon.”  Journal of Information Technology and Politics  2(3): 163–181.

—Wallsten, Scott. 2018. “Do likes of Trump’s tweets predict his popularity?”  Technology Policy Institute Blog , April 17.  https://techpolicyinstitute.org/2018/04/17/do-likes-of-trumps-tweets-predict-his-popularity/ .

—Woolley, Samuel C., and Guilbeault, Douglas R. 2017. “Computational propaganda in the United States of America: Manufacturing consensus online.” Working Paper No. 2017.5. Oxford Internet Institute: Computational Propaganda Research Project.

Related publications

• The New Media’s Role in Politics
• First the Media, Then Us: How the Internet Changed the Fundamental Nature of the Communication and Its Relationship with the Audience
• The Impact of Digital Activism on Post-Cold War Politics

Download Kindle

Download epub, download pdf, more publications related to this article, more about humanities, communications, comments on this publication.

Morbi facilisis elit non mi lacinia lacinia. Nunc eleifend aliquet ipsum, nec blandit augue tincidunt nec. Donec scelerisque feugiat lectus nec congue. Quisque tristique tortor vitae turpis euismod, vitae aliquam dolor pretium. Donec luctus posuere ex sit amet scelerisque. Etiam sed neque magna. Mauris non scelerisque lectus. Ut rutrum ex porta, tristique mi vitae, volutpat urna.

Sed in semper tellus, eu efficitur ante. Quisque felis orci, fermentum quis arcu nec, elementum malesuada magna. Nulla vitae finibus ipsum. Aenean vel sapien a magna faucibus tristique ac et ligula. Sed auctor orci metus, vitae egestas libero lacinia quis. Nulla lacus sapien, efficitur mollis nisi tempor, gravida tincidunt sapien. In massa dui, varius vitae iaculis a, dignissim non felis. Ut sagittis pulvinar nisi, at tincidunt metus venenatis a. Ut aliquam scelerisque interdum. Mauris iaculis purus in nulla consequat, sed fermentum sapien condimentum. Aliquam rutrum erat lectus, nec placerat nisl mollis id. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

Nam nisl nisi, efficitur et sem in, molestie vulputate libero. Quisque quis mattis lorem. Nunc quis convallis diam, id tincidunt risus. Donec nisl odio, convallis vel porttitor sit amet, lobortis a ante. Cras dapibus porta nulla, at laoreet quam euismod vitae. Fusce sollicitudin massa magna, eu dignissim magna cursus id. Quisque vel nisl tempus, lobortis nisl a, ornare lacus. Donec ac interdum massa. Curabitur id diam luctus, mollis augue vel, interdum risus. Nam vitae tortor erat. Proin quis tincidunt lorem.

The Past Decade and the Future of Governance and Democracy: Populist Challenges to Liberal Democracy

Do you want to stay up to date with our new publications.

Receive the OpenMind newsletter with all the latest contents published on our website

OpenMind Books

• The Search for Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
• View all books

About OpenMind

Connect with us.

• Keep up to date with our newsletter

Quote this content

Read our research on: TikTok | Podcasts | Election 2024

Regions & Countries

Social media seen as mostly good for democracy across many nations, but u.s. is a major outlier, most think social media has made it easier to manipulate and divide people, but also say it informs and raises awareness.

This Pew Research Center analysis focuses on technology use and views of internet and social media in the context of democracy and society. The survey was conducted in 19 advanced economies in North America, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.

For non-U.S. data, this report draws on nationally representative surveys of 20,944 adults from Feb. 14 to June 3, 2022. All surveys were conducted over the phone with adults in Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea. Surveys were conducted face to face in Hungary, Poland and Israel. In Australia, we used a probability-based online panel.

In the United States, we surveyed 3,581 U.S. adults from March 21 to 27, 2022. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), an online survey panel that is recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses. This way nearly all U.S. adults have a chance of selection. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other categories. Read more about the ATP’s methodology .

Technology use can be related to the way the survey is conducted. For example, our surveys in Malaysia, Singapore and South Korea are designed to only call mobile phone numbers and interview people on mobile phones because the prevalence of mobile phone ownership is so high. For instance, a 2021 study by the Korea Information Society Development Institute found that 97% of all people in Korea, not just adults, own a mobile phone.

In addition, people who take our survey over the phone may be more likely to use technology compared with those who take the survey in person. In 2019, we conducted simultaneous telephone and in-person surveys in Italy. Both samples were representative of the Italian population with respect to age, gender, education, and region. Respondents who took part in the telephone survey had somewhat higher rates of internet use, smartphone ownership and social media use. We moved from in-person interviews to telephone interviews in Italy in 2020 and Greece in 2021, and do not make direct comparisons to technology use prior to the mode change.

For purposes of comparison, data from Australia is not included in analyses of internet use or phone ownership. Internet use, smartphone and mobile phone ownership, and social media use data in the U.S. comes from a phone survey conducted Jan. 25 to Feb. 8, 2021.

Here are the questions used for the report, along with responses, and the survey methodology .

As people across the globe have increasingly turned to Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and other platforms to get their news and express their opinions, the sphere of social media has become a new public space for discussing – and often arguing bitterly – about political and social issues. And in the mind of many analysts, social media is one of the major reasons for the declining health of democracy in nations around the world.

However, as a new Pew Research Center survey of 19 advanced economies shows, ordinary citizens see social media as both a constructive and destructive component of political life, and overall most believe it has actually had a positive impact on democracy. Across the countries polled, a median of 57% say social media has been more of a good thing for their democracy, with 35% saying it has been a bad thing.

There are substantial cross-national differences on this question, however, and the United States is a clear outlier: Just 34% of U.S. adults think social media has been good for democracy, while 64% say it has had a bad impact. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier on a number of measures, with larger shares of Americans seeing social media as divisive.

Even in countries where assessments of social media’s impact are largely positive, most believe it has had some pernicious effects – in particular, it has led to manipulation and division within societies. A median of 84% across the 19 countries surveyed believe access to the internet and social media have made people easier to manipulate with false information and rumors. A recent analysis of the same survey shows that a median of 70% across the 19 nations consider the spread of false information online to be a major threat, second only to climate change on a list of global threats.

Additionally, a median of 65% think it has made people more divided in their political opinions. More than four-in-ten say it has made people less civil in how they talk about politics (only about a quarter say it has made people more civil).

So given the online world’s manipulation, divisiveness and lack of civility, what’s to like? How can this acrimonious sea of false information be good for democracy? Part of the answer may be that it gives people a sense of empowerment at a time when few feel empowered. Majorities in nearly every country surveyed say their political system does not allow people like them to have an influence in politics. In nine nations, including the U.S., seven-in-ten or more express that view.

Online platforms may help people feel less powerless in a few ways. First, social media informs them. As a recent Pew Research Center report highlighted, majorities in these countries believe that staying informed about domestic and international events is part of being a good citizen, and it is clear that people believe the internet and social media make it easier to stay informed. Nearly three-quarters say the internet and social media have made people more informed about current events in their own country as well as in other countries. Young adults are especially likely to hold these views. 

Also, most of those surveyed see social media as an effective tool for accomplishing political goals. Majorities in most countries say it is at least somewhat effective at raising public awareness, changing people’s minds about issues, getting elected officials to pay attention to issues and influencing policy decisions.

For some, social media is also an outlet for expression. In South Korea, for example, roughly half of social media users say they sometimes or often post or share things online about political or social issues. However, in the other countries polled, posting about these issues is less common, and in 12 nations four-in-ten or more say they never post about political or social topics. These are among the major findings of a Pew Research Center survey, conducted from Feb. 14 to June 3, 2022, among 24,525 adults in 19 nations.  

Americans most likely to say social media has been bad for democracy

Majorities in most of the nations surveyed believe social media has been a good thing for democracy in their country. Assessments are especially positive in Singapore, Malaysia, Poland, Sweden, Hungary and Israel, where 65% or more hold this view (for data on how international research organizations assess the quality of democracy in the countries surveyed, see Appendix A ).

In contrast, Americans are the most negative about the impact of social media on democracy: 64% say it has been bad. Republicans and independents who lean toward the Republican Party (74%) are much more likely than Democrats and Democratic leaners (57%) to see the ill effects of social media on the political system.

Half or more also say social media has been bad for democracy in the Netherlands, France and Australia.

In addition to being the most negative about social media’s influence on democracy, Americans are consistently among the most negative in their assessments of specific ways social media has affected politics and society. For example, 79% in the U.S. believe access to the internet and social media has made people more divided in their political opinions, the highest percentage among the 19 countries polled.

Similarly, 69% of Americans say the internet and social media have made people less civil in how they talk about politics – again the highest share among the nations in the study.

To compare how publics evaluate the impact of the internet and social media on society, we created an index that combines responses to six questions regarding whether the internet makes people: 1) less informed about current events in their country, 2) more divided in their political opinions, 3) less accepting of people from different backgrounds, 4) easier to manipulate with false information and rumors, 5) less informed about current events in other countries, and 6) less civil in the way they talk about politics.

The negative positions on all of these questions were coded as 1 while positive or “no impact” responses were coded as 0. For each respondent, scores on the overall index can range from 0, indicating they see no negative effects of the internet and social media across these questions, to 6, meaning a negative answer to all six questions. See Appendix B for more information about how the index was created.

Looking at the data this way illustrates the degree to which Americans stand out for their negative take on social media’s impact. The average score among U.S. respondents is 3.05, the highest – and therefore the most negative – in the survey. Dutch, Hungarian and Australian respondents are also more negative than others. In contrast, Malaysians, Israelis, Poles and Singaporeans offer less negative assessments. 

Pew Research Center’s research on the internet, social media and technology in the U.S. and around the world

Many of the topics explored in this report have been studied in depth in the U.S. by Pew Research Center’s internet and technology team , which for more than two decades has conducted survey research on the social impact of digital technologies, such as  internet and broadband ,  mobile connectivity  and  social media . The team’s work has included topics such as  privacy and surveillance ,  activism and civic engagement ,  digital divides ,  the role of technology in people’s lives and broader society ,  teens’ and younger children’s use of technology and  online dating . In addition, this research has examined the emergence of facial recognition, smart speakers, the gig/sharing economy, people’s attitudes about automation and algorithms and the use of wearable technology. The research has also regularly explored the future of digital life on such issues as the future of work and the rise of artificial intelligence.

The Center has also continually studied technology usage and views about the impact of digital technologies around the world as part of its Global Attitudes research, including reports on topics such as social media usage , smartphone ownership and public opinion in Africa regarding the impact of the internet on society. 

In 2018, the Center conducted an in-depth survey in 11 emerging economies, examining views about mobile technology and social media , as well as attitudes toward diversity in these nations. The Center also conducted focus groups in five countries as part of this study. In many ways, the results of the 2018 study were similar to those in the current survey, in that people in emerging and advanced economies alike believe social media presents both opportunities and dangers. For a comparison of results from the two studies, see “ In advanced and emerging economies, similar views on how social media affects democracy and society .”

For the past few years, the COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges for conducting surveys in nations where the Center typically interviews respondents in person, rather than via phone or online approaches. Moving forward, we will return to in-person interviewing in countries around the world, which will allow us to explore the impact of technology and other issues in regions that are underrepresented or not represented in this report.

The rapid growth of social media

Pew Research Center has been asking about social media usage for the past decade, and trend data from several nations polled over that time period highlights the extent to which these platforms have become pervasive in recent years. Growth has been especially dramatic in Japan, where just 30% used social media in 2012, compared with 75% today. Social media has also increased markedly in France, Poland, Spain, the U.S. and the United Kingdom. Even in Germany, which lags significantly behind these other nations in social media usage, there has been a notable increase since 2012. 

In every nation surveyed, young people are more likely than others to use social media. However, the age gap has closed over the past decade. When looking again at data from seven nations polled in both 2012 and 2022, growth in usage has been especially steep among 30- to 49-year-olds and those ages 50 and older. For example, nearly all British 18- to 29-year-olds were already social media users in 2012, but there has been significant growth among the two older age groups during the past 10 years.

Young people more likely to see benefits of social media

Overall, young adults are more likely than older adults to use the internet, own a smartphone and use social media. For more information on age differences in technology use, as well as differences by education and income, see the detailed tables accompanying this report.

In addition to using social media more than their older counterparts, young adults often stand out in their views about the impact of social media.

Adults ages 18 to 29 are more likely than those 50 and older to say social media has been good for democracy in 12 out of 19 nations surveyed. For instance, while 87% of 18- to 29-year-old Poles believe social media has had a positive effect on politics, just 46% of those 50 and older agree.

Young adults are also often more likely to say the internet and social media has made people more informed about domestic and international events, and they are especially likely to say these technologies have made people more accepting of others from different backgrounds.

In many cases, young people are also especially likely to consider social media an effective tool in the political realm, particularly regarding its capacity to change people’s minds on social issues and to raise awareness of those issues.

Add Pew Research Center to your Alexa

Say “Alexa, enable the Pew Research Center flash briefing”

Report Materials

Table of contents, in advanced and emerging economies, similar views on how social media affects democracy and society, freedom, elections, voice: how people in australia and the uk define democracy, global public opinion in an era of democratic anxiety, most people in advanced economies think their own government respects personal freedoms, more people globally see racial, ethnic discrimination as a serious problem in the u.s. than in their own society, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

A business journal from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Knowledge at Wharton Podcast

How social media is shaping political campaigns, august 17, 2020 • 11 min listen.

Political newcomers can leverage social media to raise money and gain recognition, which could help them compete against incumbents, according to new research co-authored by Wharton’s Pinar Yildirim.

Wharton’s Pinar Yildirim speaks with Wharton Business Daily on Sirius XM about how social media is changing political competition.

In his short-lived campaign for president, entrepreneur and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion of his own money before dropping out of the race in March 2020. More than 70% of that budget went toward advertising.

The extraordinary spend highlights just how much cash it takes to run for public office in America and why it’s so difficult for political newcomers to gain momentum at the polls without connections to influential donors (or in Bloomberg’s case, his own deep pockets). The problem perpetuates through election cycles, which is why up to 90% of incumbents are reelected in what research calls “the incumbency advantage.”

How Has the Internet Revolutionized Political Campaigns?

But social media has changed the game, allowing incumbents and newcomers alike to speak directly to constituents on everything from policy to what they had for dinner. Barack Obama was the first presidential candidate to use the medium, which was still nascent during his 2008 bid, and Donald Trump took to Twitter almost daily to express himself without the filter of traditional media.

“If you look at the way that politicians communicate today, it’s very different than the way that they used to communicate five, 10 years ago,” Wharton marketing professor Pinar Yildirim said. “They would speak through the official speakers or they would be on TV. They would be in print or official online newspapers. Today, they are communicating through places like Twitter. And I think that begs a question, why are they doing that? Is there any benefit to communicating on channels like Twitter?”

“This is not about the age of your constituency.” — Pinar Yildirim

A study co-authored by Yildirim offers some answers. “ Social Media and Political Contributions: The Impact of New Technology on Political Competition ,” written with Maria Petrova and Ananya Sen, finds that political newcomers can get a substantial boost in support by using social media channels, which cost next to nothing and are easily tapped by anyone with an internet connection. The finding is important because it indicates how social media can help level the playing field in politics, where money and access to formal communication channels pose huge barriers to new entrants.

“Never have politicians been so accessible to the public,” the authors wrote in an opinion piece for The Globe Post . Yildirim recently spoke about the researchers’ findings during a segment of the Wharton Business Daily radio show on Sirius XM . (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

Using Social Media for Political Campaign Fundraising

The study, which will be published in Management Science , measured support for a candidate based on donations from individual citizens and whether that support increased after the candidate opened a Twitter or Facebook account. Yildirim said she and her colleagues were surprised to find such a significant effect: Within the first month of using Twitter, politicians were able to raise between 1% and 3% of what they would have raised in a two-year traditional campaign. But that gain flowed almost exclusively to newcomers, not incumbents. And it was amplified when candidates included hyperlinks to more information.

Yildirim made it clear that the advantage has nothing to do with assumptions about age; there is simply more to learn about new candidates.

“This is not about the age of your constituency. This is not because the political newcomers are somewhat more technologically savvy, or their base is younger and that’s where they can communicate and find those individuals on social media,” she said. “We tested all of these, and these are not the drivers.”

Beyond communicating their policy views, new candidates can humanize themselves through their social media accounts, and that helps voters feel more connected to them. For example, former Democratic presidential contender Pete Buttigieg introduced his shelter dogs to his 2 million Twitter followers , while U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren used her Instagram account to chat live with supporters who made small contributions to her presidential campaign.

Those small contributions — often between $5 to $100 — seem unlikely to move the needle in a multimillion-dollar political campaign. But the researchers said they are an important part of the voting process because they represent hope.

“There’s this idea that if there are many of us just donating in small amounts, eventually that will turn into a sea of donations, and that could help this person to get elected down the road,” Yildirim said. “So, donations are very meaningful in a number of ways.”

“You don’t have to have the big money, big bucks, big fundraisers, big supporters to be able to communicate on Twitter with your constituency.” — Pinar Yildirim

In Politics, All Communication Counts

If video killed the radio star, as the 1980 pop song declared, will Facebook kill nationally televised debates or news interviews that are the hallmark of old-school political campaigns? Probably not. As Yildirim pointed out, organic coverage from newspapers or television stations is free and reaches a wide audience. And while costly, paid advertising allows candidates to target a specific message to a specific audience. However, so does social media. It cannot be discounted as a low-cost, powerful tool in political competition.

“You don’t have to have the big money, big bucks, big fundraisers, big supporters to be able to communicate on Twitter with your constituency and tell them about what your ideas are for the future,” Yildirim noted. “You can tell them about who you are, what your values are, and this is typically what we see politicians do. They talk about themselves. They talk about their dog, they talk about their favorite sports team, they talk about their favorite place to go in the neighborhood. Of course, you can always talk about your policies and what you hope to achieve if you were elected into an office. And you can do this way before you officially declare running for an office.”

The scholars believe the intersection of social media and politics is ripe for more research, and their paper makes a notable contribution in the field. The finding suggests that, with enough strategy, social media could erase the incumbency advantage and bring American politics back to its grass roots.

“As political campaigns are becoming increasingly more expensive and the need to reach out to constituencies is becoming more vital, social media will undoubtedly play a more important role in determining electoral outcomes as it gives young politicians a platform,” they said in the op-ed.

More From Knowledge at Wharton

Employees Have Specific Expectations Around Inclusive Work Environments & Culture

Why Breakups Aren’t the Best Way to Curb Tech Monopolies

How Early Adopters of Gen AI Are Gaining Efficiencies

Looking for more insights.

Sign up to stay informed about our latest article releases.

Find anything you save across the site in your account

All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.

How Harmful Is Social Media?

By Gideon Lewis-Kraus

In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political polarization and factional enmity long predate the rise of the platforms, and that there are plenty of other factors involved, he believes that the tools of virality—Facebook’s Like and Share buttons, Twitter’s Retweet function—have algorithmically and irrevocably corroded public life. He has determined that a great historical discontinuity can be dated with some precision to the period between 2010 and 2014, when these features became widely available on phones.

“What changed in the 2010s?” Haidt asks, reminding his audience that a former Twitter developer had once compared the Retweet button to the provision of a four-year-old with a loaded weapon. “A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly a billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.” While the right has thrived on conspiracy-mongering and misinformation, the left has turned punitive: “When everyone was issued a dart gun in the early 2010s, many left-leaning institutions began shooting themselves in the brain. And, unfortunately, those were the brains that inform, instruct, and entertain most of the country.” Haidt’s prevailing metaphor of thoroughgoing fragmentation is the story of the Tower of Babel: the rise of social media has “unwittingly dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories that had held a large and diverse secular democracy together.”

These are, needless to say, common concerns. Chief among Haidt’s worries is that use of social media has left us particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, or the propensity to fix upon evidence that shores up our prior beliefs. Haidt acknowledges that the extant literature on social media’s effects is large and complex, and that there is something in it for everyone. On January 6, 2021, he was on the phone with Chris Bail, a sociologist at Duke and the author of the recent book “ Breaking the Social Media Prism ,” when Bail urged him to turn on the television. Two weeks later, Haidt wrote to Bail, expressing his frustration at the way Facebook officials consistently cited the same handful of studies in their defense. He suggested that the two of them collaborate on a comprehensive literature review that they could share, as a Google Doc, with other researchers. (Haidt had experimented with such a model before.) Bail was cautious. He told me, “What I said to him was, ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure the research is going to bear out your version of the story,’ and he said, ‘Why don’t we see?’ ”

Bail emphasized that he is not a “platform-basher.” He added, “In my book, my main take is, Yes, the platforms play a role, but we are greatly exaggerating what it’s possible for them to do—how much they could change things no matter who’s at the helm at these companies—and we’re profoundly underestimating the human element, the motivation of users.” He found Haidt’s idea of a Google Doc appealing, in the way that it would produce a kind of living document that existed “somewhere between scholarship and public writing.” Haidt was eager for a forum to test his ideas. “I decided that if I was going to be writing about this—what changed in the universe, around 2014, when things got weird on campus and elsewhere—once again, I’d better be confident I’m right,” he said. “I can’t just go off my feelings and my readings of the biased literature. We all suffer from confirmation bias, and the only cure is other people who don’t share your own.”

Haidt and Bail, along with a research assistant, populated the document over the course of several weeks last year, and in November they invited about two dozen scholars to contribute. Haidt told me, of the difficulties of social-scientific methodology, “When you first approach a question, you don’t even know what it is. ‘Is social media destroying democracy, yes or no?’ That’s not a good question. You can’t answer that question. So what can you ask and answer?” As the document took on a life of its own, tractable rubrics emerged—Does social media make people angrier or more affectively polarized? Does it create political echo chambers? Does it increase the probability of violence? Does it enable foreign governments to increase political dysfunction in the United States and other democracies? Haidt continued, “It’s only after you break it up into lots of answerable questions that you see where the complexity lies.”

Haidt came away with the sense, on balance, that social media was in fact pretty bad. He was disappointed, but not surprised, that Facebook’s response to his article relied on the same three studies they’ve been reciting for years. “This is something you see with breakfast cereals,” he said, noting that a cereal company “might say, ‘Did you know we have twenty-five per cent more riboflavin than the leading brand?’ They’ll point to features where the evidence is in their favor, which distracts you from the over-all fact that your cereal tastes worse and is less healthy.”

After Haidt’s piece was published, the Google Doc—“Social Media and Political Dysfunction: A Collaborative Review”—was made available to the public . Comments piled up, and a new section was added, at the end, to include a miscellany of Twitter threads and Substack essays that appeared in response to Haidt’s interpretation of the evidence. Some colleagues and kibbitzers agreed with Haidt. But others, though they might have shared his basic intuition that something in our experience of social media was amiss, drew upon the same data set to reach less definitive conclusions, or even mildly contradictory ones. Even after the initial flurry of responses to Haidt’s article disappeared into social-media memory, the document, insofar as it captured the state of the social-media debate, remained a lively artifact.

Near the end of the collaborative project’s introduction, the authors warn, “We caution readers not to simply add up the number of studies on each side and declare one side the winner.” The document runs to more than a hundred and fifty pages, and for each question there are affirmative and dissenting studies, as well as some that indicate mixed results. According to one paper, “Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences,” but, according to another, which used data collected during the 2016 election, “Over the course of the campaign, we found media use and attitudes remained relatively stable. Our results also showed that Facebook news use was related to modest over-time spiral of depolarization. Furthermore, we found that people who use Facebook for news were more likely to view both pro- and counter-attitudinal news in each wave. Our results indicated that counter-attitudinal exposure increased over time, which resulted in depolarization.” If results like these seem incompatible, a perplexed reader is given recourse to a study that says, “Our findings indicate that political polarization on social media cannot be conceptualized as a unified phenomenon, as there are significant cross-platform differences.”

Interested in echo chambers? “Our results show that the aggregation of users in homophilic clusters dominate online interactions on Facebook and Twitter,” which seems convincing—except that, as another team has it, “We do not find evidence supporting a strong characterization of ‘echo chambers’ in which the majority of people’s sources of news are mutually exclusive and from opposite poles.” By the end of the file, the vaguely patronizing top-line recommendation against simple summation begins to make more sense. A document that originated as a bulwark against confirmation bias could, as it turned out, just as easily function as a kind of generative device to support anybody’s pet conviction. The only sane response, it seemed, was simply to throw one’s hands in the air.

When I spoke to some of the researchers whose work had been included, I found a combination of broad, visceral unease with the current situation—with the banefulness of harassment and trolling; with the opacity of the platforms; with, well, the widespread presentiment that of course social media is in many ways bad—and a contrastive sense that it might not be catastrophically bad in some of the specific ways that many of us have come to take for granted as true. This was not mere contrarianism, and there was no trace of gleeful mythbusting; the issue was important enough to get right. When I told Bail that the upshot seemed to me to be that exactly nothing was unambiguously clear, he suggested that there was at least some firm ground. He sounded a bit less apocalyptic than Haidt.

“A lot of the stories out there are just wrong,” he told me. “The political echo chamber has been massively overstated. Maybe it’s three to five per cent of people who are properly in an echo chamber.” Echo chambers, as hotboxes of confirmation bias, are counterproductive for democracy. But research indicates that most of us are actually exposed to a wider range of views on social media than we are in real life, where our social networks—in the original use of the term—are rarely heterogeneous. (Haidt told me that this was an issue on which the Google Doc changed his mind; he became convinced that echo chambers probably aren’t as widespread a problem as he’d once imagined.) And too much of a focus on our intuitions about social media’s echo-chamber effect could obscure the relevant counterfactual: a conservative might abandon Twitter only to watch more Fox News. “Stepping outside your echo chamber is supposed to make you moderate, but maybe it makes you more extreme,” Bail said. The research is inchoate and ongoing, and it’s difficult to say anything on the topic with absolute certainty. But this was, in part, Bail’s point: we ought to be less sure about the particular impacts of social media.

Bail went on, “The second story is foreign misinformation.” It’s not that misinformation doesn’t exist, or that it hasn’t had indirect effects, especially when it creates perverse incentives for the mainstream media to cover stories circulating online. Haidt also draws convincingly upon the work of Renée DiResta, the research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, to sketch out a potential future in which the work of shitposting has been outsourced to artificial intelligence, further polluting the informational environment. But, at least so far, very few Americans seem to suffer from consistent exposure to fake news—“probably less than two per cent of Twitter users, maybe fewer now, and for those who were it didn’t change their opinions,” Bail said. This was probably because the people likeliest to consume such spectacles were the sort of people primed to believe them in the first place. “In fact,” he said, “echo chambers might have done something to quarantine that misinformation.”

The final story that Bail wanted to discuss was the “proverbial rabbit hole, the path to algorithmic radicalization,” by which YouTube might serve a viewer increasingly extreme videos. There is some anecdotal evidence to suggest that this does happen, at least on occasion, and such anecdotes are alarming to hear. But a new working paper led by Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth, found that almost all extremist content is either consumed by subscribers to the relevant channels—a sign of actual demand rather than manipulation or preference falsification—or encountered via links from external sites. It’s easy to see why we might prefer if this were not the case: algorithmic radicalization is presumably a simpler problem to solve than the fact that there are people who deliberately seek out vile content. “These are the three stories—echo chambers, foreign influence campaigns, and radicalizing recommendation algorithms—but, when you look at the literature, they’ve all been overstated.” He thought that these findings were crucial for us to assimilate, if only to help us understand that our problems may lie beyond technocratic tinkering. He explained, “Part of my interest in getting this research out there is to demonstrate that everybody is waiting for an Elon Musk to ride in and save us with an algorithm”—or, presumably, the reverse—“and it’s just not going to happen.”

When I spoke with Nyhan, he told me much the same thing: “The most credible research is way out of line with the takes.” He noted, of extremist content and misinformation, that reliable research that “measures exposure to these things finds that the people consuming this content are small minorities who have extreme views already.” The problem with the bulk of the earlier research, Nyhan told me, is that it’s almost all correlational. “Many of these studies will find polarization on social media,” he said. “But that might just be the society we live in reflected on social media!” He hastened to add, “Not that this is untroubling, and none of this is to let these companies, which are exercising a lot of power with very little scrutiny, off the hook. But a lot of the criticisms of them are very poorly founded. . . . The expansion of Internet access coincides with fifteen other trends over time, and separating them is very difficult. The lack of good data is a huge problem insofar as it lets people project their own fears into this area.” He told me, “It’s hard to weigh in on the side of ‘We don’t know, the evidence is weak,’ because those points are always going to be drowned out in our discourse. But these arguments are systematically underprovided in the public domain.”

In his Atlantic article, Haidt leans on a working paper by two social scientists, Philipp Lorenz-Spreen and Lisa Oswald, who took on a comprehensive meta-analysis of about five hundred papers and concluded that “the large majority of reported associations between digital media use and trust appear to be detrimental for democracy.” Haidt writes, “The literature is complex—some studies show benefits, particularly in less developed democracies—but the review found that, on balance, social media amplifies political polarization; foments populism, especially right-wing populism; and is associated with the spread of misinformation.” Nyhan was less convinced that the meta-analysis supported such categorical verdicts, especially once you bracketed the kinds of correlational findings that might simply mirror social and political dynamics. He told me, “If you look at their summary of studies that allow for causal inferences—it’s very mixed.”

As for the studies Nyhan considered most methodologically sound, he pointed to a 2020 article called “The Welfare Effects of Social Media,” by Hunt Allcott, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer, and Matthew Gentzkow. For four weeks prior to the 2018 midterm elections, the authors randomly divided a group of volunteers into two cohorts—one that continued to use Facebook as usual, and another that was paid to deactivate their accounts for that period. They found that deactivation “(i) reduced online activity, while increasing offline activities such as watching TV alone and socializing with family and friends; (ii) reduced both factual news knowledge and political polarization; (iii) increased subjective well-being; and (iv) caused a large persistent reduction in post-experiment Facebook use.” But Gentzkow reminded me that his conclusions, including that Facebook may slightly increase polarization, had to be heavily qualified: “From other kinds of evidence, I think there’s reason to think social media is not the main driver of increasing polarization over the long haul in the United States.”

In the book “ Why We’re Polarized ,” for example, Ezra Klein invokes the work of such scholars as Lilliana Mason to argue that the roots of polarization might be found in, among other factors, the political realignment and nationalization that began in the sixties, and were then sacralized, on the right, by the rise of talk radio and cable news. These dynamics have served to flatten our political identities, weakening our ability or inclination to find compromise. Insofar as some forms of social media encourage the hardening of connections between our identities and a narrow set of opinions, we might increasingly self-select into mutually incomprehensible and hostile groups; Haidt plausibly suggests that these processes are accelerated by the coalescence of social-media tribes around figures of fearful online charisma. “Social media might be more of an amplifier of other things going on rather than a major driver independently,” Gentzkow argued. “I think it takes some gymnastics to tell a story where it’s all primarily driven by social media, especially when you’re looking at different countries, and across different groups.”

Another study, led by Nejla Asimovic and Joshua Tucker, replicated Gentzkow’s approach in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and they found almost precisely the opposite results: the people who stayed on Facebook were, by the end of the study, more positively disposed to their historic out-groups. The authors’ interpretation was that ethnic groups have so little contact in Bosnia that, for some people, social media is essentially the only place where they can form positive images of one another. “To have a replication and have the signs flip like that, it’s pretty stunning,” Bail told me. “It’s a different conversation in every part of the world.”

Nyhan argued that, at least in wealthy Western countries, we might be too heavily discounting the degree to which platforms have responded to criticism: “Everyone is still operating under the view that algorithms simply maximize engagement in a short-term way” with minimal attention to potential externalities. “That might’ve been true when Zuckerberg had seven people working for him, but there are a lot of considerations that go into these rankings now.” He added, “There’s some evidence that, with reverse-chronological feeds”—streams of unwashed content, which some critics argue are less manipulative than algorithmic curation—“people get exposed to more low-quality content, so it’s another case where a very simple notion of ‘algorithms are bad’ doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It doesn’t mean they’re good, it’s just that we don’t know.”

Bail told me that, over all, he was less confident than Haidt that the available evidence lines up clearly against the platforms. “Maybe there’s a slight majority of studies that say that social media is a net negative, at least in the West, and maybe it’s doing some good in the rest of the world.” But, he noted, “Jon will say that science has this expectation of rigor that can’t keep up with the need in the real world—that even if we don’t have the definitive study that creates the historical counterfactual that Facebook is largely responsible for polarization in the U.S., there’s still a lot pointing in that direction, and I think that’s a fair point.” He paused. “It can’t all be randomized control trials.”

Haidt comes across in conversation as searching and sincere, and, during our exchange, he paused several times to suggest that I include a quote from John Stuart Mill on the importance of good-faith debate to moral progress. In that spirit, I asked him what he thought of the argument, elaborated by some of Haidt’s critics, that the problems he described are fundamentally political, social, and economic, and that to blame social media is to search for lost keys under the streetlamp, where the light is better. He agreed that this was the steelman opponent: there were predecessors for cancel culture in de Tocqueville, and anxiety about new media that went back to the time of the printing press. “This is a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and it’s absolutely up to the prosecution—people like me—to argue that, no, this time it’s different. But it’s a civil case! The evidential standard is not ‘beyond a reasonable doubt,’ as in a criminal case. It’s just a preponderance of the evidence.”

The way scholars weigh the testimony is subject to their disciplinary orientations. Economists and political scientists tend to believe that you can’t even begin to talk about causal dynamics without a randomized controlled trial, whereas sociologists and psychologists are more comfortable drawing inferences on a correlational basis. Haidt believes that conditions are too dire to take the hardheaded, no-reasonable-doubt view. “The preponderance of the evidence is what we use in public health. If there’s an epidemic—when COVID started, suppose all the scientists had said, ‘No, we gotta be so certain before you do anything’? We have to think about what’s actually happening, what’s likeliest to pay off.” He continued, “We have the largest epidemic ever of teen mental health, and there is no other explanation,” he said. “It is a raging public-health epidemic, and the kids themselves say Instagram did it, and we have some evidence, so is it appropriate to say, ‘Nah, you haven’t proven it’?”

This was his attitude across the board. He argued that social media seemed to aggrandize inflammatory posts and to be correlated with a rise in violence; even if only small groups were exposed to fake news, such beliefs might still proliferate in ways that were hard to measure. “In the post-Babel era, what matters is not the average but the dynamics, the contagion, the exponential amplification,” he said. “Small things can grow very quickly, so arguments that Russian disinformation didn’t matter are like COVID arguments that people coming in from China didn’t have contact with a lot of people.” Given the transformative effects of social media, Haidt insisted, it was important to act now, even in the absence of dispositive evidence. “Academic debates play out over decades and are often never resolved, whereas the social-media environment changes year by year,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting around five or ten years for literature reviews.”

Haidt could be accused of question-begging—of assuming the existence of a crisis that the research might or might not ultimately underwrite. Still, the gap between the two sides in this case might not be quite as wide as Haidt thinks. Skeptics of his strongest claims are not saying that there’s no there there. Just because the average YouTube user is unlikely to be led to Stormfront videos, Nyhan told me, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t worry that some people are watching Stormfront videos; just because echo chambers and foreign misinformation seem to have had effects only at the margins, Gentzkow said, doesn’t mean they’re entirely irrelevant. “There are many questions here where the thing we as researchers are interested in is how social media affects the average person,” Gentzkow told me. “There’s a different set of questions where all you need is a small number of people to change—questions about ethnic violence in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, people on YouTube mobilized to do mass shootings. Much of the evidence broadly makes me skeptical that the average effects are as big as the public discussion thinks they are, but I also think there are cases where a small number of people with very extreme views are able to find each other and connect and act.” He added, “That’s where many of the things I’d be most concerned about lie.”

The same might be said about any phenomenon where the base rate is very low but the stakes are very high, such as teen suicide. “It’s another case where those rare edge cases in terms of total social harm may be enormous. You don’t need many teen-age kids to decide to kill themselves or have serious mental-health outcomes in order for the social harm to be really big.” He added, “Almost none of this work is able to get at those edge-case effects, and we have to be careful that if we do establish that the average effect of something is zero, or small, that it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be worried about it—because we might be missing those extremes.” Jaime Settle, a scholar of political behavior at the College of William & Mary and the author of the book “ Frenemies: How Social Media Polarizes America ,” noted that Haidt is “farther along the spectrum of what most academics who study this stuff are going to say we have strong evidence for.” But she understood his impulse: “We do have serious problems, and I’m glad Jon wrote the piece, and down the road I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a fuller handle on the role of social media in all of this—there are definitely ways in which social media has changed our politics for the worse.”

It’s tempting to sidestep the question of diagnosis entirely, and to evaluate Haidt’s essay not on the basis of predictive accuracy—whether social media will lead to the destruction of American democracy—but as a set of proposals for what we might do better. If he is wrong, how much damage are his prescriptions likely to do? Haidt, to his great credit, does not indulge in any wishful thinking, and if his diagnosis is largely technological his prescriptions are sociopolitical. Two of his three major suggestions seem useful and have nothing to do with social media: he thinks that we should end closed primaries and that children should be given wide latitude for unsupervised play. His recommendations for social-media reform are, for the most part, uncontroversial: he believes that preteens shouldn’t be on Instagram and that platforms should share their data with outside researchers—proposals that are both likely to be beneficial and not very costly.

It remains possible, however, that the true costs of social-media anxieties are harder to tabulate. Gentzkow told me that, for the period between 2016 and 2020, the direct effects of misinformation were difficult to discern. “But it might have had a much larger effect because we got so worried about it—a broader impact on trust,” he said. “Even if not that many people were exposed, the narrative that the world is full of fake news, and you can’t trust anything, and other people are being misled about it—well, that might have had a bigger impact than the content itself.” Nyhan had a similar reaction. “There are genuine questions that are really important, but there’s a kind of opportunity cost that is missed here. There’s so much focus on sweeping claims that aren’t actionable, or unfounded claims we can contradict with data, that are crowding out the harms we can demonstrate, and the things we can test, that could make social media better.” He added, “We’re years into this, and we’re still having an uninformed conversation about social media. It’s totally wild.”

New Yorker Favorites

Why facts don’t change our minds .

How an Ivy League school turned against a student .

What was it about Frank Sinatra that no one else could touch ? 

The secret formula for resilience .

A young Kennedy, in Kushnerland, turned whistle-blower .

The biggest potential water disaster in the United States.

Fiction by Jhumpa Lahiri: “ Gogol .”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Elizabeth Kolbert

By Jay Caspian Kang

By Mosab Abu Toha

By Rivka Galchen

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essay Examples >
• Essays Topics >
• Essay on Twitter

Social Media And Politics Essay

Type of paper: Essay

Topic: Twitter , Sociology , Politics , Internet , Social Media , Obama , Media , Elections

Words: 1300

Published: 03/28/2020

ORDER PAPER LIKE THIS

[Title: Essay 1] Social media is a new method of creating political dialogue. It helps to build trust among government officials and public, promotes active participation and engagement of policymakers into interests of the nation. It can be regarded as a new form of public affairs approach, where appropriate use can lead to successful outcomes. Before social networks appeared on the internet and became so widely widespread, all policymakers could do was to influence audiences on radio and television. Candidates, who were smiling and charismatic, had indeed more chances to win. If we trace back to the history we remember Kennedy-Nixon debates or series of interview between Clinton and Bush, and we understand how physical appearance, speech and confidence of the candidates were used as a campaign tool. Nowadays, everything is replaced by social media. Governors all over the USA use social media to share posts and updates on their life, work and interviews with politicians. Majority of them have their own websites, apart from accounts in Facebook and Twitter. Governors compete to gain attention and to keep pace with rapid technological advancement. Jerry Brown California Governor is famous for having more than 1 million of Twitter followers. Janice Brewer State Governor of Arizona drew attention of the social media after wagging a finger at President Obama. It may seem surprising how a single action can increase the number of your supporters; however, social media should never be left underestimated. Correct usage of social media requires political nudges, priming, and correspondence to a domestic environment, apart from simply statistics of “followers”. Social media is increasingly becoming influential, so that it can have a significant impact on elections. Presidential campaigns determined elections, and there is no better way of targeting electorate in the XXIst century as not from the side of digital networks. The most successful example of social media usage during campaign refers to Barack Obama. In 2008, he had more friends on Facebook that his opponent McCain, and fairly any other candidate could have more. He became the first candidate to use the social media effectively. He understood the underlying importance of social media and served as an example for all following policymakers. Presidential campaign of Obama involved huge spending on social media. In 2012 expenditures on social media of two candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney was as following: $47 million compared to $4.7 million only. Obama’s Twitter account is ranked sixth worldwide according to the number of followers, which exceed 16 million people. He participates a lot of times in Twitter forums, and uses it to further promote its policies and legislation. Social media has become a marketing strategy of today’s world. Many policymakers try to approach their targeting audience through famous social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and many others. Social media gives a range of opportunity to have a closer interaction with the public, gain their trust, and promote transparency, openness and collaborative activities. Social media is different from mass media from the point that people are able to witness the real position, opinion and world outlook of a governor, or policymaker without having that information distorted by various mass media sources. Social media is used because it facilitates goal-achievement of the state and related agencies. Governors of the USA should use social media actively in order to pursue own policies and improve image. [Title: Essay 2] Social media is a very powerful tool in public policy. Media plays an important role in information dissemination, which does not only spread a vast amount of information, but forms the basis for public opinion. Policymakers use media in order to influence people through transfer of knowledge, communication of reasoned argument, and moral suasion in order to achieve a policy result. Social media like a brand image can make you famous or can fall to you with a negative critique. Inappropriate use of social media will have an unfavorable shade on your future political career. Many policymakers have a challenge in using social media in the right way. Most of them perceive social media as a broadcasting tool, without differentiating it from TV or radio. When social media is viewed as an advertising mechanism, it will not work. One of the examples of such irrelevant participation in internet belongs to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He visited web-site Tagged.com and sent a letter with the intention to sue the website for violating trade laws connected to containing images of pornography. He was so actively demanding Tagged.com to clear up from pornography, that his claims become rather threatening and irrelevant. It is misunderstood whether he wanted to appear as an active fighter against child-pornography. If yes, then he has chosen wrong tools and the wrong way. Another inappropriate use of twitter account belongs to Barack Obama, who lost up to 40 000 followers in one night. This was the result from Obama’s request to call, email, and tweet leaders of Congress to persuade them raising $14.3 trillion debt limit. This was regarded as President was spamming, on the one hand, and on the other that he was so desperate that he urged his followers to take action. Familiar Governor of New Jersey Chris Christie has a range of controversial policies. Starting from Gay Marriage equality Bill to recent Bridgegate scandal, he has most disputable activities on social media. It is merely hard to say whether the use of social media is helpful, as long as there are always two sides of the same coin. His attempt to lower flag to half-mast next day after Whitney Houston funeral caused a wave of negative critique. One of the twitter posts was as following: Thanks @govchristie for degrading the meaning of the American tradition. A half staffed flag has a deeper meaning for Americans. (qtd. OhMyGov News.) Policymakers around the world understand that ignoring social media in XXIst century will not bring results and political changes. If status-quo is considered as policy option, the not using social media also has its own disadvantages. During the crisis and disputes, social media can indeed promote peace and stability. It is argued that Arab Spring was the direct outcome of twitter revolutions. In such situations government involvement in the digital world is necessary.

Works Cited

“How Obama Won the Social Media Battle in the 2012 Presidential Campaign.” Pamela Rutledge Media Psychology Blog. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. <http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/25/how-obama-won-the-social-media-battle-in-the-2012-presidential-campaign/>. “New York AG Suing Social Network Tagged.com” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, 10 June 2008. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/tagged-child-porn-ag/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A%20wired27b%20%28Blog%20-%2027B%20Stroke%206%20%28Threat%20Level%29%29>. “President Barack Obama takes debt battle to Twitter, loses more than 40,000 followers in one day.” NY Daily News. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/obama-loses-40k-twitter-followers-day-article-1.155812>. “Social Media and Political Engagement.” Pew Research Centers Internet American Life Project RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/10/19/social-media-and-political-engagement/>. “Top 10 Governors in Social Media - Republican Governors Dominate the Board - OhMyGov News.” Top 10 Governors in Social Media - Republican Governors Dominate the Board - OhMyGov News. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2014. <http://blog.ohmygov.com/blogs/general_news/archive/2012/03/22/top-10-governors-in-social-media.aspx>.

Cite this page

Share with friends using:

Removal Request

Finished papers: 1303

This paper is created by writer with

ID 280578413

If you want your paper to be:

Well-researched, fact-checked, and accurate

Original, fresh, based on current data

Eloquently written and immaculately formatted

275 words = 1 page double-spaced

Get your papers done by pros!

Other Pages

Adam smith thesis proposals, advocacy thesis proposals, social class thesis proposals, popularity thesis proposals, campaign thesis proposals, rule thesis proposals, motion thesis proposals, procedure thesis proposals, assumption thesis proposals, panel thesis proposals, judgment thesis proposals, aforementioned argumentative essays, production scheduling and control case study examples, example of essay on suffering of loss, free course work on the cold war, sample course work on decision, example of essay on interpreting market research, good example of media industry al jazeera report, financial management article reviews examples, good essay about product placement, the evolutionary theory of psychopathy essay sample, essay on managing high performance, free evolutionary change and revolutionary change differ critical thinking sample, free how corporations promote inequality in america article review sample, good course work about health care policy, example of research paper on facility physical settings, the 17 indisputable laws of teamwork embrace them and empower your team essays examples, reviews literature review examples, free admission essay about you 039 re applying to harvard business school we can see your resume academic, treatment plan essay examples, the effect of dependence on the internet essay example, good romeo and juliet term paper example, managing high performance essay sample, maximilien robespierre essays, leopoldo galtieri essays, kell essays, institutional theory essays, differing opinions essays, hybridomas essays, enemy soldiers essays, televised violence essays, large part of the essays, effective organization essays.

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Civics Project explainer: How social media changes politics | Opinion

Q. How has social media changed our politics?

A. In a democracy, the right and ability of the people to be informed and to discuss the important issues of the day is vital. It is one of the reasons that the 1st Amendment to the Constitution prohibits states from passing laws that restrict free speech, the freedom of the press and the right to gather and petition the government for redress. We are allowed to disagree with our leaders and let them know that we do not approve. Moreover, we can and regularly do vote them out of office.

One would think that digital communication would improve our ability to engage in political discourse and to learn more about candidates and policies. Indeed, for most of our history, news production was in the hands of the owners of newspapers and then later broadcast stations. As journalist A. J. Liebling said in the New Yorker in 1960, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” It is understandable why so many contended that this system was restrictive and not open to all voices.

More Kevin Wagner: Civics Project explainer: Why do presidential candidates drop out even before a vote?

Social Media provides a far more open forum for discussion and news, however, the effects have been more troubling than many, including myself, predicted. Digital platforms have altered the political calculus in the United States by changing the relationship between politicians, citizens and the media. As Jason Gainous and I noted in Tweeting to Power (2014), online platforms exist outside the traditional media machine, allowing political actors - including parties and candidates - to shape and dictate their content.

While that appears like an improvement on the surface, it has generated some less desirable externalities. There is far less distance between the ones making news and the ones covering it. Politicians and political actors can now be their own news source and publish information that is misleading or even untrue with almost no check. There can be little attempt at objectivity when the person covering the politician is the politician.

Previously, journalists were forced to evaluate and investigate stories before releasing them, now the stories are rushed out by political actors on social media. Indeed, there is evidence that many people trust the information generated by a politician in the social media more than traditional political news coverage. In the modern age, it is the political players who are often the most effective at constructing and marketing news.

More Kevin Wagner: The Civics Project column: Could former President Barack Obama run for vice president?

Since popular politicians often have huge numbers of followers, a social media post can have far greater reach than a cable news program. Indeed, it is in the interest of traditional media to cover the social media posts in the hopes that they can draw some of that viewership and engagement. Politicians will use social media to amplify the traditional media when it provides them with beneficial coverage. This creates an incentive for outlets to conform to the politicians’ message in order to get mentions and links which will increase readers or viewership for the media outlet.

There were and are problems when the media is in the hands of a limited number of owners. However, the current age of political self-coverage has generated some new and different challenges.

Kevin Wagner is a noted constitutional scholar and political science professor at Florida Atlantic University. The answers provided do not necessarily represent the views of the university. If you have a question about how American government and politics work, email him at [email protected] or reach him on Twitter @kevinwagnerphd .

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Review Essay: Social Media, Politics and Protest

Books reviewed: Lina Dencik and Oliver Leistert (eds), Critical Perspectives on Social Media and Protest: Between Control and Emancipation. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Daniel Trottier and Christian Fuchs (eds), Social Media, Politics and the State: Protests, Revolutions, Riots, Crime and Policing in the Age of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Julie Uldam and Anne Vestergaard (eds), Civic Engagement and Social Media: Political Participation Beyond Protest. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

RELATED PAPERS

Journal of Superconductivity

Dragan Mihailovic

Avances en …

Elizabeth C. Zapata G.

Stimme und Performanz in der mittelalterlichen Literatur

Tina Terrahe

Canadian journal of psychiatry. Revue canadienne de psychiatrie

Scott Harrison

African Journal of Biotechnology

Shiva Shanker

José Almeida

European Journal of Neuroscience

Karen julissa Elorreaga castillo

Gábor Mélypataki

Cornell University - arXiv

Luca Comanducci

Maria Lassnig. Ich bin ganz Landschaft, hrsg., Maria Nicolini, Klagenfurt: Ritter Verlag, S. 96 – 121.

Anna S C H O B E R

Der Nervenarzt

Steffen Lau

Cuadernos de Administración

CARLOS AUGUSTO RINCON SOTO

The Light of Peace

Phra Nicholas Thanissaro

Gasification [Working Title]

Danielle R S Guerra

Grigori Tomski

Revista del Departamento de Psicología - UFF

Rosângela Francischini

International Journal of Contemporary Medical Research [IJCMR]

Shahnawaz Jafri

Trakya University Journal of Natural Sciences

Merve Yildirim

Chemical senses

Achal Gulati

Apuntes de Psicología

laura velazquez

KU毕业证文凭金斯顿大学本科毕业证书 英国学历学位认证如何办理

Derecho Comparado de la Información

Gisela Maria Pérez Fuentes

Antonio Giorgilli

Frances Mair

See More Documents Like This

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Celebrity, Politics, and New Media: an Essay on the Implications of Pandemic Fame and Persona

• Original Research
• Published: 03 January 2019
• Volume 33 , pages 89–104, ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• P. David Marshall   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0418-4447 1  

5113 Accesses

21 Citations

8 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Celebrity articulates a very particular form of public identity that more or less is linked to the extensions of the self beyond one’s primary activity and into the complex dimensions of publicity, fame, and into a wider, and by its very definition, popular culture. Celebrity’s relationship to another form of public identity—the politician/political leader—is conceptually and practically connected by their shared relationship to the popular and its articulation through the various mediated forms of popular culture. This connection to popular culture is one of the ways in which power is legitimized as the politician or celebrity is authenticated by their capacity to embody the citizenry in one sphere and the audience in another. This paper argues that there has been a significant transformation in our constitution of fame in the contemporary moment that has fundamentally shifted this fame/politics nexus. The key element of this shift is the way in which digital media has reconfigured our political-popular cultural landscape. It is argued that via the communicative structures of social media and its avenues of sharing and connecting, there has developed a pandemic will-to-public identity by the billions of users of online culture—what is identified as pandemic persona—that resembles the patterns with which celebrity and politicians have operated over the previous century. Pandemic persona has produced a new instability in the organization of contemporary politics as this new public intermediary insinuates itself in unpredictable ways into the way that the process of representation in both popular and political culture manifests itself in what could be seen as legacy media and legacy formations of political institutions and practices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

It is important to understand that the concept of representation has been effectively analyzed in many works in political science that inform the characterization outlined in this paper as a “representational media and cultural regime” (see for instance Powell Jr 2004 ; 273–296, Pitkin 1967 , and Urbinati et al. 2008 ; 387–412). A very good summary of the historical work on representation that acknowledges the intersection of Kantian philosophical traditions and social science disciplines as well as its transition into conceptualizations of democracy is achieved by Colebrook 1999 . Nonetheless, there is little research that connects media to these theorizations emerging from political science concerned with representation. The complete linkage of the idea of a (political) regime being connected to its hegemonically supported and consensus building media and its associated production of a particular form of culture is developed here to further accentuate this linkage in the production of a system of recognized and legitimized public personalities.

An active user is generally defined in these statistics as on the social media site at least once a month.

See Harvey 2007 ; Couldry 2010 ; and for further background to this new individuality in late modernity, see Giddens 1991 .

Abidin, C. (2015). Communicative intimacies: influencers and perceived interconnectedness. Ada: A Journal of Gender, new Media & Technology, 8 , 1–16 Retrieved from http://adanewmedia.org/2015/11/issue8-abidin/ . Accessed 10 July 2018.

Alberoni, F. (2006 - Originally published in 1962). The powerless ‘Elite’: theory and sociological research on the phenomenon of the stars. In P. David Marshall (Ed.), The celebrity culture reader (pp. 108–123). New York: Routledge.

Google Scholar  

Barlow, J.P. (1996). Declaration of the independence of cyberspace, Retrieved 24 April 2018 from http://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html .

Barney, D., Coleman, G., Ross, C., Sterne, J., & Tembeck, T. (Eds.). (2016). The participatory condition in the digital age . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2012). The logic of connective action: digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Inf Commun Soc, 15 (5), 739–768.

Article   Google Scholar  

Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action . New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Book   Google Scholar  

Brejzek, T. (2010). From social network to urban intervention: on the scenographies of flash mobs and urban swarms. International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 6 (1), 109–122. https://doi.org/10.1386/padm.6.1.109_1 .

Brockington, D. (2009). Celebrity and the environment: fame, wealth and power in conservation . London; New York: Zed; distributed in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan.

Brockington, D. (2014). Celebrity advocacy and international development . London: Routledge.

Burgess, J., & Green, J. (2009). YouTube: online video and participatory culture. In Cambridge . Malden, MA: Polity.

Castells, M. (2012). Networks of outrage and hope: social movements in the internet age . Cambridge: Polity Press.

Cheney-Lippold, J. (2017). We are data: algorithms and the making of our digital selves . New York: New York University Press.

Colebrook, C. (1999). Ethics and representation: from Kant to post-structuralism . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Coleman, G. (2014). Hacker, hoaxer, whistleblower, spy: the many faces of Anonymous . New York: Verso books.

Confessore, N., Dance, G. J.X., Harris, R. & Hansen, M. (2018). The follower factory: inside social media’s black market. New York Times 27 January 2018. Retrieved 25 April 2018 from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html .

Corner, J. (2000). Mediated persona and political persona. Eur J Cult Stud, 3 (3), 386–402. https://doi.org/10.1177/136754940000300306 .

Couldry, N. (2010). Why voice matters: Culture and politics after neoliberalism . London: Sage.

Driessens, O. (2013). Celebrity capital: redefining celebrity using field theory. Theory Soc, 42 (5), 543–560. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-013-9202-3 .

Duffy, B. E., & Wissinger, E. (2017). Mythologies of creative work in the social media age: fun, free, and “just being me”. Int J Commun, 11 , 20.

Dyer, R. (1979). Stars . London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute.

Fietkiewicz, K. J., Dorsch, I., Scheibe, K., Zimmer, F., & Stock, W. G. (2018). Dreaming of stardom and money: micro-celebrities and influencers on live streaming services. In G. Meiselwitz (Ed.), Social Computing and Social Media 10th Conference (Vol. 1, pp. 240–253). Las Vegas NV: Springer.

Gal, N., Shifman, L., & Kampf, Z. (2016). “It gets better”: internet memes and the construction of collective identity. New Media Soc, 18 (8), 1698–1714.

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age . Cambridge: Polity.

Grayling, A. C. (2016). The age of genius: the seventeenth century and the birth of the modern mind (1st U.S. edition. ed.). New York, NY: Bloomsbury.

Guastella, G. (2017). Word of mouth: Fama and its personifications in art and literature from Ancient Rome to the Middle Ages (1st ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hale, S. A., John, P., Margetts, H., & Yasseri, T. (2018). How digital design shapes political participation: a natural experiment with social information. PLoS One, 13 (4), e0196068.

Hardie, P. R. (2012). Rumour and renown: representations of Fama in Western literature . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harvey, D. (2007). A brief history of neoliberalism . New York: Oxford University Press.

Hearn, A. (2017). Verified: self-presentation, identity management, and selfhood in the age of big data. Pop Commun, 15 (2), 62–77.

Heimans, J., & Timms, H. (2018). New power: how movements build, businesses thrive, and ideas catch fire in our hyper-connected world (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Horkheimer, M., Theodor W. Adorno,T. W. & Noeri, G. (2002) Dialectic of enlightenment . Stanford University Press, 2002.

Karlsen, R. (2015). Followers are opinion leaders: The role of people in the flow of political communication on and beyond social networking sites. European Journal of Communication, 30 (3), 301–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323115577305 .

Katz, E., Lazarsfeld, P. F., & Columbia University. Bureau of Applied Social Research. (1955). Personal influence; the part played by people in the flow of mass communications . Glencoe, Ill.: Free press.

KickFactory. (2016). The average Twitter user now has 707 Followers. 23 June. We blog. Retrieved 23 December 2018. from https://kickfactory.com/blog/average-twitter-followers-updated-2016/ .

Kohn, M. (2013). Privatization and protest: Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Toronto, and the occupation of public space in a democracy. Perspectives on Politics, 11 (1), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592712003623 .

Lee, F. L. F. (2017). Social media, political information cycle, and the evolution of news: the 2017 chief executive election in Hong Kong. Communication and the Public, 3 (1), 62–76. https://doi.org/10.1177/2057047317742421 .

Lilti, A. (2017). Trans. by Lynn Jeffress. The invention of celebrity: 1750 – 1850. Malden, MA: Polity.

Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S., & Yasseri, T. (2015). Political turbulence: how social media shape collective action . Princeton University Press.

Margetts, H., John, P., Hale, S., & Yasseri, T. (2016). Brexit, voting, and political turbulence. Retrieved from http://blog.press.princeton.edu/2016/08/18/brexit-voting-and-political-turbulence/ . Accessed 15 Nov 2018

Marshall, P. D. (2010). The promotion and presentation of the self: celebrity as marker of presentational media. Celebrity Studies, 1 (1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392390903519057 .

Marshall, P. D. (2014). Celebrity and power: fame in contemporary culture (2nd edition (1st edition: 1997) ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Marshall, P. D. (2016). Celebrity persona pandemic . Minneapolis Minn: University of Minnesota Press.

Marshall, P. D., & Henderson, N. (2016). Political persona 2016 - an introduction. Persona Studies, 2 (2), 1–18.

Marshall, P. D., Moore, C., & Barbour, K. (2019). Persona studies: an introduction . Malden Ma: Blackwell-Wiley.

Marwick, A. (2016). You may know me from YouTube: (micro-)celebrity in social media. In P. D. Marshall & S. Redmond (Eds.), A Companion to Celebrity (pp. 333–350). Boston: Wiley Blackwell.

Mention Reports (2018). Followers - Instagram report. Retrieved 21 November 2018 from https://mention.com/en/reports/instagram/followers/#2

Milner, R. M. (2016). The world made meme: public conversations and participatory media . MIT Press.

Neely, C. (2018). Japan’s top social media networks for 2018. Humble Bunny . Retrieved from http://www.humblebunny.com/japans-top-social-media-networks-2018/ .

Pels, D., & Corner, J. (2003). Media and the restyling of politics: consumerism, celebrity and cynicism . London: Sage.

Perrin, A. (2015). Social media usage: 2005-2015. Pew Research Centre: Internet and Technology. 8 October. Retrieved 25 April 2018 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/10/08/social-networking-usage-2005-2015/ .

Pew Research Centre: Internet and Technology. (2018). Social Media Fact Sheet. 5 Feb. Retrieved 25 April 2018 ( http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/social-media/ ).

Pitkin, H. F. (1967). The concept of representation: University of California Press.

Powell, G. B., Jr. (2004). Political representation in comparative politics. Annu Rev Polit Sci, 7 , 273–296.

Raphael, J., & Lam, C. (Eds.). (2017). Becoming brands: celebrity, activism and politics . Toronto: Waterhill Publishing.

Senft, T. M. (2008). Camgirls: celebrity & community in the age of social networks . New York: Peter Lang.

Senft, T. M. (2013). Microcelebrity and the branded self. In A. Bruns, J. Burgess, & J. Hartley (Eds.), A companion to new media dynamics (pp. 346–354). Chichester ; Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.

Chapter   Google Scholar  

Shifman, L. (2013). Memes in digital culture . Cambridge MA: MIT Press.

Smith, K. (2017). “Marketing: 47 incredible Facebook statistics.” Brandwatch . Retrieved 25 April 2018 ( https://www.brandwatch.com/blog/47-facebook-statistics/ ).

Smith, C. (2018). Snapchat statistics and facts (February 2018) by the numbers. 17 April. Retrieved 25 April 2018 ( https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/snapchat-statistics/ ).

Statista. (2018a). “Numbers of social network users worldwide from 2010 to 2021 (in billions).” Retrieved 25 April, 2018 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/278414/number-of-worldwide-social-network-users/ ).

Statista. (2018b). “Most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2018, ranked by number of active users (in millions).” Retrieved 25 April, 2018 ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/ ).

Street, J. (2004). Celebrity politicians: popular culture and political representation. British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 6 , 435–452. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-856X.2004.00149.x .

Totman, S. (2017). The emergence of the super-celebrity activist: George Clooney and Angelina Jolie. In J. Raphael & C. Lam (Eds.), Becoming brands: celebrity, activism and politics (pp. 21–31). Toronto: Waterhill Publishing.

Tsaliki, L. et. al. eds. (2011). Transnational celebrity activism in global politics: Changing the world? Bristol, England. Chicago: Intellect Books.

Turner, G. (2010). Ordinary people and the media: the demotic turn . Los Angeles: SAGE.

Urbinati, N., Mark, E., & Warren, M. E. (2008). The concept of representation in contemporary democratic theory. Annu Rev Polit Sci, 11 , 387–412.

Van Zoonen, L. (2005). Entertaining the citizen: when politics and popular culture converge: Rowman & Littlefield.

Weber, M. (1968). Economy and society; an outline of interpretive sociology. New York: Bedminster Press.

Wheeler, M. (2013). Celebrity politics: image and identity in contemporary political communications . Cambridge: Polity.

Wilson, J. (2014). Stardom, sentimental education and the shaping of global citizens. Cine J, 53 (2), 27–49.

Wong, W. H., & Brown, P. A. (2013). E-bandits in global activism: WikiLeaks, Anonymous, and the Politics of No One. Perspectives on Politics, 11 (4), 1015–1033. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592713002806 .

Zhang, L., Zhao, J., & Xu, K. (2016). Who creates trends in online social media: the crowd or opinion leaders? J Comput-Mediat Commun, 21 , 1–16.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Communication and Creative Arts, Deakin University, Burwood, Victoria, 3125, Australia

P. David Marshall

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. David Marshall .

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval.

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher’s note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Marshall, P.D. Celebrity, Politics, and New Media: an Essay on the Implications of Pandemic Fame and Persona. Int J Polit Cult Soc 33 , 89–104 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9311-0

Download citation

Published : 03 January 2019

Issue Date : March 2020

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-018-9311-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Persona studies
• Social media
• Online culture
• Word-of-mouth culture
• Instability
• Fame apparatus
• Opinion leaders
• Key opinion leaders
• Influencers
• Micro-publics
• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research

Feb 15, 2023

6 Example Essays on Social Media | Advantages, Effects, and Outlines

Got an essay assignment about the effects of social media we got you covered check out our examples and outlines below.

Social media has become one of our society's most prominent ways of communication and information sharing in a very short time. It has changed how we communicate and has given us a platform to express our views and opinions and connect with others. It keeps us informed about the world around us. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn have brought individuals from all over the world together, breaking down geographical borders and fostering a genuinely global community.

However, social media comes with its difficulties. With the rise of misinformation, cyberbullying, and privacy problems, it's critical to utilize these platforms properly and be aware of the risks. Students in the academic world are frequently assigned essays about the impact of social media on numerous elements of our lives, such as relationships, politics, and culture. These essays necessitate a thorough comprehension of the subject matter, critical thinking, and the ability to synthesize and convey information clearly and succinctly.

But where do you begin? It can be challenging to know where to start with so much information available. Jenni.ai comes in handy here. Jenni.ai is an AI application built exclusively for students to help them write essays more quickly and easily. Jenni.ai provides students with inspiration and assistance on how to approach their essays with its enormous database of sample essays on a variety of themes, including social media. Jenni.ai is the solution you've been looking for if you're experiencing writer's block or need assistance getting started.

So, whether you're a student looking to better your essay writing skills or want to remain up to date on the latest social media advancements, Jenni.ai is here to help. Jenni.ai is the ideal tool for helping you write your finest essay ever, thanks to its simple design, an extensive database of example essays, and cutting-edge AI technology. So, why delay? Sign up for a free trial of Jenni.ai today and begin exploring the worlds of social networking and essay writing!

Want to learn how to write an argumentative essay? Check out these inspiring examples!

We will provide various examples of social media essays so you may get a feel for the genre.

6 Examples of Social Media Essays

Here are 6 examples of Social Media Essays:

The Impact of Social Media on Relationships and Communication

Introduction:.

The way we share information and build relationships has evolved as a direct result of the prevalence of social media in our daily lives. The influence of social media on interpersonal connections and conversation is a hot topic. Although social media has many positive effects, such as bringing people together regardless of physical proximity and making communication quicker and more accessible, it also has a dark side that can affect interpersonal connections and dialogue.

Positive Effects:

Connecting People Across Distances

One of social media's most significant benefits is its ability to connect individuals across long distances. People can use social media platforms to interact and stay in touch with friends and family far away. People can now maintain intimate relationships with those they care about, even when physically separated.

Improved Communication Speed and Efficiency

Additionally, the proliferation of social media sites has accelerated and simplified communication. Thanks to instant messaging, users can have short, timely conversations rather than lengthy ones via email. Furthermore, social media facilitates group communication, such as with classmates or employees, by providing a unified forum for such activities.

Negative Effects:

Decreased Face-to-Face Communication

The decline in in-person interaction is one of social media's most pernicious consequences on interpersonal connections and dialogue. People's reliance on digital communication over in-person contact has increased along with the popularity of social media. Face-to-face interaction has suffered as a result, which has adverse effects on interpersonal relationships and the development of social skills.

Decreased Emotional Intimacy

Another adverse effect of social media on relationships and communication is decreased emotional intimacy. Digital communication lacks the nonverbal cues and facial expressions critical in building emotional connections with others. This can make it more difficult for people to develop close and meaningful relationships, leading to increased loneliness and isolation.

Increased Conflict and Miscommunication

Finally, social media can also lead to increased conflict and miscommunication. The anonymity and distance provided by digital communication can lead to misunderstandings and hurtful comments that might not have been made face-to-face. Additionally, social media can provide a platform for cyberbullying , which can have severe consequences for the victim's mental health and well-being.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the impact of social media on relationships and communication is a complex issue with both positive and negative effects. While social media platforms offer many benefits, such as connecting people across distances and enabling faster and more accessible communication, they also have a dark side that can negatively affect relationships and communication. It is up to individuals to use social media responsibly and to prioritize in-person communication in their relationships and interactions with others.

The Role of Social Media in the Spread of Misinformation and Fake News

Social media has revolutionized the way information is shared and disseminated. However, the ease and speed at which data can be spread on social media also make it a powerful tool for spreading misinformation and fake news. Misinformation and fake news can seriously affect public opinion, influence political decisions, and even cause harm to individuals and communities.

The Pervasiveness of Misinformation and Fake News on Social Media

Misinformation and fake news are prevalent on social media platforms, where they can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This is partly due to the way social media algorithms work, which prioritizes content likely to generate engagement, such as sensational or controversial stories. As a result, false information can spread rapidly and be widely shared before it is fact-checked or debunked.

The Influence of Social Media on Public Opinion

Social media can significantly impact public opinion, as people are likelier to believe the information they see shared by their friends and followers. This can lead to a self-reinforcing cycle, where misinformation and fake news are spread and reinforced, even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The Challenge of Correcting Misinformation and Fake News

Correcting misinformation and fake news on social media can be a challenging task. This is partly due to the speed at which false information can spread and the difficulty of reaching the same audience exposed to the wrong information in the first place. Additionally, some individuals may be resistant to accepting correction, primarily if the incorrect information supports their beliefs or biases.

In conclusion, the function of social media in disseminating misinformation and fake news is complex and urgent. While social media has revolutionized the sharing of information, it has also made it simpler for false information to propagate and be widely believed. Individuals must be accountable for the information they share and consume, and social media firms must take measures to prevent the spread of disinformation and fake news on their platforms.

The Effects of Social Media on Mental Health and Well-Being

Social media has become an integral part of modern life, with billions of people around the world using platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to stay connected with others and access information. However, while social media has many benefits, it can also negatively affect mental health and well-being.

Comparison and Low Self-Esteem

One of the key ways that social media can affect mental health is by promoting feelings of comparison and low self-esteem. People often present a curated version of their lives on social media, highlighting their successes and hiding their struggles. This can lead others to compare themselves unfavorably, leading to feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem.

Cyberbullying and Online Harassment

Another way that social media can negatively impact mental health is through cyberbullying and online harassment. Social media provides a platform for anonymous individuals to harass and abuse others, leading to feelings of anxiety, fear, and depression.

Social Isolation

Despite its name, social media can also contribute to feelings of isolation. At the same time, people may have many online friends but need more meaningful in-person connections and support. This can lead to feelings of loneliness and depression.

Addiction and Overuse

Finally, social media can be addictive, leading to overuse and negatively impacting mental health and well-being. People may spend hours each day scrolling through their feeds, neglecting other important areas of their lives, such as work, family, and self-care.

In sum, social media has positive and negative consequences on one's psychological and emotional well-being. Realizing this, and taking measures like reducing one's social media use, reaching out to loved ones for help, and prioritizing one's well-being, are crucial. In addition, it's vital that social media giants take ownership of their platforms and actively encourage excellent mental health and well-being.

The Use of Social Media in Political Activism and Social Movements

Social media has recently become increasingly crucial in political action and social movements. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have given people new ways to express themselves, organize protests, and raise awareness about social and political issues.

Raising Awareness and Mobilizing Action

One of the most important uses of social media in political activity and social movements has been to raise awareness about important issues and mobilize action. Hashtags such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter, for example, have brought attention to sexual harassment and racial injustice, respectively. Similarly, social media has been used to organize protests and other political actions, allowing people to band together and express themselves on a bigger scale.

Connecting with like-minded individuals

A second method in that social media has been utilized in political activity and social movements is to unite like-minded individuals. Through social media, individuals can join online groups, share knowledge and resources, and work with others to accomplish shared objectives. This has been especially significant for geographically scattered individuals or those without access to traditional means of political organizing.

Challenges and Limitations

As a vehicle for political action and social movements, social media has faced many obstacles and restrictions despite its many advantages. For instance, the propagation of misinformation and fake news on social media can impede attempts to disseminate accurate and reliable information. In addition, social media corporations have been condemned for censorship and insufficient protection of user rights.

In conclusion, social media has emerged as a potent instrument for political activism and social movements, giving voice to previously unheard communities and galvanizing support for change. Social media presents many opportunities for communication and collaboration. Still, users and institutions must be conscious of the risks and limitations of these tools to promote their responsible and productive usage.

The Potential Privacy Concerns Raised by Social Media Use and Data Collection Practices

With billions of users each day on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, social media has ingrained itself into every aspect of our lives. While these platforms offer a straightforward method to communicate with others and exchange information, they also raise significant concerns over data collecting and privacy. This article will examine the possible privacy issues posed by social media use and data-gathering techniques.

Data Collection and Sharing

The gathering and sharing of personal data are significant privacy issues brought up by social media use. Social networking sites gather user data, including details about their relationships, hobbies, and routines. This information is made available to third-party businesses for various uses, such as marketing and advertising. This can lead to serious concerns about who has access to and uses our personal information.

Lack of Control Over Personal Information

The absence of user control over personal information is a significant privacy issue brought up by social media usage. Social media makes it challenging to limit who has access to and how data is utilized once it has been posted. Sensitive information may end up being extensively disseminated and may be used maliciously as a result.

Personalized Marketing

Social media companies utilize the information they gather about users to target them with adverts relevant to their interests and usage patterns. Although this could be useful, it might also cause consumers to worry about their privacy since they might feel that their personal information is being used without their permission. Furthermore, there are issues with the integrity of the data being used to target users and the possibility of prejudice based on individual traits.

Government Surveillance

Using social media might spark worries about government surveillance. There are significant concerns regarding privacy and free expression when governments in some nations utilize social media platforms to follow and monitor residents.

In conclusion, social media use raises significant concerns regarding data collecting and privacy. While these platforms make it easy to interact with people and exchange information, they also gather a lot of personal information, which raises questions about who may access it and how it will be used. Users should be aware of these privacy issues and take precautions to safeguard their personal information, such as exercising caution when choosing what details to disclose on social media and keeping their information sharing with other firms to a minimum.

The Ethical and Privacy Concerns Surrounding Social Media Use And Data Collection

Our use of social media to communicate with loved ones, acquire information, and even conduct business has become a crucial part of our everyday lives. The extensive use of social media does, however, raise some ethical and privacy issues that must be resolved. The influence of social media use and data collecting on user rights, the accountability of social media businesses, and the need for improved regulation are all topics that will be covered in this article.

Effect on Individual Privacy:

Social networking sites gather tons of personal data from their users, including delicate information like search history, location data, and even health data. Each user's detailed profile may be created with this data and sold to advertising or used for other reasons. Concerns regarding the privacy of personal information might arise because social media businesses can use this data to target users with customized adverts.

Additionally, individuals might need to know how much their personal information is being gathered and exploited. Data breaches or the unauthorized sharing of personal information with other parties may result in instances where sensitive information is exposed. Users should be aware of the privacy rules of social media firms and take precautions to secure their data.

Responsibility of Social Media Companies:

Social media firms should ensure that they responsibly and ethically gather and use user information. This entails establishing strong security measures to safeguard sensitive information and ensuring users are informed of what information is being collected and how it is used.

Many social media businesses, nevertheless, have come under fire for not upholding these obligations. For instance, the Cambridge Analytica incident highlighted how Facebook users' personal information was exploited for political objectives without their knowledge. This demonstrates the necessity of social media corporations being held responsible for their deeds and ensuring that they are safeguarding the security and privacy of their users.

Better Regulation Is Needed

There is a need for tighter regulation in this field, given the effect, social media has on individual privacy as well as the obligations of social media firms. The creation of laws and regulations that ensure social media companies are gathering and using user information ethically and responsibly, as well as making sure users are aware of their rights and have the ability to control the information that is being collected about them, are all part of this.

Additionally, legislation should ensure that social media businesses are held responsible for their behavior, for example, by levying fines for data breaches or the unauthorized use of personal data. This will provide social media businesses with a significant incentive to prioritize their users' privacy and security and ensure they are upholding their obligations.

In conclusion, social media has fundamentally changed how we engage and communicate with one another, but this increased convenience also raises several ethical and privacy issues. Essential concerns that need to be addressed include the effect of social media on individual privacy, the accountability of social media businesses, and the requirement for greater regulation to safeguard user rights. We can make everyone's online experience safer and more secure by looking more closely at these issues.

In conclusion, social media is a complex and multifaceted topic that has recently captured the world's attention. With its ever-growing influence on our lives, it's no surprise that it has become a popular subject for students to explore in their writing. Whether you are writing an argumentative essay on the impact of social media on privacy, a persuasive essay on the role of social media in politics, or a descriptive essay on the changes social media has brought to the way we communicate, there are countless angles to approach this subject.

However, writing a comprehensive and well-researched essay on social media can be daunting. It requires a thorough understanding of the topic and the ability to articulate your ideas clearly and concisely. This is where Jenni.ai comes in. Our AI-powered tool is designed to help students like you save time and energy and focus on what truly matters - your education. With Jenni.ai , you'll have access to a wealth of examples and receive personalized writing suggestions and feedback.

Whether you're a student who's just starting your writing journey or looking to perfect your craft, Jenni.ai has everything you need to succeed. Our tool provides you with the necessary resources to write with confidence and clarity, no matter your experience level. You'll be able to experiment with different styles, explore new ideas , and refine your writing skills.

So why waste your time and energy struggling to write an essay on your own when you can have Jenni.ai by your side? Sign up for our free trial today and experience the difference for yourself! With Jenni.ai, you'll have the resources you need to write confidently, clearly, and creatively. Get started today and see just how easy and efficient writing can be!

Try Jenni for free today

Create your first piece of content with Jenni today and never look back