How Social Media Divides Us

There are grow­ing con­cerns about how social media divides us.

As it becomes easi­er for every­one to self-pub­lish without cen­sor­ship, we also see the rise of anonym­ous hate, fraud­u­lent beha­viour, online trolls, rampant pop­u­lism, and propaganda. 

And then there’s the tech­lash.

Oh, and haven’t you heard? Social media is killing journ­al­ism and cul­ture, too.

Can the gen­er­al pub­lic be trus­ted to wield such powers if the inter­net is truly migh­ti­er than the sword? 

Here we go:

Social Media Divides Us Academically

Walter Lippmann (1889 – 1974) was an American writer, polit­ic­al com­ment­at­or, and colum­nist. His leg­acy still lingers, as he coined con­cepts like “the Cold War” and words like “ste­reo­type.” His most not­able pub­lic­a­tion, Public Opinion (1922), is still note­worthy for pub­lic rela­tions professionals.

Lippmann, the win­ner of two Pulitzer prizes, engaged in heated pub­lic debates with John Dewey (1859−1952), an American philo­soph­er and psy­cho­lo­gist of spe­cif­ic interest in pub­lic rela­tions. His per­spect­ive of human inter­ac­tion gave rise to seg­ment­ing people in pub­lics (the “P” in pub­lic rela­tions). ³The Lippmann-Dewey debate was an intel­lec­tu­al battle con­cern­ing the role of journ­al­ism. Can the gen­er­al pub­lic com­pre­hend the value of ser­i­ous report­ing, or will they opt for enter­tain­ment instead?

Dewey cri­tiqued Lippmann’s “elit­ist views”, while Lippmann emphas­ised the import­ance of journ­al­ism; the pub­lic can­not make sense of the world without object­ive report­ing and expert insights. 

Edward Bernays (1891−1995) argued that mass media was a pro­pa­ganda tool for the elites, the fath­er of pub­lic relations. 

Another influ­en­tial PR prac­ti­tion­er, Ivy Lee (187−1934), who, amongst oth­er accom­plish­ments, cre­ated the first press release and influ­enced the field of crisis com­mu­nic­a­tions, seemed to have much more faith in human­ity’s capa­city for under­stand­ing the world.

On Lippmann’s side of things, we see crit­ic­al minds like Noam Chomsky dis­cuss­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing of con­sent, and on Dewey’s side, we find minds like Clay Shirky dis­cuss­ing, here comes every­body. While Chomsky would argue that our media is primar­ily a tool for the élite to shape our minds, Shirky would likely say that we as indi­vidu­als have abso­lute power (“there’s no inform­a­tion over­load, only fil­ter failure”).

Neil Postman (1931−2003) warned us about amus­ing ourselves to death, while Marshall McLuhan (1911−1980) demoted the import­ance of spe­cif­ic con­tent by stat­ing that the medi­um is the mes­sage.

From a found­a­tion­al stand­point, there are reas­on­able argu­ments from both sides of the spectrum.

Social Media Divides Us Individually

Today, those who believe in the power of social media will argue that every­one’s a pub­lish­er with a power­ful voice and that social graphs are rede­fin­ing how we relate to each oth­er. They are social media optim­ists about how the media land­scape is chan­ging, and they typ­ic­ally believe that we’re simply in the pro­cess of learn­ing how to man­age the digit­al media landscape.

Social media optim­ists will argue that if there’s a prob­lem with how humans behave, we should embrace the fact that tech­no­logy brings these beha­viours out in the open. Because only then can we learn, as a soci­ety, how to deal with such ser­i­ous issues.

Then, we have social media pess­im­ists who will argue that social media is a breed­ing ground for fake news, pop­u­lism, and the sub­sequent death of one of the essen­tial pil­lars of demo­cracy — journ­al­ism. They’re also the driv­ing force behind the tech­lash, ser­i­ously cri­tiquing the tech giants.

“The wis­dom of crowds” is beau­ti­ful, but is it also naïve? Wikipedia is a remark­able achieve­ment and could­n’t exist without its com­munity of volun­teers. WordPress powers 26% of the web and runs on open-source con­tri­bu­tions from pro­gram­mers worldwide.

Still, pess­im­ists don’t feel that whatever good social media is doing isn’t enough to make up for mak­ing us addicted to smart­phones and pro­mot­ing fur­ther polarization.

Social Media Divides Us Algorithmically 

In the wake of the recent US elec­tion, where President Donald Trump won the pop­u­list voters, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has been heav­ily cri­ti­cised for aid­ing and abet­ting the dis­sem­in­a­tion of peak populism. 

Facebook, and most oth­er social media plat­forms, are being heav­ily cri­ti­cised for cre­at­ing fil­ter bubbles where like-minded people amp­li­fy their delu­sions by social rein­force­ment — instead of listen­ing to well-edu­cated experts on rel­ev­ant sub­ject matters. 

The Cambridge Analytica scan­dal did­n’t pre­cisely strengthen Facebook’s case.

Governments and insti­tu­tions are going after the tech giants world­wide, but are their goals altru­ist­ic? Or are our gov­ern­ments try­ing to get their hands on our data themselves?

With pro­found advance­ments in nar­row arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, social scor­ing sys­tems and facial recog­ni­tion, there’s a case to be made that it’s bet­ter to see innov­a­tion driv­en by com­pan­ies that run ads rather than insti­tu­tions that mono­pol­ise violence.

Still, put­ting the macro power bal­ance aside, there’s the press­ing under­ly­ing issue of social media algorithms pro­mot­ing media logic mech­an­isms, i.e. polar­isa­tion, sim­pli­fic­a­tion, per­son­al­isa­tion, and visualisation.

Either way, there’s an appar­ent risk that power­ful agents like states and tech giants are tak­ing advant­age of adverse side effects to push for more power and incred­ible wealth — at the expense of us social media users.

Social Media Divides Us Politically

The con­flict between news pub­lish­ers and tech giants fight­ing for a share of voice and ad rev­en­ue isn’t made any bet­ter. This con­flict often forces news pub­lish­ers to side with the state’s agenda, not the people’s. 

Still, our social media usage is deeply ingrained in our com­mu­nic­at­ive beha­viour. Companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google (FAANG) are already influ­en­cing our media con­sump­tion at an unpre­ced­en­ted level. 

Consequently, journ­al­ists and tra­di­tion­al news pub­lish­ers, the former cham­pi­ons of free speech and free­dom from cen­sor­ship, are push­ing tech giants like Facebook to take respons­ib­il­ity for how we, the social media users, lever­age the free­dom of speech.

Still, we must ask ourselves if we want the FAANG com­pan­ies to act­ively use their algorithms to shape our worldview.

A sig­ni­fic­ant issue is that today’s polit­ic­al land­scape is driv­en by its flanks. On the one side, we have alt-right nation­al­ists and pop­u­lists, and on the oth­er, we have alt-left social justice war­ri­ors. While far apart polit­ic­ally, they’re both heav­ily reli­ant on iden­tity polit­ics, cent­ral­ised power, and intol­er­ance of dif­fer­ing opinions.

Both flanks see aggres­sion and viol­ence as reas­on­able polit­ic­al meth­ods, highly favoured expres­sions amp­li­fied by social media algorithms.

So, no mat­ter if Mark Zuckerberg were to take the stance of being a social media optim­ist or a social media pess­im­ist, he would­n’t know which leg to stand on:

If the tech giants leave the social algorithms unchecked, they fuel the flanks.
They fuel the flanks if they manip­u­late the algorithms to sta­bil­ise human behaviour.

And doing noth­ing accel­er­ates the spir­al of silence:

How To Stop Social Media From Dividing Us

As the recent debate on how social media is respons­ible for spread­ing fake news and altern­at­ive facts stirs emo­tions, many raise their voices for stricter reg­u­la­tion and increased con­trol. We mustn’t social­ise ourselves to death, it seems.

Neil Postman warned us about the dangers of media logic and the risk of “amus­ing ourselves to death”.

While tele­vi­sion indeed changed the fab­ric of our soci­ety for both bet­ter and worse, we must ask ourselves if we believe that state-con­trolled tele­vi­sion used to con­trol our world­views and emo­tion­al states would have been prefer­able. Or if it’s even pos­sible to stop inform­a­tion tech­no­logy from chan­ging our lives?

As social media users, we must be care­ful about our wishes. 

The ques­tion of how social media divides us is com­plex, so what kind of change should we demand from those in power?

We should demand that social media com­pan­ies con­tinu­ously improve their algorithms to give priv­ilege to sci­ence, sub­stance, trust, and logic instead of the beha­viours of those who are most prone to irra­tion­al and emo­tion­al responses.

We should demand that states and insti­tu­tions con­tinu­ously ensure that no third parties ever get their hands on our user data — includ­ing forms and institutions.

We should demand that news pub­lish­ers con­tinu­ously report the object­ive truth and side with indi­vidu­als (not groups) without voice or platform.

We should demand that polit­ic­al interest groups con­tinu­ously defend their oppon­ents’ demo­crat­ic rights to engage in respect­ful debate and that all forms of polit­ic­al coer­cion by force are unacceptable.

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