In recent years, social media platforms have become more and more prominent in how information is transmitted across society.
From conveying news to fostering political action and forming public opinion, there are countless examples of this. Social media impacted how the COVID-19 pandemic was handled, has backed political and social movements like the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter, has been a tool of counter-war efforts for Ukraine, among many other recent and notable examples.
As social media becomes more prominent in political spheres, for example as a campaign tool for candidates or as a communication tool for elected politicians, how the public and politicians interact with the communication platforms is key to reaping the benefits and avoiding the detriments that they offer.
A great way to describe how social media platforms are functioning today is a quote from the 2018 work of Lee, So, Lee, Leung, and Chan, “Social media and political partisanship – A subaltern public sphere’s role in democracy”:
“Social media are a vehicle for users to maintain and consolidate their relationships in normal times and to empower them when controversial social and political issues arise.”
1 – Rise of Political Communication via Social Media
Many researchers have proposed the democratic and political benefits of social media, comparing these platforms to possible make-shift public spheres (CITE).
On the contrary, there are also plenty of concerns about the use of social media (owned and operated by non-governmental companies, operated by algorithms) for true democratic conversation and debate. Particularly in the USA, it’s become blatantly evident how politicians can use social media to rally their base and push their agendas with only a few clicks of a button. It’s easier than ever to communicate with massive audiences, for both the left and right side of the political spectrum. For example, Marjorie Taylor Greene (Republican Congresswoman for Georgia) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, better known as AOC (Democratic Congresswoman for New York), are both tremendously active on Twitter, using it to address both their supporters and their political adversaries.
With “a little under half (48%) of U.S. adults say they get news from social media “often” or “sometimes’” (Pew Research Centre, 2021).
And with more political discourse happening online, it’s clear that social media is certainly impacting:
Elections and voter decisions
Formation of public opinion on political matters
The decisions of policy-makers and politicians
2 – CASE: Cambridge Analytica
In 2016, there were two major elections happening in the Global North, the US 2016 Presidential Election and the Brexit Referendum in the UK.
The emerged Cambridge Analytica, funded by big Republican names from the US and run by Aleksandr Kogan (a Russian-American researcher working out of Cambridge University in the UK). Functioning as essentially a shell company of already established firm SCL group, a British behavioural research and strategic communication company, “Cambridge Analytica” became the name of one of the biggest data scandals in recent history.
It is estimated that upwards of 87 million Facebook users' data was leaked by Cambridge Analytica.
Regardless of whether or not Brexit was passed or Trump was elected because of the information leaked by Cambridge Analytica, this data breach during these campaigns/elections is a key example in why the use of social media for political purposes is complex. Receiving or sharing political information across platforms that are run by companies who are susceptible to such massive data breaches is not an airtight democratic practice.
To learn more about the role of key Republican players like Steven Bannon and mega-donors the Mercers, this VOX article is a great resource. Additionally, documentary The Great Hack (Netflix) dives into this story and dissects the possible role that Cambridge Analytica, the SCL Group, and Facebook could have had in these elections.
3 – CASE: The Alabama Senate Special Election in 2017
Although the role of Cambridge Analytica in the U.S. Presidential Election and the Brexit Referendum of 2016 is considerably debated, there are other examples of social media and misinformation playing roles in (or against) political campaigns. Take the special election for the U.S. Senate in Alabama in 2017.
Documentary After Truth, which we reviewed a few weeks ago, dove into the role of New Knowledge in the special election. In an attempt to fight misinformation from Republicans by using it to their own advantage, Democrat-supporter-run New Knowledge participated in this special election by spreading false information about the Republican candidate, Roy Moore. In the end, whether or not this was the reason why, the Democratic candidate (Doug Jones) won.
Here’s a quote summarizing the events from Variety:
“But the fake news, planted by Democrats, that may well have turned the election spun around the notion that Moore was the kind of Christian puritan who wanted to make Alabama a dry state — a piece of fiction that would have turned off anyone who likes to grab a beer after work. Moore lost the election, and the film rightly questions whether liberals getting down in that mud can ultimately lead to anything but a greater abandonment of truth.”
4 – Youth Interest in Politics
A key tenant to a successful democracy: participation and engagement.
Voter apathy is a big issue in many democracies. Getting people involved and to the polls is a huge roadblock, whether or not this is due to lack of interest and motivation, or more malicious reasons like systemic issues with voter registration, poll locations, or getting time off work to go vote. Regardless, getting young people interested in and aware of politics is an important way to create civically-motivated citizens for future generations. What’s the best way to do this today? Social media.
Researchers have concluded before that the skills and interests developed in the adolescence period influences the “political socialization” of an individual (Langton, 1969; as cited in Kim & Yang, 2016). Further, with the role that social media has played in the adolescence periods of Generation Z and Generation Alpha, it’s become clear the role that this has played in how these individuals think about (or will think about) political issues (Kim & Yang, 2016).
Kim and Yang (2016) differentiate between how politics interacted with more traditional media forms and how it’s working now:
“[The Internet] also provides detailed information and especially information about the political processes; enables discussion and debate; and informs people about how to realize their own political opinions. In doing so, it enhances political efficacy and participation.”
Essentially, interactive media (social media platforms) have altered how everyone interacts with politics, but it will likely impact younger generations even more since they have and will come of voting age after being introduced and acquainted with such media.
This further emphasizes the importance of them learning how to interact with such media! Kim and Yang (2016) agree, describing a concept called “Internet information literacy,” the ability to navigate online platforms to find, collect, understand, and evaluate information online.
5 – Social Media Platforms Aren’t Designed for Democratic Practices
As Vijay and Gekker highlight in their article on how TikTok played a role in the 2019 Indian elections, social media platforms don’t lend themselves well to politics. Despite their accessibility and (for the most part) free entry, there are many reasons why these platforms have not been hailed as the new public spheres where public opinion can be formed justly and equally.
For starters, sustained engagement. Nearly all popular social media platforms thrive on short attention spans, most notably, TikTok. New content with every swipe. Additionally, there isn’t room on most platforms for equality. Each post gets different levels of engagement or “impressions.” This is usually dependent on the amount of followers a user has – which is impacted by a myriad of factors, including everything from physical appearance to social and cultural capital.
Vijay and Gekker (2021) point out how sustained engagement on complex topics was not the goal of those who created the platforms. Take Twitter as an example. The character limit quite literally limits how much information can be sent out. This doesn’t lend itself well to complicated topics, context, or nuance.
These five points have illustrated the prominent role that social media platforms play in our democratic and civic actions today. Now, apply the significant opportunity to spread false information and deliberately dissuade each other online. Not so great.
The more we become reliant on social media platforms for news, information, and political debate, the more necessary media literacy becomes. Even those most critical and aware of the situation are susceptible to being influenced by information and knowledge fed to us – its human nature.
Scholars have argued the importance of media literacy in this rising age of digital political participation. For example, the work of Mihailidis and Thevenin (2013), who describe a model of how media literacy is a required competency to participate in democracy. Their model is made up of four competencies:
Participatory (enabling the average consumer to navigate networks and platforms effectively)
Collaborative (the ability to form connections and engage openly with surrounding environments)
Expressive Media Literacy (how individual users choose to engage with peers and express themselves online)
Critical (the ability to access, evaluate, and analyze encountered messages)
Social media has become the most efficient, convenient, and one of the most accessible ways to get news and information, but it’s not the most fact-checked. Differentiating fact from fiction, real people from Internet trolls, truth from satire, or true story from just someone’s opinion, becomes necessary for social media to play any role in aiding democracy instead of destroying it.
Research
Kim, E., & Yang, S. (2016). Internet literacy and digital natives' civic engagement: Internet skill literacy or Internet information literacy? Journal of Youth Studies, 19(4), 438–456. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2015.1083961
Lee, P. S. N., So, C. Y. K., Lee, F., Leung, L., & Chan, M. (2018). Social media and political partisanship – A subaltern public sphere’s role in democracy. Telematics and Informatics, 35(7), 1949–1957. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2018.06.007
Mihailidis, P., & Thevenin, B. (2013). Media Literacy as a Core Competency for Engaged Citizenship in Participatory Democracy. The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), 57(11), 1611–1622. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764213489015
Vijay, D., & Gekker, A. (2021). Playing Politics: How Sabarimala Played Out on TikTok. The American Behavioral Scientist (Beverly Hills), 65(5), 712–734. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764221989769