Social Media: Fallen Hero

Introduction

Since 2016, the Western public’s perception of social media changed rapidly from positive to suspicious. Where the public had once held up social media platforms as the beacon of liberalism, it now viewed social media with suspicion and fear. It was once believed that social media would democratize the political process. The world found instead found that illiberal forces are just as capable of using social media to cause discord in liberal democratic societies.

Added to this mix is an increasingly likely future of tightening regulation of cyberspace. Even social media’s traditional champions such, as the U.S. and the U.K., are looking to roll back open the internet and impose some form of national control. The Western public had once seen social media as the champion of liberal democratic activists. But now, it increasingly perceives social media as a threat to these very same values.

Revolutions

When social media’s potential as a tool of political mobilization became apparent, many scholars believed the new communication platforms would help bring down autocracies and foster new forms of horizontal, democratic organization. The logic goes that non-democratic governments cannot control social media the same way they control traditional media. The content creators on social media platforms do not answer to a hierarchy of managers that governments can target and threaten. There would be too many users and platforms for governments to effectively target and shut down. Content creators in one jurisdiction can easily send information over non-existent cyberspace borders.

Social media advocates believe social media would ultimately undermine the hierarchies and instilled obedience that non-democratic governments depend on to maintain control. It would allow liberal democracy to flourish by imbuing people with individualism and the tools for mobilization that bypasses traditional channels controlled by governments. Illiberal and undemocratic governments everywhere must either accept this development and become liberal democracies or risk mounting unrest and economic disruptions from their own citizens.

The Arab Spring

The optimistic prediction surrounding social media seemed to validate itself in the decades of the 2000s and early 2010s. Western media outlets claimed the Arab Spring, protests in Iran, and the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine were all made possible due to social media.

The standard Western narrative of the Arab spring often attributed the usage of social media for mobilization to a “young, tech-savvy, liberal population”. The narrative often claimed that in countries where protests erupted, the young were fed up with their governments and religious radicals alike. It further claimed that these countries’ authoritarian rulers and illiberal extremist groups were simply too fossilized in their ways to adapt to social media. The resulting picture created portrayed the revolutions as an unstoppable force representing the natural desires of the population to become just as liberal and democratic as North America or Europe.

The narrative of the naturally liberal-leaning young people being fed up with their illiberal rulers was so pervasive, the West was still reluctant to entirely discredit social media even when the revolutions failed or when non-liberal radicals came to power. Western media was more likely to attribute a failed revolution to luck, an elderly conservative population, outside intervention, or hijacking. The liberals’ reluctance to believe illiberal forces can effectively use social media to mobilize allowed it to be blindsided when precisely that happened in a series of elections and referendums since 2016.

Illiberalism Strikes Back

Faith in the inherent attractiveness of liberal democracy and the power of social media remained relatively firm until the shocking reversals of Brexit and the 2016 U.S. Election. These events revealed that illiberal forces, whether they were populists, religious radicals, or authoritarian governments, have adapted to social media much better than many liberals had believed possible. Instead of a one-way channel of promoting liberal democratic values, illiberal forces have proven to be capable of using social media to promote their own ideals in liberal democratic countries.

The Illiberal movements’ success upended the traditional assumption that illiberal forces cannot effectively use social media. These illiberal movements, whether they were populists, racists, religious extremists, or climate denialists, managed to effectively use social media to spread their ideas and politically mobilize to tip elections in their favor. In several high-profile cases, they first succeed in winning the Brexit referendum, then winning the U.S. election for Donald Trump. Their success in leveraging social media has led to, almost ironically, liberals demanding government intervention to shut illiberal groups from the internet.

Government intervention would only be effective if it can effectively control social media platforms. While liberal theories once claimed no one can effectively control social media because of the network’s dispersed and unorganized architecutre, recent events have shown that social media actually has its own types of power dynamics and methods of control and manipulation. These dynamics, between social media users and managers, are not necessarily favorable to those that want to create a rational and democratic society.

Manipulation Through Social Media

Controlling Social Media

It is becoming apparent that social media platforms are just as prone to manipulation and control as any of the traditional media outlets. Only the exact methods and who does the controlling my differ. One way actors have used social media to promote certain agendas is through an army of internet bloggers hired by a political organization to promote themselves and discredit their enemies. Whether the information propagated is real or fake does not matter on the unregulated social media platforms.

Recent American debates over net neutrality have also shown that equal access to information does not occur organically. Advocates fear that the end of net neutrality would allow for-profit companies to legally deny access to information to their customers. It would allow internet service providers to stop providing access to certain websites for whatever reason, whether it be commercial or ideological. Users would have to pay more for the “privilege” of accessing additional internet sites in a manner similar to buying additional packages for cable television. If corporations can control access to information purely for commercial profit, then governments can do it as well.

Algorithms

Algorithms and “big data” analytics also allow social media corporations an unparalleled tool to manipulate public opinion to their advantage. While ostensibly for commercial purposes such as targeted advertising, big data analytics are also found to be an excellent tool for creating target political messages capable of swaying identifiable groups.

Algorithms also contribute to political polarization by aiding the formation of “echo chambers”. Echo chambers occur when people only expose themselves to information they already want to hear. With algorithms, social media sites can identify individual user preferences and only provide the user with the information they know the user wants to hear. The result is the algorithm reinforces the user’s prior beliefs, shutting down dialogue between different groups. Polarization prolongs the lifespan of rumors, makes debunking false information more difficult. and reasonable public debate impossible.

Conclusion

Given its track record, the new digital social media is increasingly appearing as a politically neutral tool and sharing more similarities with the old “traditional” media than many had liked to believe.

With the recent events, it should be time for the Internet’s advocates to admit that the digital age will not be a golden age of liberal democracy. Social media is not an inherently democratic method of communication. Instead, it increasingly seems that social media, by giving a “voice to the voiceless,” has empowered fringe elements of all stripes. It is also becoming apparent that social media is just as susceptible to control and misinformation as all forms of media that have come before.

Since 2016, many governments have passed new laws that are forcing social media to conform to many of the same rules that “traditional” media must comply with. The new rules attempt to shape public discourse, similar to how traditional media is used. Some suggestions are more innovative, such as implementing new algorithms to direct users to view information coming from the opposite ends of the political spectrum. These new regulations may signal the subservience of the digital moguls submitting to the objectives of the nation-state; as newspapers, radio, and television companies have done before.

Bibliography

Ingram, D. (2017, November 2). Facebook pressured to notify people who saw Russian posts. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-facebook-idUSKBN1D22X6

Kendzior, S. (2017, November 26). Gutting net neutrality is a death knell for the resistance. The Globe and Mail. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/gutting-net-neutrality-is-a-death-knell-for-the-resistance/article37088279/

Once considered a boon to democracy, social media have started to look like its nemesis. (2017, November 4). The Economist. https://www.economist.com/briefing/2017/11/04/once-considered-a-boon-to-democracy-social-media-have-started-to-look-like-its-nemesis

Wheeler, T. (2017, November 21). The FCC’s net neutrality proposal: A shameful sham that sells out consumers. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2017/11/21/the-fccs-net-neutrality-proposal-a-shameful-sham-that-sells-out-consumers/