Social Media: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (final draft)

-- By FatimaIsmail - 26 Nov 2024

Introduction

The rise of social media as a popular means of content creation and sharing among virtual communities has impacted traditional media outlets in myriad ways, calling into question the dominant narratives of contemporary issues as projected by these news outlets; reshaping the competitive landscape; and ultimately threatening the preeminent position of traditional media sources. The second notable effect has been the democratization of the news generating landscape, enabling ordinary citizens to become ‘citizen journalists.’ On the one hand, while social media has exposed bias spread by traditional broadcasters, the converse is also true, that social media platforms have also been responsible for the proliferation of fake news. The conundrum is thus the greater diversity of views owing to social media presence, coupled with the generation of fake news.

The Good

It is true that we live in a complex dynamic world, yet the dissemination of news via traditional outlets has tended to remain simplistic and often one-dimensional reflecting the biased and skewed narrative of these broadcasters.

One topical example in which a television broadcaster has intentionally presented a skewed narrative to the public occurred just a few days after October 7th last year. In the wake of events, CNN was found to have staged a report in which its correspondent and her team sheltered in a ditch near the Israel-Gaza border during a rocket attack while an off-air camera directs the correspondent to “try and look nice and scared”. Skeptical of the actual threat of harm depicted by CNN in this report, viewers uncovered the dramatization of the event by the correspondent which ultimately led to these viewers turning to social media platforms to “spread the word” that the report had been staged.

A study conducted by The Nation on the double standards of the media coverage of the war on Gaza, specifically, CNN and MSNBC’s coverage, found that these broadcasters focused significantly on the plight of Ukrainians and Israelis in a more humanizing manner, which ultimately led to shaping the public’s perception of these conflicts at the expense of balanced reporting.

The increased distrust of traditional media mirrors the distrust that people have of elites in general. Hence people are turning to social media to stand in as an “arbiter of truth”.

The Bad and the Ugly

The rise of social media has created an epidemic unique to the modern technological age-the epidemic of fake news. From war and conflict, to elections, fake news does not discriminate.

With respect to war and conflict social media platforms have also been used to propagate false narratives. In the aftermath of October 7, videos depicting children being pulled from rubble, captioned in Hebrew and tagged with the hashtag #freeisrael went viral on TikTok? claiming to be taken in Israel (it was later reported that the footage was taken years before the conflict and was not actually footage from Israel).

On the contrary, pro-Palestinian content has been shared on platforms claiming to be destruction in Gaza which was later found to be old footage from a scene demonstrating the aftermath of an earthquake in Afghanistan.

In the context of elections, AI has been used to generate fake news globally. Ahead of the previous national elections in Germany, TikTok? accounts had been used to impersonate political figures, while in the Philippines, myths circulated on social media accounts led to the son of a dictator winning the presidential race.

In the US, in the lead up to the 2020 elections, specific Facebook pages which disseminated misinformation were viewed 10.1 billion times. Facebook created the conditions for such information to be proliferated by failing to adjust its algorithms in order to prevent the spread of this information which ultimately led to the insurrection.

The Solution

As demonstrated in the preceding paragraphs, both traditional media and social media face a legitimation crisis. While Mark Zuckerberg stated under Congressional cross examination that “[social media platforms] do not want to become the arbiters of truth. That would be a bad position for us to be in and not what we should be doing”, given the immense power and influence that social media platforms have had on the public perception of significant issues (including war, conflict, and elections), social media platforms have in fact become “the arbiters of truth.” What then, you may ask, is the solution?

The solution is for social media platforms to self-regulate to a greater extent than they are currently doing, to prevent the spread of fake news. In this regard, social media platforms could employ a number of mechanisms to assist in preventing misinformation and disinformation, such as providing users with a list of sites and accounts that have previously shared fake news and alerting users that certain sites and accounts are questionable. In addition, social media platforms could also implement more stringent controls to prevent bias in their algorithms which would reduce the risk of “echo chambers”. In other words, if social media platforms tweaked their algorithms so that users are not exposed solely to content that supports their own views, this would decrease the risk of political polarization and prevent, for example, extremist views.

Conclusion

While social media has exposed the reporting bias advanced by traditional media outlets which has led to the questioning of the dominant narratives advanced by these outlets, social media platforms are simultaneously responsible for furthering the dissemination of fake news. Misinformation and disinformation disseminated on social media platforms can have significant impacts on the public perception of war and conflict, and the outcome of elections. In light of these harms, the solution is for social media platforms to impose stricter self-regulation mechanisms on themselves to decrease the spread of fake news. This would ultimately have the effect of reducing misinformation and disinformation, thereby enhancing the legitimacy of the information shared on these platforms.