Social media tools like Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitch have reduced the distance between elitist politicians and the average voter. Although it’s difficult to tell with a rigorous scientific study how much social media affects an election after the fact, there have been numerous journalistic attempts to demonstrate the harms of social media to election integrity.
There are several ways in which social media tools can be used to affect election integrity. Social media companies may sell their data to third parties, even without notice to voters. Trolls, bots, and fake accounts from foreign actors may target voters. Disinformation can spread like wildfire, influencing voters. Traditional media tends to play into clickbait and disinformation too, hence affecting general distrust of institutions. (In fact, news media who use hashtags to contribute to online conversations may be perceived as more partisan). Advertising and content are basically unregulated, unlike on TV or radio. Hackers can gain control of politicians’ accounts. In some small measure, social media can also create a kind of “filter bubble” or “echo chamber” because voters get their news from social media and politicians directly, rather than through the filter of various media outlets. (I push back on the rather shallow popular and media-influenced understanding of the so-called “coastal elites” in the wake of the 2016 US election.) And in the 2020 US election, Trump, via Twitter, is setting the agenda for news media because of his overwhelmingly significant reach, even with Twitter (and Facebook) flagging Trump multiple times. (I’m so tired of them falling for it, but they don’t seem to know how to get out of this rabbit hole of chasing after Trump’s distractions). The COVID-19 pandemic too has deepened the reach of social media, I think almost irreversibly.
I would be careful to note too that election interference is not confined to the US either. It was evident in Brazil and the Philippines, and certainly, social media tools have been used to perpetrate human rights abuses, if not outright war crimes, by China in the case of the Uighur Muslims and by Myanmar in the case of the Rohingya Muslims. As I’ve written in previous posts, election interference is now in the purview of American democracy and exceptionalism, and thus the rupture of American society can be blamed somewhat on social media tools and can no longer be ignored.
It’s not all bad news though. Politically engaged TikTok Gen Zers used the tool to artificially inflate numbers at a Trump campaign rally in Tulsa in June 2020, which means there’s room for creativity in grassroots activism. (For more on how the 2020 Presidential campaigns are using TikTok, despite not having official accounts on the tool, check out this great radio doco). In 2011, Kisan “Anna” Baburao Hazare began a hunger fast to encourage politicians to vote for the Jan Lokpal legislation to hold politicians accountable and gained supporters numbering 80,000 SMS texts to 35 million missed calls.
So what now? Can we rely on grassroots activism against the elite institutions that social media companies have become? How can we trust political elections and leaders when their integrity has been so compromised? Is it too late?
Well, ever the optimist, I still have hope.
First, we have to keep focused on the actual issues, because let’s be honest, the media has a role to play in how social media has harmed election integrity, and it has a stake in keeping us focused on “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” rather than the deeper, root causes of division in our society today. So yes, follow a variety of news media, a variety of influencers and brands, a variety of people, not just everything you agree with (though within the boundaries of your own mental health of course). But content moderation isn’t enough.
Second, we have to think more broadly than digital and media literacy. Even if people have great critical thinking skills and are presented with facts, fact-checking can amplify the sensationalism or disinformation in the first place, and doesn’t actually go to the root causes of why social media tools allow disinformation to spread so easily in the first place.
Third, we have to change the way we understand social media tools. Yes, they have addictive properties, but they can be much more insidious than that, because not only are humans the products in this market for predictive human behaviours, information (tied up with human rights, privacy rights, epistemic rights) is being extracted from us as free raw material for a new economic order of the surveillance economy–surveillance capitalism. So the more important point is that social media tools deepen polarisation, and the only way to return from that is to think about politics, not from the point of view of social identity, but rather from the point of view of social psychology.
Wrapped up in all of this is the idea of government regulation, company accountability, and most crucially of all, public discourse. The more we call out social media tools for the harms they present to election integrity, the more we can mediate trust in institutions and democracy.
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