According to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Centre, Americans under 30 are about as likely to trust information on social media as they are to trust national news organisations. More recently Pew found that 32% of those aged 18-29 get their news from TikTok. Social-media sites are rife with conspiracy theories, and research has found strong associations between rates of social-media use and beliefs in such theories. This makes worrying reading, particularly when considering how foreign powers such as Russia have in the past tried to influence public opinion through social networks.
Conspiracy theories in this respect are the least of my worries. many of these are so gross and unrealistic, that fortunately a majority of the population disregard them as irrelevant tosh. Much more concerning to me is how platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok shape the political views and perceptions of society and the world around us in general.
In social media, algorithms are rules, signals and data that govern the platform’s operation. They determine how content is filtered, ranked, selected and recommended to users. In some ways, algorithms influence our choices and what we see on social media. Say, you watch a few cute cat videos on Facebook, you will be recommended an abundance of more such clips. And, more worrying, this also applies to posts on political views.
Take the current situation in Israel and Gaza. A recent article in Time magazine makes a salient point: There is ample heart-wrenching footage from Gaza across social media platforms amidst significant civilian casualties; but there is also sadly rampant misinformation fomenting anger, and extremist antisemitic and Islamophobic hate alike, on those platforms.
Relying on social media to gauge general public opinion is dangerous, as was, for example, demonstrated by an article published in The Economist at the beginning of November: On social media in general and apparently Instagram (owned by Meta, which also owns Facebook) in particular, younger people seem to be generally more pro-Palestinian. But this is not necessarily backed-up by general opinion polls: A poll of Americans by YouGov found three backers of Israel for every Palestinian supporter on October 20th—a day with twice as many pro-Palestinian posts on American social media as pro-Israeli ones. In Britain, another YouGov survey found equal support for each side that day, when the Palestinians won the British social-media battle by a six-to-one margin.
With some foreign powers actively trying to shape public opinion and policy in other countries, a younger generation feeding mostly off social networks is somewhat worrying: Will they, and if so to what extent, be influenced by being spoon fed information of lets say dubious origin? But wouldn’t this also mean, that we are going to be puppets rather than masters of our own universe? In the current climate of tensions between the world’s superpowers a disconcerting thought!
As we all (should) know by now, if you read a number of say pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli posts on your favourite social network, the algorithm will feed you many more such messages, ultimately bolstering your opinion on the topic – and quite possibly giving you a somewhat distorted view of the real world. But then, as with conspiracy theories, this may just be just the thing you want to see and know. In psychology this is known as ‘confirmation bias’. On the other hand this is one good reason for thinking twice and maybe not taking everything we read and hear in the media (be they social or not) for face value. And, of course, this includes this blog…
The grumpy older man 