Consumption of Polarization
Social media has played a significant role in our lives since the days of early platforms like Six Degrees, Ryze, and Teamster. Today, we engage with platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and more, with the average person spending 145 minutes daily on social media (We Are Social et al., 2021, p. 1). Social media has revolutionized not only our online activities but also our offline behaviors and life in general. A global online user survey conducted in February 2019 revealed that a significant share of respondents believed social media increased their access to information, ease of communication, and freedom of expression. However, they also felt that social media worsened personal privacy, increased political polarization, and heightened everyday distractions (CIGI, 2019, p. 1). The creation of social media has permanently altered how we consume and engage with political media and information, especially in the context of the 2020 presidential election, often for the worse.
To begin, it's important to provide background information on the impacts of social media on political discourse, participation, and polarization. I will then discuss examples from the 2020 election and beyond, such as the rise in lawmakers’ social media activity, increased spending on digital media by presidential candidates, and Facebook’s role in facilitating the January 6th riots.
Understanding the structure and emergence of social media is crucial to grasping its effects on media and political engagement. Our media system, in general, is an essential information system that supports the development, maintenance, and change of modern societies (Geber et al., 2006, p. 498). Media as a whole also serves as a civic forum where public participation in political discourse is encouraged and functions as a ‘watchdog’ for our government and corporations (Geber et al., 2006, p. 498). When viewed as a comprehensive system, media typically has positive consequences. “Democratic media structures build a structured environment in which social capital can be generated. If media freedom, media access, and media plurality exist, media can promote government transparency, provide an open platform for political discussion, and facilitate social integration” (Geber et al., 2006, p. 498).
Social media, however, differs significantly from traditional media. Social media platforms are competitors in the market, striving to develop unique profiles that attract users, solicit advertisers, and maintain economic viability (Bossetta, 2018, p. 473). Unlike traditional media, social media is driven by network effects and user engagement, centering around connection. But because platforms are competing for audiences, the pluralization and fragmentation of social media—typically viewed as positive in a capitalist context—can lead to innovations that harm society. This competition drives the fragmentation of audiences, which Bossetta examines through four aspects of social media's digital architecture: network structure, functionality, algorithmic filtering, and datafication. “These categories have been chosen because each is argued to affect either the political content issued by politicians or citizens’ access to political messages. Network structure influences how users identify and connect with political accounts. Functionality governs the rules of media production and diffusion across a platform. Algorithmic filtering determines what content users are exposed to. Datafication provides the means for politicians to target voters outside their existing subscribers” (Bossetta, 2018, p. 473). Bossetta's analysis of the 2016 election cycle highlighted the dominance of Facebook as the most attractive platform for political campaigns due to its design.
Facebook's design features, such as public pages that allow for easily searchable accounts and large social media followerships, were heavily utilized by campaigns. The platform's hyperlinking functionality was crucial for driving traffic to campaign websites and collecting emails. Additionally, the nonrestrictive rules on video lengths made Facebook a key medium for long-form visual telecommunication. Campaigns could also override algorithmic filtering through paid advertising, enabling them to reach potential voters outside their organic follower bases. Moreover, Facebook's advanced matching, targeting, and analytics tools allowed well-funded campaigns to test messages strategically in different geographical locations (Bossetta, 2018, p. 473). This social media architecture is integral to how we consume, share, and interact with political discourse and with each other today.
Increasingly, individuals receive their news from social media platforms, but this shift brings challenges, especially regarding misinformation. Social media, with its pro-interactive nature, absence of nonverbal communication cues, and physical isolation, allows every user to voice their views and opinions, which can create fertile ground for uncivil rhetoric (Manuel et al., 2021, p. 2). Manuel’s study warns of a “detrimental, but virtuous circle of unfriending,” where users isolate themselves from politically dissonant perspectives and news, a behavior that may be pervasive and growing on social media (Manuel et al., 2021, p. 2). These echo chambers not only drive people apart but also push them toward more extreme ideological identifications. Engagement in uncivil political discourse is further fueled by social media's emphasis on political information. Richard Rogers’s analysis of multiple social media platforms found that “TikTok parodies mainstream media, 4chan and Reddit dismiss it and direct users to alternative influencer networks and extreme YouTube content. Twitter prefers the hyperpartisan over it. Facebook’s ‘fake news’ problem also concerns declining amounts of mainstream media referenced. Instagram has influencers dominating user engagement. By comparison, Google Web Search buoys the liberal mainstream (and sinks conservative sites), but generally gives special interest sources the privilege to provide information rather than official sources” (Rogers, 2021, p. 1). This new segregation of information can lead to increased political polarization. Levy shows that “exposure to pro-attitudinal news increases affective polarization compared to counter-attitudinal news, which suggests that a more segregated news environment may partially explain the increase in affective polarization over the past decades” (Levy, 2021, p. 37). This polarization, combined with social media's design architecture and the segmented media landscape, is a dangerous combination. QAnon, an extreme conservative ideology, exemplifies this combination. “QAnon is an instantiation of a particular infrastructure, a particular media ecosystem, in which individuals remain anonymous and post anything they want, and this environment is not going away” (Hannah, 2021, p. 12). The permanence of these structures and designs on social media poses a significant threat to our future, with the 2020 election cycle merely being the beginning.
The 2020 election, occurring amid a pandemic and deep political divide, saw social media playing a more significant role than in the 2016 and 2018 elections due to the new virtual nature of our lives. Pew Research Center tracked the increase in social media activity by Congress members during the 2020 presidential election cycle compared to 2016. Lawmakers received 586 percent more likes/favorites, 268 percent more shares/retweets, and posted 53 percent more content in 2020 than in 2016 (Shah et al., 2021, p. 1). This data highlights the growing importance of social media in political campaigns and discourse. Notably, the word ‘Trump’ was the most-used word in Democratic posts in 2020 and the second most used in 2016 (Shah et al., 2021, p. 1), underscoring the rise of negative partisanship and polarization in our current democracy. Moreover, neither party's language was similar to the other’s, further illustrating extreme partisanship and polarization.
Another critical aspect of the 2020 election was the significant increase in spending on digital media. According to a news article, both Biden and Trump outspent the collective 2016 spending by Trump and Clinton on Facebook ads between January 2019 and October 24, 2020. Trump's campaign spent around $107 million on Facebook ads, and Biden's campaign spent slightly over $94 million during this period, compared to the $81 million collectively spent by both candidates in 2016 (Manthey, 2020, p. 1). This shift to social media spending aligns with the design elements discussed by Bossetta, allowing candidates to segment and target specific audiences effectively. Biden focused on targeting women and younger voters under 44, while Trump slightly favored men and individuals over 45 (Manthey, 2020, p. 1).
The role of social media in the January 6th Capitol Building riots is perhaps the most alarming example of its dangers. These riots exemplify how the echo chambers and polarization fostered by social media can lead to real-life violence. QAnon played a significant role in the insurrection, and Facebook provided a platform for sharing this ideology and planning the attack. Whistleblower documents reveal that “the company’s internal research over several years had identified ways to diminish the spread of political polarization, conspiracy theories and incitements to violence but that in many instances, executives had declined to implement those steps” (Timberg, 2021, p. 1). This evidence highlights the consequences of social media companies prioritizing user engagement over societal responsibility, often burying information instead of taking conscious action.
Researching and analyzing the impact of social media on politics is both daunting and concerning. While social media offers benefits like connection and access to information, its current design and structure are fragmenting our country into segmented populations. To move forward positively as a nation, changes are needed, including regulation to limit political discourse on media platforms and efforts to stop the spread of misinformation, especially by prominent political figures. The evidence presented in this paper demonstrates that social media is a combination of fragmented platforms designed to segment populations and incite uncivil political discourse and polarization. The 2020 election cycle is a prominent example of this dangerous separation, yet we continue to contribute to the cycle. The creation of social media has permanently changed how we consume and engage with political media and information, particularly in the context of the 2020 presidential election, and often for the worse.
Works Cited
Bossetta, M. (2018). The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 95(2), 471–496. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699018763307
CIGI. (June 11, 2019). Share of internet users worldwide who believe that social media platforms have had an impact on selected aspects of daily life as of February 2019 [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1015131/impact-of-social-media-on-daily-life-worldwide/
Geber, Scherer, H., & Hefner, D. (2016). Social capital in media societies: The impact of media use and media structures on social capital. The International Communication Gazette, 78(6), 493–513. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048516640211
Hannah. (2021). A Conspiracy of Data: QAnon, Social Media, and Information Visualization. Social Media + Society, 7(3), 205630512110360. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211036064
Levy. (2021). Social Media, News Consumption, and Polarization: Evidence from a Field Experiment. The American Economic Review, 111(3), 831–870. https://doi.org/10.1257/AER.20191777
Manthey, G. (2020, October 29). Presidential campaigns set new records for social media ad spending. ABC7 Los Angeles. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://abc7.com/presidential-race-campaign-spending-trump-political-ads-biden/7452228/
Manuel G., Porismita, B., Homero, G. (2021, July). Social media filtering and democracy: Effects of social media news use and uncivil political discussions on social media unfriending, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume 120, 2021, 106759, ISSN 0747-5632, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106759.
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Rogers. (2021). Marginalizing the Mainstream: How Social Media Privilege Political Information. Frontiers in Big Data, 4, 689036–689036. https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2021.689036
Shah, S., Widjaya, R., Smith, A., Rivero, G., & Chapekis, A. (2021, October 20). Charting congress on social media in the 2016 and 2020 elections. Pew Research Center - U.S. Politics & Policy. Retrieved December 19, 2021, from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/30/charting-congress-on-social-media-in-the-2016-and-2020-elections/
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