If, like me, you’ve been reading countless articles about the spread of misinformation via social media; about disinformation campaigns that present us with cartoonish depictions claiming to represent our fellow citizens who disagree with us; about echo chambers that give us a distorted take on the political conversation; and about tech companies constantly changing their content moderation policies, and journalists detailing ways in which the new policies still fail at their stated goals — well, you might be a bit in despair.
Despair and a sense of helplessness are not what we want suffusing a democratic country whose citizens are in the process of voting on important issues and policies whose implications will echo worldwide.
So what can we do?
A recent op-ed in Wired magazine argues that social media platforms should “go dark” for a few days before and after the election. Whether or not that’s a good idea, the companies are not likely to follow that suggestion. But we, the social media users in the U.S., can choose to stay off the platforms these days. What would we gain, and what would we lose, by doing that?
We would certainly avoid seeing and absorbing some of the vast, ongoing flood of misinformation (and intentional disinformation) coursing through most of those platforms — in particular the election-related kind.
We would also be less likely to participate in the unwitting spread of that misinformation through our own accounts. As social media researcher Kate Starbird has written, “perhaps the most dangerous misconception is that disinformation targets only the unsavvy or uneducated, that it works only on ‘others.’” In fact, especially when it seems to confirm our existing beliefs, we all fall for it.
By stepping away from social media during this pre-election stretch, we would also be less likely to be stuck in echo chambers. Even if we have “friends” or followers who don’t all share the same beliefs about social issues, the reality is that on social media we are likely to hear mostly the opinions of those select few who are comfortable with open conflict; the rest will simply keep their opinions to themselves. Online networks in which you might interact with people who have no idea who you are and care nothing about you are not, it turns out, the best places to have a civic (and civil) conversation.
Sure, there are good things that we would miss, too. Some of us are shut in and use social media to share meaningful personal communications (not news!) with their families, their friends, their support groups. If that’s your situation, you might lose more than you gain by taking a break. Some of us also have to use social media as part of our jobs, and don’t have the luxury to take a break.
But for many of us whose feeds are a mix of friends’ children’s pictures, unverified claims about election problems, misrepresented scientific findings about the pandemic, recipes, outraged claims about what some politician said, musings about pumpkin spice, and political ads, an election-period break from social media might mean more time to look for accurate information about the issues and candidates we’re voting on; more time to talk to actual people around us (socially reconnecting even while social distancing); less exposure to falsehoods; less guilt, as a result of not having spread falsehoods ourselves; and less of a sense that we are pawns played by the algorithms that determine what we see.
We are powerful, in these weeks of voting. And we have the power to help shape social media, too — by staying off it.
Irina Raicu is director of the Internet Ethics Program (@IEthics) at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, Santa Clara University. Views expressed are her own.
"Media" - Google News
October 30, 2020 at 06:00PM
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Should we stay off social media until after the election? - San Francisco Chronicle
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