Facebook And the Election
Many people have called into question social media, and more notably Facebook in general, for its influence in this past election. Facebook is a source of news for many, and there is a plethora of informative political videos and pages throughout the site. However, with Facebook’s algorithm comes a certain problem. This problem is that Facebook tries to show you things that coincide with other things that you have “liked” or previously watched or clicked on before. This perpetuates a cycle in which you are constantly being shown things that coincide with a specific view or idea.
Now, you may be thinking, “Well that isn’t so bad, wouldn’t I want to see things that I agree with and that corroborate my manner of thinking?” That may be true, but this by no means (in my opinion, anyway) is the proper way to grow as an individual. To constantly be shown things that pertain to a certain ideal is an easy way to get caught up in a specific manner of thinking, without ever considering the other side of what may be going on. If you are not informed of other information, or even worse, if you are fed misinformation that happens to be floating around that pertains with your previous views, then you get stuck.
Facebook received some flack because it was accused of allowing fake news stories to be spread and shared on its social media website. In this sense, social media can become an extremely dangerous tool. When the false stories can spread like wildfire being shared millions of times and reaching so many people, it is very damaging to the views of the people. These are the same people that are reading to try to figure out things such as who they should vote for in the next election and who they believe should run their country. This in fact could resemble an information cascade. For example, let’s say that a large group of people on your friends list share a video containing a specific political view. As a result, because many people you know and are exposed to have shared this video, you might be more inclined to believe the political ideas that are being spread by the video, regardless of your own specific thoughts. This, however, is extremely dangerous.
Overall, it is still unclear whether or not Facebook played a clear role in affecting the election. Although it is fairly clear that Facebook did not intentionally or directly affect the election, it is also fairly clear that Facebook and social media in general can play a huge role in affecting what people see and are exposed to. This in turn shapes the ideals of the users, and can act as an echo chamber which promotes a certain idea and completely squashes out all other varying views. In this sense, it seems that it is up to the people and mainly the users to do their own research and not completely rely on any one source such as Facebook that will intentionally show you things that are related to other things you have seen and liked in the past.