Social Media and Election
Social media is good because it helps spread out information. However, if the information it spreads is fake, then it becomes bad.
After or even before the election, tons of fake news and stories were posted on Facebook and other social medias. The algorithm of Facebook makes things that people want to see bump on to your feeds, instead of things that are authentic. The more comments the fake news receives, the more popular the news becomes and gets to be seen by more people. And the more times the post is being shared, the more likely that it will affect people’s way of thinking.
We can see in information cascade forming through Facebook. When there are enough friends of yours shared a post and supported a view, no matter the post is true or not, no matter you personally agree with the view or not, you tend to switch your thinking and support your friend, because you believe that there must be a reason for them to do so. If there is only one friend who shared that thoughts, it is possible that you are not much influenced, but Facebook is such a big network, and it puts you into such a big cluster that behavior cascades are much easier to be formed than you think. Therefore, I doubt Facebook even somewhat influenced the result of the election.
After election, activities like protests against Trump can be seen everywhere. The reason why these activities can reach out to so many people is also because of behavior cascade. If enough of your friends are going to the protest, you will join them as well. At this point, I feel like social media is no longer a place that people can really freely state their ideas. If you are a Trump supporter, it becomes harder for you to state your position in this “against-Trump” environment. The cascade is so strong that it permeated through too many people, and no one likes to be the minority.
However, Facebook didn’t intend to lead people’s opinion. Although it is likely that your opinion goes with your friend cluster, another important thing you have to consider before you make decision is your own research result. Your own research and information give you a signal of whether your decision is good or not. If you are fully convinced of your own research result, you won’t be too easy to be affected by the cascade.