The Problem Is Not Fake News, Its Social Media

“What I try to focus on is not to stop the march of technological progress. Instead, I try to run faster.” –Historian Yuval Harari

Theologians, philosophers, futurists and historians are typically the people that attempt to decipher the future when faced with pivotal moments in human history. Many would say that to understand the future, one must also examine the past. Considering the uptick in citizen activism around the world in the last 5-7 years, there are two closely related denominators revealing themselves that exist in in the past, present and future. The first is politics. Political Scientist Harold Lasswell defines politics as involving questions as who gets what, when, and how. It is the process of making decisions and allocations. The second is populism. In 21st Century Populism, Daniele Albertazzi and Duncan McDonnell defines it as an ideology that pits a virtuous and homogeneous people against a set of elites and dangerous ‘others’. In short, the former is a series of actions taken to achieve a particular end. The latter are ideas and ideals expressed through civic engagement. Both go hand in hand.

Social media (primarily Facebook and Twitter) has provided the perfect outlet for politics and populism.

When both were integrated with social media, they sparked unrest creating the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter. With social media and on-the ground engagement, these movements forced themselves into international discourse. But with this exposure came fake and slanted news designed to blunt their success. Since social media has become a gateway for news, idea sharing and activism, it is inevitable that fake news will be mixed in with it.

The fake news/alternative facts issue has dominated the news cycle since Trump won the presidential election. Many are upset that the traditional media seemed to underreport the growing influence of Trump during the election. There is evidence that fake news was planted on the internet aimed primarily at Trump supporters. Russia has been accused of undermining U.S. democracy through propaganda and hacking by releasing sensitive DNC emails. (They also tried to hack the RNC but with no success.) The term ‘alternative facts’ has entered our lexicon made famous from an NBC’s Meet the Press TV interview when Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway claimed there were other facts that TV journalist Chuck Todd did not know about. With Trump becoming the first ‘Twitter’ President, he has embraced the power of communicating quickly and without the traditional media. But this comes at a high cost: President Trump has also used fake news to support his opinions.

According to Gallup, Americans’ trust in the media is falling steadily. A Radio One Black America Today Study on Black Media Attitudes documents that:

• 53% of Blacks do not believe that mainstream media has stopped reinforcing Black stereotypes.
• Blacks are more than twice as likely to trust Black media (30%) as they are to trust mainstream media (13%).

African Americans have historically distrusted American institutions including the press with good reason. Martin Luther King, Jr. used the media to challenge American institutions but remained mostly silent about the press. He understood that the First Amendment (freedom of the press) was crucial to documenting the injustices suffered by American Blacks. However, Malcolm X was much more skeptical: “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

Now, politics, populism and fake news are constantly flowing through our social media newsfeeds. But let’s understand this: fake news is not new. Entertainment tabloids found in supermarket aisles comes to mind. But further back in American history, traditional and non traditional media was known to spread fake news about Black people. For example, the May 31, 1921 Tulsa Tribune ran an inflammatory front-page story titled ‘Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator’. This was later found to be a chance encounter between a white elevator operator and a black teenager. This was considered a major contributing factor in the Tulsa Riot destroying ‘Black Wall Street’ and claiming 300 lives. When you study the Tulsa Riot, you see politics, populism and lies used to stoke fears which led to that horrific event.

Today, social media has accelerated our politics and populism because we spend so much time on it. But in order for social media to function this way, you need four elements to undergird it:

The Soundbite

In the 1930s and 1940s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt used Fireside Chats, a series of radio conversations to explain his policies. A popular phrase taken from Roosevelt’s first inaugural speech that we occasionally still hear today is there is nothing to fear but fear itself. But how many of us understand the context of that soundbite? Because of the digital revolution, what someone said/did halfway around the world can be beamed to our laptops. Because of information overload, there is a extreme skepticism aimed toward the media.

Rise of Opinion Makers

With the fragmentation of traditional media, pundits and personalities have become the visible intermediaries of context. They are billed as experts who help us interpret current events. The proliferation of news channels (cable and network TV) based on segmentation has created echo chambers that speak to our narrow interests. Often times, balance and accuracy is ignored and replaced with emotional arguments and takedowns. This is entertainment infused news and it is all over social media. But the real question is, who is giving the opinion makers their information?

Cult of the Self

The 1980s, the ‘Me’ decade, continued to usher in the cult of personality by emphasizing individual choices and freedom. This was the era of rule breaking Madonna, androgynous Boy George and erotic Prince. Traditional morality continued to erode and people focused on their own happiness. This included sex, drugs, the pursuit of money and in some cases, violence. Community values, especially in big cities, were collapsing with nothing to replace it. The hardest hit areas were low income urban neighborhoods and poor rural areas. Today, narcissism is an acceptable worldview and lifestyle. ‘Being famous for being famous’ is now considered a legitimate career choice. 

Pluralism

America is not a melting pot anymore. We embrace being a salad bowl with each distinct ingredient maintaining its own flavor. We are hyphenated Americans now. The emphasis between the separation of church and state, the rise of scientific innovation, the decline of American exceptionalism, family and religion has made diverse even opposing ideas and more choices available. Tradition is out. Innovation is in. Focault breaks with the past and focuses on the now by asking What’s going on just now? What’s happening to us? What is this world, this period, this precise moment in which we are living? Diversity and tolerance are the clarion calls of American culture (although I would argue it does not extend to all areas.) 

What does this have to do with social media?

These elements are ingrained in social media: The Soundbite, Rise of Opinion Makers, Cult of the Self and Pluralism. Every time we post, we are engaging in two or more of them. Businesses and organizations that want to develop a social media presence must make sure they understand these four elements when developing a social media engagement plan. After all, people on social media have brought large businesses to their knees through viral posts. The power of social media is in the hands of the people…or is it?

Fake news and alternative facts thrive in an environment of Disintermediation. Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble, borrows this term from New York Times columnist Jon Parseles. It basically means eliminating the middlemen. Pariser believes it is a myth that the internet has shifted power from the center (media institutions) to the periphery (people). All that has happened is that the visible gatekeepers are now invisible. We don’t always fully know who is curating our news anymore. Let’s be real: In the past, fake news was called propaganda and it was administered by nation states that harnessed new technologies (radio and moving pictures). We are afraid to call it this because it conjures up horrible fears of Nazi Germany, Communist Russia and Fascist Italy. Our modern technologies allow for one person to do what it took whole departments to do for the Fuhrer. This is how a teen in Macedonia can make millions publishing fake news that finds its way to social media. Now, that’s scary.

Social media makes this worse by using algorithms that provide us with more information based on what we click, like and share. According to Pariser, this filter creates a bubble that surrounds us with ideas we already agree with making us overconfident in our own beliefs and attitudes. For example, let’s say you have family in another state that are Trump supporters. On social media, they click on all things Trump. Let’s say you are not a Trump supporter. You click on is all things anti-Trump. Based on the Facebook algorithm, you would have no idea that your family in another state are supporters of Trump.

We can’t necessarily blame Facebook for this. This is their successful business model.

You can look at your family’s Facebook page any time you want. But Zuckerberg’s naive attempt to convince us that Facebook is not a news organization is dubious. His unwavering faith in algorithms ignores the tremendous social capital Facebook has amassed in a short period of time. If he wants us all to be connected, then disintermediation becomes normative and Facebook becomes an arbiter of truth. So, we default to click bait headlines that say what we already believe. This is why hoaxes, that have been proven false over and over, incessantly come back from the dead to haunt us on social media. Someone, somewhere believes the hoax and keeps sharing it. There is no intermediary making sure that these lies die a thousand deaths. If we each decide the truth as silos, then we will be at the mercy of the invisible gatekeepers.

The result has been a cynical social media environment. It encourages us to focus on self display, instant gratification and superficial connectedness. We bring this into our real lives giving energy to protests (some not all) that don’t seem to move beyond mass public therapy or acting as lone individuals hooked on false information (Pizzagate). There is real deep seated rage dividing this country and unfortunately President Trump is helping fan the flames. As the most powerful leader in the free world, Trump’s tweets feed the politics and populism negatively contributing to the further erosion of trust in American ideals, media and political institutions. He is also emboldening fringe beliefs in American society. From my past experiences doing community work, anger needs parameters to become righteous and effective. Some citizens are doing just that using social media to spark social change offline. But when anger becomes its own therapy, it destroys whatever it comes in contact with. There are those caught in a web of social media tantrums that are on repeat. (Nevermind that they may be angry about something that is actually personal, not political.) It is not good for American politics and it is embarrassing when a sitting American President engages in it.

So, while Mark Zuckerburg is right that the source of our fake news issue is that our real offline communities are declining, his solution is wrong. We don’t need more social media. Social media IS the problem. While many are running towards it, like Yuval Harari and many others, I am simply running faster away from it.

Aristotle gave a dire warning about politics and populism:

“Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.”

Next Commentary: How Businesses/Organizations Can Navigate Politics and Populism on Social Media