Your Personal Brand

I recently watched a somewhat dated Frontline documentary, “Growing Up Online”, which explored the impact that access to the internet and social media have on children.  I say dated because, as it was filmed in 2007, the technology and concepts discussed in the film felt very out of date, with many references to  kids obsessed with their MySpace pages. I don’t know about you, but I find it easy to forget that MySpace ever existed.  In 2007 Facebook (which started up in 2004), had just over 50 million users (Number of active users at Facebook over the years, n.d.).  Today there are nearly 3 billion users of Facebook worldwide.  

In the film some children referenced the pleasure they felt from developing an entirely different persona online, and collecting followers (FRONTLINE | Growing Up Online | Season 2008 | Episode 3, n.d.).  Back in early 2008 when this documentary aired this was a novel idea.  But here we are in 2022, and the idea of a personal brand has evolved to the point that business articles and bloggers extol the necessity of having one, along with the detailed how to maintain that brand online.  

Why Build a Personal Brand?

If you are anything like me, and shudder at the idea of taking a selfie, the idea of building a personal brand online might not be attractive.  So let’s step back from the personal and the digital and take a look at what it means to build a brand. 

There are many ways to define a brand in terms of business, but at its core it relates to how the public perceives the identity of a business, product, or person.  Facebook offers a good definition that can be adapted to personal brand building, “a brand is the collection of associations that people have about a product or business.  People have personalities.  Businesses have brands” (What Is a Brand?, n.d.).  

Brand building is shaping the perceptions of how others see you, your business or product.  It works best with the application of focus (your mission), vision (your goals) and narrative building (your story).  What is the mission of your brand?  What associations should people have with your brand in order for you to best accomplish that mission?  How will these associations help further your vision for how you want the brand to evolve?  

Brand Building According to Aristotle 

Aristotle is sometimes thought of as one of the earliest marketing strategists, because he published one of the first known treatises on the art of rhetoric, or persuasion.  Aristotle felt that in order to persuade an audience, the speaker needed to build an argument on three pillars - ethos (character/credibility), logos (argument/logic) and pathos (emotion).  (3 Ways Aristotle Can Tweak Your Content And Beef Up Your Brand, 2015).  Applying these ideas to brand building, a brand needs to convey authenticity, backed by evidence couched in a narrative that inspires empathy with an audience.   In order to convey authenticity, it’s a good rule of thumb to keep your brand positive - no wading about in social media muck for fun.  The argument that supports your brand is evidence that your authenticity is legitimate, as conveyed by your behaviors, whether it is how you communicate online or the pictures of offline activities that you post.  Sharing narratives that inspire empathy with your audience is a key factor in establishing who you are with your audience and reinforcing their perceptions of your brand. 

Here’s the scary thing about living in the digital twenty-first century - even if you don’t think you need to worry about establishing a personal brand in the digital landscape, chances are you already have one and just aren’t aware of it.  After all, what is the first thing many of us do nowadays when we are looking to learn something about someone we recently met?  We google them.  If you are someone who has not been engaged in  business activities in the public eye, anyone googling you is likely to end up on your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or whatever other social media accounts you might have.  Like it or not, your digital footprint is the first impression you will make on many people.  

Curate Your Content

The good news is, you can exert a good amount of control over that impression.  For one thing, you can establish the brand identity you want by curating your content.  Your content can convey the values that you feel are of primary importance to your brand.   This means having a sense of your personal mission and values, and making sure that the things you post (or just as important, repost) are “on brand” in terms of the picture you want to portray to the world.  In an article for Forbes, Caroline Castrillon discusses the potential importance of a carefully curated digital brand for job seekers, citing a study that showed 70% of employers check out potential employee’s online, searching Google and looking at social media pages (Castrillon, 2020).  In the twenty-first century, where workers are more likely to change jobs often, the image you present online is vitally important.  

All Eyes Are On You

Something folks tend to forget about social media - it’s a public forum.  If you wouldn’t get up in front of a hundred strangers and read what you are about to post from behind the podium, chances are you should not be posting it on your social media account.  The same thing goes for the posts that you choose to share from your account.  It is important to fact-check news items before you share them, particularly if you don’t recognize the source.  You might think twice before sharing content that has off-color humor or polarizing political content.  Even if you have controls on your account limiting access to just friends, posts can easily become screenshots and go more public than you know.  Even if you aren’t very active on social media, do you have friends who are?  If you are out drinking at a bar, are your friends taking pictures of you and posting them to their social media accounts with your name?  Do you want those images to be a part of your brand?  Once there is information published about you online, it is difficult to isolate it from your overall brand.  Reputation.management.com claims that “it’s nearly impossible to get something removed from Google completely.”  (Reputation Protection - How to Protect Your Reputation Online, 2020)  

So take a moment to check out where your current digital reputation stands.  Remember you want to keep it positive, keep it authentic and look for opportunities to share stories that connect your audience emotionally to who you are as a person to better reflect the perceptions you want out there of your personal brand.

3 Ways Aristotle Can Tweak Your Content And Beef Up Your Brand. (2015, February 20). Zen Media. https://zenmedia.com/blog/3-ways-aristotle-can-tweak-content-beef-brand/

  Castrillon, C. (n.d.). Why Personal Branding Is More Important Than Ever. Forbes. Retrieved February 27, 2022, from

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecastrillon/2019/02/12/why-personal-branding-is-more-important-than-ever/?sh=7063ff3f2408

Chan, G. (n.d.). 10 Golden Rules Of Personal Branding. Forbes. Retrieved February 28, 2022, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/goldiechan/2018/11/08/10-golden-rules-personal-branding/?sh=6f13583658a7

FRONTLINE | Growing Up Online | Season 2008 | Episode 3. (n.d.). Www.pbs.org. https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-growing-up-online/

Number of active users at Facebook over the years. (n.d.). Finance.yahoo.com.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-active-users-facebook-over-years-214600186--finance.html

Reputation Protection - How to Protect Your Reputation Online. (2020, July 13). ReputationManagement.com. https://www.reputationmanagement.com/blog/reputation-protection/

What Is a Brand? (n.d.). Facebook for Business. https://www.facebook.com/business/learn/lessons/what-is-a-brand

‌Wheeler, K. (2020). How to Develop a Unique (& Memorable) Brand Identity in 2020. Hubspot.com. https://blog.hubspot.com/agency/develop-brand-identity

Social Media & Political Polarization

 I’ve been thinking a lot lately about political polarization.  Months ago, I had something of an epiphany when I encountered a visual meme posted by a cousin on Facebook.  The meme deployed an illogical argument to argue against mask-wearing for mitigating COVID-19.  I couldn’t understand where my cousin came up with such an idea and why he felt the need to share it, but of course it wasn’t his idea - and that makes all the difference.

Because it does make a difference when you think about the fact that a malignant social media post, rather than being produced by the person posting, has actually been deliberately produced and placed to provoke discord between American families, friends and neighbors.  In the past two years, foreign governments acting in opposition to US interests have sought to disrupt public trust and sow domestic confusion among rival Western states by promoting disinformation COVID-19, especially to American audiences on social media.  For example, state-sponsored troll farms out of Russia and China have spread disinformation about Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. “They broadcast exaggerated side effects, falsely reported deaths, intentionally contradictory information regarding Western regulatory approval processes, personal attacks upon pharmaceutical executives, so as to undermine public confidence” (Gowda, 2021).   These bad actors on social media exacerbate our political divisions. 

Political Polarization

So my cousin isn’t so much a producer of bad information as a victim of it.  But in reposting the bad information, he assists in superspreading a viral disease.  This disease isn’t physical, it’s mental, and helps drive the perception that we are currently in the highest state of political polarization experienced in our country since the Civil War. (Political polarization at its worst since the Civil War, 2016) Researchers from Stanford University found that animosity between Democrats and Republicans nearly doubled from 1975 to 2017 (Sonnemaker, n.d.).  Though not solely responsible, social media has exacerbated political polarization, and there are several reasons why - algorithms that encourage echo chambers, purposeful disinformation campaigns, and the opportunity for political rhetoric to devolve into untruth on platforms with no accountability.

Cognitive Echo Chambers

Social media offers a skewed version of reality.  Algorithms encourage content in an individual's news feed geared towards what they like, over time creating a kind of echo chamber where users only receive the content they want, encouraging confirmation bias. Human behavior also has a role to play in the development of these echo chambers, as people unfriend or block others that disagree with them politically, further promoting the likelihood that a diversity of opinion won’t exist on their feed.  Opinions don’t get challenged in this environment, only amplified.  Exacerbating this issue, these same algorithms work to maximize social engagement and keep people online longer. Unfortunately, the posts that typically generate maximum engagement are those that incite outrage.  Online negativity is incentivised when divisive content equals higher engagement - in other words, the current system encourages negative content because it generates more money for platforms from advertisers (Sonnemaker, n.d.)

Bad Actors

Purposeful disinformation campaigns on social media are produced by individuals, political operatives and governments known as troll farms. These troll farms post from fake accounts or groups meant to look like real people, with content about the pandemic, elections, race, religion and divisive political issues on both the left and right ends of the political spectrum.  Ahead of the 2020 Election, troll farms in Kosovo and Macedonia engaged in disinformation campaigns that “reached 140 million US users monthly and 360 million global users weekly in late 2019” (Agustin, n.d.). Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the Kremlin-backed troll farm that was very active with disinformation campaigns in the 2016 US election, created groups that attracted large followings like the black activism group “Blacktivist” (360,000 followers) and “Heart of Texas” (250,000 followers) a Texas secessionist group (Alba, 2020).  These groups, which weren’t shut down by Facebook until 2017, exposed many unwitting people to Russian propaganda meant to damage our political institutions and democratic ideals.  

This Texas secessionist group attracted nearly 250,000 followers

 - but was actually created by Russian Trolls (Source:  New York Times)

Move On Over, Pinocchio

When it comes to political advertising, there is a big difference between newspapers and broadcast television vs. social media and cable television.  Newspaper publishers and broadcast news producers can be held legally liable for untruthful political ads they publish or broadcast.  So it is not in the best interest of a newspaper to print a political ad that has untruths in it.  But cable television and social media, operating under the parameters of private enterprise and free speech, have no such incentive. The aforementioned social media echo chambers also offer politicians opportunities to shape messaging for specific audiences, meaning they can easily craft lies about their opponents that only reach interested audiences, so that their lies never come under true “public” scrutiny.  Lata Nott writes for the American Bar Association, “Regulation of political ads on social media, whether by the platforms themselves or government actors, needs to take into account that allowing candidates to micro target ads while at the same time refraining from fact checking their statements creates an environment where false information can spread unchecked” (Nott, 2020).

How Far Apart Are We, Really?  

Sure, political polarization is rampant, but is it real?  Yes, Democrats and Republicans may be twice as adversarial as they were in 1975, but if you remove the labels of “Democrat” and “Republican,” you may find that folks are not so divided when it comes to actual political issues.  For example, you might think that “Black Lives Matter,” is a point of contention for Americans, yet there has been a seismic shift in American attitudes towards racism and policing according to a 2020 Monmouth University poll, with 76% of respondents agreeing that racism is a big problem in America.  “Never before in the history of modern polling have Americans expressed such widespread agreement that racial discrimination plays a role in policing — and in society at large” (Russonello, 2020). 

‌

Where Do We Go From Here?

Social media seems to do more to drive us apart politically than bring us together. But it doesn’t have to be that way, if social media users can get savvy in regards to how they interact with the information they encounter, particularly when it is polarizing.  First off, don’t follow accounts you can’t verify are legitimate or share posts from accounts you don’t recognize. The posts won’t always be informative on this point - some bad actors will create innocuous posts at first to build their following, so exercise discretion in your following.  Many of the memes and posts that bad actors spread on social media can be easily debunked with the application of a bit of critical thinking, or the 5 W’s:

• Who (originally) wrote what you are reading?   

• What are they trying to convince you to believe?  

• Why do they want you to think that way? 

• When did they write it? (When you first encounter a post it might seem new, but could be years out of date.)  

• Where did the meme originate?  (Was it a foreign country unfriendly to American interests?)  

Finally, don’t trust political information from politicians or about politicians on social media. Use a rule of three whenever you see contentious information about someone - check three other legitimate sources for the same information, one right-leaning, one left-leaning, and one non-partisan.  See if they are saying the same things in the same way.  Broadcast television and mainstream newspapers are sources that, because of the accountability factor, are a much better source for political candidate information.  Above all, don’t get revved up by what you encounter on social media before you’ve thoroughly fact-checked, and even then, give some thought about who might be attempting to manipulate your views and why.

     Agustin, F. (n.d.). Troll farms peddling misinformation on Facebook reached 140 million Americans monthly ahead of the 2020 presidential election, report says. Business Insider. Retrieved January 21, 2022, from https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-troll-farms-peddling-misinformation-reached-nearly-half-of-americans-2021-9

 

               Alba, D. (2020, March 29). How Russia’s Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/technology/russia-troll-farm-election.html

America Is Not As Divided As You Think. Yes, Really. (n.d.). Www.wbur.org. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2021/01/20/biden-inauguration-polarization-unity-shaun-adamec-nat-kendall-taylor

 

Dimock, M., & Wike, R. (2020, November 13). America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide. Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/13/america-is-exceptional-in-the-nature-of-its-political-divide/

 

     Gowda, V. (2021, March 10). State-Sponsored COVID Vaccine Disinformation: A New Front in Geopolitical Conflict. Bill of Health. https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2021/03/10/covid-vaccine-disinformation-geopolitics/

Murse, Tom. (2021, February 16). How Social Media Has Changed Politics. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534

Nott, L. (2020, June 26). Political Advertising on Social Media Platforms. Www.americanbar.org. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/voting-in-2020/political-advertising-on-social-media-platforms/

Olin, J. (2016, December 6). Letters to a Young Librarian: Information Literacy as Liberation. Letters to a Young Librarian. http://letterstoayounglibrarian.blogspot.com/2016/12/information-literacy-as-liberation.html

Political polarization at its worst since the Civil War. (2016, November 8). USC News. https://news.usc.edu/110124/political-polarization-at-its-worst-since-the-civil-war-2/

Russonello, G. (2020, June 5). Why Most Americans Support the Protests. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/polling-george-floyd-protests-racism.html

Sonnemaker, T. (n.d.). 11 experts explain how our digital world is fueling polarization. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/how-internet-social-media-fuel-polarization-america-facebook-twitter-youtube-2020-12

Citizen Journalism - Is it Enough?

 Previous posts on this blog have discussed the diminution of traditional media as digital media grows more dominant, the subsequent development of news deserts as smaller communities lose their daily newspapers, and the importance of a free press in a democracy.  “Citizen journalism,” is often mentioned as the solution to saving democracy as community newsrooms shrink or disappear, with the understanding that without journalists acting as watchdogs, our government, corporations, and systems will grow more corrupt in the absence of accountability.  Can the responsibility for accountability be safely left in the hands of the citizen journalists?  Not without addressing issues of access, credibility and dissemination.  

Democracy depends on fair press

Writing for Nieman Reports, Mary Ellen Klas, who recently spent a year as a Nieman Fellow, cites the ongoing impact of the decline of traditional media on government accountability as newsrooms have shrunk. According to Klas, as reporters covering local and state government are laid off, coverage of complex issues disappears, making it easier for special interests to influence politicians and for bad budgets and tax hikes to pass without public examination. As the press corps has shrunk, government administrations have grown more opaque and less inclined to share information with reporters, opting instead to control all their messaging on their own social media channels. Without the press on hand as watchdogs, local government activities occur out of the public eye.  Klas writes that even with its deficiencies, “local journalism helps reduce government corruption, increases the responsiveness of elected officials to their constituents, and encourages public participation in local politics”  (Less Local News Means Less Democracy, n.d.) 

 

Citizen journalism = user generated content

The term “citizen journalism,” has evolved to mean any number of different kinds of user generated content, from opinion blogs to YouTube channel commentaries, or breaking stories with eye-witness video posted on social media in real time (Rogers, 2010).  To some degree it also reflects the shift in the balance of power between traditional news organizations and the public, which once was just a recipient of directional media but now can be an active participant in media (Nolan, n.d.).  Interaction and feedback can be immediate on news sites that have enabled user comments, allowing opportunity for citizen journalists to contest the contents of a story or enhance it with their own reporting in real time.  

The Issue of Access

There are examples in recent times of the tremendous impact citizen journalists can have on exposing issues that might otherwise remain unseen, a prime example the viral videos of George Floyd’s murder, which spurred a wave of protests that culminated in a court hearing that found Derek Chauvin guilty of murder. Other incidents of police brutality have been caught by a cell phone video, shared on social media and driven public awareness of an event that would otherwise be hidden from view, giving the public the opportunity to demand justice. Citizen journalism can make a great impact when citizens capture an event as it unfolds and share on social media.  

But the power of the press in regards to government oversight has to do with the access they can demand from the government and the expertise journalists develop when they specialize on a certain beat. A journalist might specialize in public school news or the prison system or county tax structure, meaning someone with a high level of experience and expertise on a subject, committed to being impartial, is watching out for wrongdoing.  It is not so easy for everyday citizens to get this experience and access to government and government officials, or to get an interview with an elected official in the interest of asking them hard questions about a proposed budget, particularly with the trends towards government opacity in sharing information.  

Credibility - Who to Believe?

When you visit Joe Smith’s blog, self-acclaimed citizen journalist, how do you know he is legitimate?  Has he researched his story thoroughly, checked his sources, etc.?  Does he have any ties to the subject he is writing about that make him a biased source?  Does he have anything to gain by convincing you of his point of view?  How is Joe going to get folks to believe his reporting?  Professional news media outlets are not without bias, but they are subject to public scrutiny and bias checks.  There are also a number of media bias charts that might provide a guideline for whether a source can be considered factual and relatively unbiased, but even the charts themselves can be biased. Click here to check out a great article by Candice Benjes-Small, Head of Research at William & Mary, and Nathan Elwood, Library Administrator at the Missouri Legislative Library, on media charts and tips for recognizing bias (Author, 2021).  Primary news outlets like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, NPR and PBS Newshour have built credibility over many years of trusted reporting from credentialed journalists, while citizen journalists don’t necessarily have the credentials or associations to establish their own credibility.  

Dissemination

If you are a citizen journalist, how do you promote the stories you publish without an advertising budget?  It isn’t easy, and in fact, disseminating information organically has grown more difficult as digital media companies like Google and Facebook revise their SEO and organic reach practices to give them more control over the product they sell to their advertisers.  Companies always have a different way of putting this - for example Facebook, when they changed their organic reach algorithms claimed it was to craft a “better user experience” (Chaim Gartenberg, 2019).  That “better user experience” in practice means that even when you follow a group or company on Facebook you aren’t likely to see all their posts.  For an organization not deploying paid promotion, only 2-5% of their followers will see a post (Chantelle, 2021).  

 

                                                                              Source:  expandcart.com

 

Collaboration - The Happy Medium?

Given the issues of credibility, access and dissemination, how can citizen journalism promote the transparency necessary for a healthy democracy?  Collaboration, civic engagement and public sponsorship for media are all key.  There are many opportunities for citizen journalists to contribute to the mediascape in a way that shares credibility, capitalizes on access and allows for maximum dissemination, when citizen journalists work in conjunction with professional journalists.  From low-threshold citizen journalism that invites public comment on existing news stories, to a more collaborative model of open source reporting provided to professional journalists, to integrated models of sites that are a balance of professional journalists and citizen journalists both providing content with rigorous oversight for background research and fact checking, citizen journalism can contribute in a meaningful way to protecting our democracy.  That said, the opportunity for citizen journalists to contribute can only exist if professional journalists and media outlets are supported to the degree that they can still embed in government and institutions to allow the access needed for full transparency.  Non-profit entities like Spotlight PA in Pennsylvania are offering opportunities for independent investigative reporting funded by grants and individual donors in collaboration with existing newsrooms (Our Mission, 2020).  Funding models for digital enterprises like this could promote a new model for a robust network of professional and citizen journalists.  Professional journalists and citizen journalists can work together to “agitate, investigate, and scrutinize our leaders and institutions. That freedom is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship” (Importance Of A Free Press, 2018)

 

References

Author. (2021, February 23). Complex or clickbait?: The problematic Media Bias Chart. ACRLog. https://acrlog.org/2021/02/23/complex-or-clickbait-the-problematic-media-bias-chart/comment-page-1/

Chaim Gartenberg. (2019, March 8). What is Facebook? Just ask Mark Zuckerberg. The Verge; The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/8/18255269/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-definition-social-media-network-sharing-privacy

Chantelle. (2021, October 3). 4 Ways to Solve for Organic Social Media Reach Decline. Chantelle Marcelle, Brand and Marketing. https://chantellemarcelle.com/improve-organic-social-media-reach-decline-2/

Chung, Deborah & Nah, Seungahn. (2013). Media Credibility and Journalistic Role Conceptions: Views on Citizen and Professional Journalists among Citizen Contributors. Journal of Mass Media Ethics. 28. 271-288. 10.1080/08900523.2013.826987. 

How citizen journalists, cell phones and technology shape coverage of police shootings - College of Information and Communications | University of South Carolina. (n.d.). Www.sc.edu. Retrieved February 13, 2022, from https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/cic/journalism_and_mass_communications/news/2020/citizen_journalists_cell_phones_shape_coverage.php#.YgmZIy3Yrrcces

How to Increase Organic Reach on Facebook in 2021? | ExpandCart. (2021, December 23). Expand Cart. https://expandcart.com/en/32759-how-to-boost-your-facebook-organic-reach-in-2021/

Importance Of A Free Press. (2018, May 3). Charles Koch Institute. https://charleskochinstitute.org/stories/importance-of-a-free-press/

Less Local News Means Less Democracy. (n.d.). Nieman Reports. https://niemanreports.org/articles/less-local-news-means-less-democracy/

Nolan, M. (n.d.). How to separate fact and fiction online. Www.ted.com. Retrieved September 20, 2020, from https://www.ted.com/talks/markham_nolan_how_to_separate_fact_and_fiction_online

Our Mission. (2020, July 17). Spotlight PA. https://www.spotlightpa.org/about/mission/

Outing, S. (2011, March 2). The 11 Layers of Citizen Journalism. Poynter. https://www.poynter.org/archive/2005/the-11-layers-of-citizen-journalism/

Rogers, Tony. (2019, January 15). Citizen Journalism and Its Powerful Role Outside the Mainstream Media. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-citizen-journalism-2073663

How Social is Social Media? Does it Divide Us?

“I don’t use social media,” my cousin said, who happens to be (at twenty-nine years old), an executive for Google.  “I really can’t stand it.”  

I’m sure you’ve met people who don’t participate in social media.  Yes, they do exist!  According to the Pew Research Center nearly 72% of Americans use social media (Pew Research Center, 2021).  In a way, those who eschew social media seem like the teetotalers of our modern age - met with raised eyebrows and disbelief.  “Really?  Not at all?  No Twitter, no Facebook, no Snap, no Insta?”  The rest of us (of a certain age) seem to be a combination of addicts and weekend bingers, except when we get fed up and go on a social media fast.  In these times of vicious political discourse, social media abstinence sometimes feels like the best option.  

The Bad & the Ugly

But really, how much of the discourse out there on social media  is actually vicious?  Not everyone is in agreement about whether social media is good or bad. Among the 66% of respondents who used social media, a 2021 NBC News Poll showed that 64 percent of them believed social media does more to divide us than it does to bring us together (Murray, 2021).  Only 57% of respondents to the same poll given in 2019 found social media divisive, so perceptions of social media seem to be growing  increasingly negative over time - but is that due to social media itself, or simply a reflection of our national political polarization?   Does social media help build community or does it further divide it?

Facebook, as one of the earliest social media platforms and now the largest, initially presented itself as a community builder.  In the early days of Facebook, founder Mark Zuckenberg said its purpose was “about helping people share information and share themselves,” with a focus on connecting family and friends, but by 2015  that purpose evolved to a mission to “connect the world,” not just for family and friends but  also “ helping people connect with businesses, governments and other organizations in their lives”  (Chaim Gartenberg, 2019).  

Whatever intentions the initial Facebook team had, the Facebook of today is big business focused on connections between advertiser and consumer, to the tune of $29 billion of profit in 2020.  Facebook’s pursuit of profits came under fire in September of 2021 when whistle blower Frances Haugen came forward accusing the company of putting profits before people. Haugen, a former employee, claimed that Facebook allows hate speech and misinformation to spread on the platform, sharing an internal company memo that stated “we also have compelling evidence that our core product mechanics, such as vitality, recommendations and optimizing for engagement, are a significant part of why these types of speech flourish on the platform”(Facebook revelations: what is in cache of internal documents?, 2021).

So Facebook’s own research seems to show that social media is helping to divide us, but things get interesting when you look at who is responsible for creating much of the divisive rhetoric out there.  Whether or not you have an opinion that social media is good or bad, it is a powerful platform, and bad actors have taken note and worked to weaponize it.  “Troll farms,” or paid groups of online agitators, are often deployed by foreign powers with an eye towards destabilizing rival countries.  These “malicious actors can erode trust in institutions and breed an atmosphere of contempt, distrust, and even violence among citizens (Weaponizing Social Media: Heinz Experts on Troll Farms and Fake News, 2018).  An internal Facebook report stated that, in the months prior to the 2020 presidential election, 140 million Americans a month were reached on Facebook  by propaganda and misinformation generated by troll farms (Agustin, n.d.).

The Good?

So what good does social media do, aside from giving grandma a quick way to see pictures of the grandkids, and letting me know what that old college friend of mine had for dinner yesterday?  Is this all the good that social media can do?  Given all the crap that we can encounter given the prevalence of troll farms or that out-there family member, is it worth using?

In a  2009 Ted Talk, “How Social Media Can Make History,” social media theorist Clay Shirky talks about seismic shifts in communication technology like the printing press, telephone, radio and television and…you guessed it, social media.  Unlike previous shifts that enabled two-way communication that was still primarily speaker to audience, suddenly with social media, everyone can craft content immediately launched on a public platform. Those who were just part of an audience receiving communications are now active participants in a media that is “global, social, ubiquitous and cheap” (Shirky, 2014).

When people are empowered as participants in the realm of media, good things can happen.  We might not even know George Floyd’s name if it weren’t for the capacity of social media to empower the powerless.  In countries with repressive governments, social media is an avenue to expose corruption and spur activism.  Public opinion can still be a powerful driver in politics or with corporations in terms of driving change, and social media is a platform that can rally the masses.  

The Future

Still not sure if social media is more good than bad?  Check out this 2021 Pew Research Center report “The Future of Digital Spaces and Their Role in Democracy,” for industry expert predictions of how social media will continue to develop over the next fifteen years.  In a survey of 862 digital industry experts, 61% thought digital spaces could evolve to better serve the public good, if current issues of disinformation and toxic discourse are addressed and reformed (Janna et al., 2021).

Because regardless of whether it is used for good or for ill, social media is used a lot - and it’s here to stay.  The platforms we use might change - even as Facebook is dominant in the social mediascape currently, it is losing traction among younger folks, who prefer TikTok, SnapChat, and YouTube  (Anderson & Jiang, 2018).  Platforms will evolve but this new media environment of shared conversation will continue, and our job is to advocate for vigilance and reform on platforms so we can benefit from the good and guard against the bad.  

References

Agustin, F. (n.d.). Troll farms peddling misinformation on Facebook reached 140 million Americans monthly ahead of the 2020 presidential election, report says. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-troll-farms-peddling-misinformation-reached-nearly-half-of-americans-2021-9

Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2018, May 31). Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/

Auxier, B., & Anderson, M. (2021, April 7). Social Media Use in 2021. Pew Research Center; Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2021/04/07/social-media-use-in-2021/

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Murray, Mark (2021). Poll: Nearly two-thirds of Americans say social media platforms are tearing us apart. NBC News. 

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