Did Facebook cause influence the outcome of the election?
Was Donald Trump elected because of Facebook?
These questions have been the subject of a bunch of articles
over the past couple of days. Basically, Facebook is “embroiled
in accusations that it helped spread misinformation and fake news stories that
influenced” the outcome of the election.
Early this morning, Mark Zuckerberg
posted this open
letter denying Facebook’s influence and renewing a commitment to preventing
fake news and hoaxes. The problem, and he recognizes this, is that declaring
stories accurate and false turns the platform into an arbiter of truth.
That pesky question about the nature of
truth once again rears its ugly head. It is one of the most essential issues
raised this cycle, made ever more complicated because of its connection to
partisanship and identity.
This NYMag
piece claims that “Donald Trump Won Because of Facebook.” In essence, Facebook (and
other social media) enabled Trump to communicate directly with supporters thus
bypassing the mediating and filtering effect of the mainstream press. In other
words, Facebook doesn’t just intensify politics – by providing another way to
get news; it “changes politics entirely” by altering the power dynamic of
candidate – media – consumer.
According to Read (author of NYMag piece), Trump exists
because he was able to get his message directly to supporters. And, (interestingly),
so does Obama: a candidate with virtually no experience but a powerful message
of hope galvanized large amounts of people through online organizing. Political
insiders/media establishment/east coast elite/liberal snobs (whatever you want
to call them) often decry social media’s degrading of political discourse, but
does this apply if it also gave us Barack Obama?
On tonight’s 60
Minutes, Trump credited his social media presence as leading to victory. He
said that it offered him a way to fight against unflattering stories. For Trump, “social media has more power than
the money” spent by his opponents.
Trump gets it: social media allows the creation of self-reinforcing
communities. These groups of people would never find each other without the
communication power of the internet and their feelings cannot be legitimized
without direct access to a candidate. Trump knows how to use these communities to
build power, a practice that many find detrimental to civility in politics. Is
it Facebook’s job to censure communities that have gone too far down the rabbit
hole? Isn’t that how we ended up here in the first place?
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