Social Media And Democracy

João Victor · May 29, 2023

Over the past 30 years, we've modified the way we communicate with each other, the way we get information, the way we see the world. The way social media merged in our society is something to pay attention, irrelevant people, as once I said, today can simply talk for a big public just because of the existence of social media and spread weird content in the internet. That said, we come to the point of groups being excluded by they irrelevance and prejudices, seeing a gap to fill in the social media, a gap that they can fit in and keep a hateful light, I'm saying about the extreme right wing.

The behavior of the extreme right wing on social media can shudder a democracy, as we have seen in Brazil, USA, Hungary, Turkey and India. The anti-woke culture has grown in an unimaginable size around the world. The anti-woke culture is nothing more than the people on the right wing who create narratives to divert the population from social causes and real problems that happen in everyday life. An example that can be given about the anti-woke culture is from Bolsonaro, former president of Brazil who, in the midst of an economic crisis in 2020, said that the 2018 elections were rigged, he didn’t present any proof, the matter went viral, taking the focus off the crisis that was happening at the time.

Together with anti-woke culture rise, we have the problem that caused so much damage in democracies: Fake News. Fake news, caused a big damage just by the fact they spread very fast, instead of a true news, just a image or a text of few lines is very easier to understand the sign and take considered less time to read, that way, people often prefer to inform themselves in this way through the everyday life that capitalism imposes on them, not having time even just to read the news, in Brazil, IDEIA Big Data carried out a survey in 2019 that showed that 52% of people trust news sent by family on social media, and 43% trust those sent by friends. Seeing that gap, hateful groups could create a large network to go share some of their racist, homophobic and xenophobic thought through channels of easy access, as WhatsApp and Facebook. often conspiring against a government or against science, as is the case with anti-vaccines and flat-earthers. Plots on social media work because they provoke strong emotions, polemics, indignation and anger. And those emotions generate clicks and keep users glued to their screen.

Taking a vision from what fake news turned in our world, I can say, that much of the crazy theories and conspirations was permitted by the big distance from academy to the population, the academy lives in a world of ego where only they have the knowledge to keep it to themselves and not distribute this knowledge to the population, explaining how the process of studies and articles works. Thus, making more and more people with anti-vaccine thoughts grow their number of followers on social media, due to the lack of contact between the academy and society. A doctor in biology prefers to be trapped in the university world and disputing egos with other doctors than to go to the street to publish scientific articles for society to understand how science works, thus removing denialist thoughts. Science was built with a lot of debate, why today these debates are over and become a war of ego?

In Giuliano Da Empoli's book Engineers of Chaos, he describes how data science has helped right wing populists with social media, collecting massive amounts of data and managing to personalize anti-opposition messages for each of their supporters and even who does not support them, with fake news messages that affect the beliefs and customs of that person based on their profile in data collection; changing their opinion many times and converting their votes for a simple fake message. Messages often arrive personalized to each one by the algorithm designed to identify that person's personality. Algorithms are also biased in big tech companies, as I once wrote: "the spirituality associated with AI can be understood as the spirituality associated with it by its engineers and creators.". The programmer who develops the algorithm will put his bias in the lines of code, so a message of hate against immigrants will spread more, due to the simple fact that the algorithm has behind it a person who is against immigrants in his country of origin. ChatGPT itself confirms this, saying that yes, the algorithms have ideological biases behind them, which must be why we see problems of racism, homophobia and xenophobia so often in social media.

Steve Bannon, one of Trump's 2016 campaign strategists, used data science and social media tools to win the Republican Party election. Bannon was vice president of Cambridge Analytica, a company that was the subject of a social media scandal. In 2018, it was revealed that the company obtained data from millions of people through applications on Facebook - personality tests, for example - that collected information from the user and his friends on the platform, without their authorization. CA also bought data from companies such as Experian, Acxiom and Infogroup, large data compiler companies. And what did they do with so much information? Brittany Kaiser, who was CA's director of business development, explains how the strategy they used worked. Unbeknownst to people, the company was segmenting these millions of users into groups, following a method that classified people as "open to new experiences", "extroverted", "methodical", "empathetic" or "neurotic". From that initial design, they added other information to create political campaigns that exploited the anxieties of segments of society. With dark adds, only certain groups received certain messages on their Facebook timelines.

All this discussed, we came to a conclusion: the behavior of the extreme right in social media frightens and makes fear the future of democracies. An example of how to deal with fake news and combat it is Finland and its media education, since 2013 schools have in their curriculum, subjects that educate their students to question themselves and go after that news, thus confirming or not, if it's fake news. So, education is the first step to dealing with fake news. The other step is to standardize the internet, people should act on the internet as they act in real life, and real life laws should be applied on the internet, following this thought. Regulating the internet is a big step towards combating fake news, in Brazil, a bill against fake news is under discussion, the objective of the project says in itself: "Establishes norms related to the transparency of social networks and private services, especially with regard to the responsibility of providers for combating disinformation and increasing transparency on the internet, transparency in relation to sponsored content and the actions of public authorities, as well as establishing sanctions for messaging non-compliance with the law.”. Therefore, at least in Brazil, or in Finland, everything is moving towards more prosperous years for democracy to shine and be safe, with space for the emancipation of society. Only education and respect for the true can build a good civilization.