Today, I have taken a course called Digital Influence, which inspired me most in social media influence. It focuses on the impact of social media on political beliefs.

Social media companies use algorithms to push content that makes people stay on the sites – this can be extreme content and extreme political views causing political polarization. Also, social media is used by political elites/entities to convey their message and can be used to manipulate opinion. For example, Twitter, in particular, influences the coverage of political topics in the media.

Seriously, the consumption of political information through social media facilitates the spread of misinformation. Also, political exchanges on social media sites are frequently negative and uncivil, which contributes to the rise in affective polarization. For example, In the 2016 American Election, “misinformation and hyper-partisan stories are shared at rates comparable to news stories by mainstream media outlets” Tucker et al (2018). People share stuff that confirms their worldview and often don’t check the source.

As social media can generate such large-scale civic engagement and discussion on a given topic, I’m curious how social media, if used properly, can be used as a tool to increase civic engagement in building society.

My Blog / Knowledge Integration and Project Planning: Data, Inequality and Society (2022-2023) by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0