Although social media is blamed for many social ills, the sickness doesn’t come from Twitter or Facebook but from how the ruling classes have politicized life itself
The increased division between people based on political affiliation has been recognized by many and has frequently been attributed to technological developments.
Outlets like Facebook and Twitter are blamed for increased hostility, disinformation, and hateful attitudes spreading across the political discourse. But maybe politics has itself to blame.
The influence of social media is usually attributed to the platforms’ fundamental structure. Government officials and those loyal to their message emphasize this a lot. Their explanation for polarization is that serious disagreement with their policies stems from “disinformation,” which is amplified by algorithms that match users with information that they will be more likely to engage with.
Supposed disinformation receives exponential aggrandizement because of platforms’ promotion of popular content, which gives this kind of information better chances to become even more popular. Further, false statements tend to become popular because they evoke stronger emotions compared to the truth. Content creators are incentivized to postulate incorrect statements to market themselves, because the truth about the targets of such statements, such as government officials, wouldn’t evoke such anger and dislike as can be observed today. Thus, supposedly, the political process is damaged, since the most popular ideas are false.
Narrowly ascribing the drive toward increased disagreement, dislike, and other aspects of polarization to social media platforms is difficult. The empirical data that are sometimes claimed to support the notion that social media drives political polarization more accurately show that politics evoke polarization on social media. One study by Antoine Banks, Ernesto Calvo, David Karol, and Shibley Telhami presumably shows that browsing on Twitter can increase polarization. Their experiment shows that exposure to “negative tweets” about a candidate that you don’t like can increase your immediate perception of the contrast between yourself and that candidate.
The extreme right and extreme left do not represent the majority of Americans. However, they both make the most noise, thus getting the most attention.