The Dangers of Citizen Journalism

by Surya Shanmugaselvam

The birth and evolution of Social Media has held a complicated relationship with society. For one, it has promoted increased interaction with friends, family, and colleagues despite distance and physical barriers. It offers teachers and educators useful tools to distribute and access educational support and materials. And it provides a medium of disseminating information in a snap of a finger, making citizens aware of the direst societal issues while establishing an informed public opinion. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, for instance, social media reached its apex for good, being hailed as a blessing to democracy: the Facebook and Twitter Revolutions enabled citizen journalism which exposed government oppression and a resultant mobilization of young protesters… However, behind the curtain, the strings are being tied every day to reveal a new hidden dimension. In less than a decade, the headlines are taking a different stance on the once-revered technological achievement–it’s a threat to democracy.

For years before this digital decade, humans have been reliant on the truth in order to come to terms with our existence. The truth is the way we build a common understanding between one another and can form a common cultural identity from which we are increasingly able to work peaceably alongside one another. Throughout the 20th century, news outlets were brokered by traditional journalism, controlled by the big 4 public broadcasters: ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. The landscape consisting of very few broadcasters and credible newspaper companies forced them to maintain the facts and merits of any news story so that anyone on any side of the political spectrum could keep faith in the media. This would arguably lead to better understanding and greater compromise among individuals during the time.

However, the paradigm suddenly shifted around the turn of the century when the explosion of social media platforms provided a faster, more convenient method of communication and personal expression; its growth went unchecked through the decade. This inadvertently influenced the privatization of knowledge in which individuals were all of a sudden responsible for fabricating news stories, interpreting them, and disseminating them, bringing about the subsequent rise of citizen journalism.

It becomes interesting and eventually cynical when all of the citizens of the world are shoved into a three-dimensional universe without boundaries. In this fabric of digital space-time, information acts a little differently than it would have during the traditional journalism era. It acts as a currency, competing for individual retention, turning the entire meaning of “truth” upside down. The “Truth” that once unified us eventually becomes unnecessary and just not worthy anymore. Information becomes split up based on individual prejudices, beliefs, and values, giving rise to differing “truths” among individuals based on what people are readily willing to accept. Humans are social animals meaning we tend to ally ourselves with people who think like us, repeatedly altering our mindsets to align with our “tribe’s” general fervor as if we are adaptive machine learning robots; in fact, social media has gamed the neuroplasticity of our minds molding us into certain camps of thought. Social media’s extensive universe has opened doors to more people who think like us, whether a celebrity or personality who tweets something we may be passionate about. On top of that, the algorithms that make it easier for information to reach its audience and work as a currency filter content that satisfies our predisposed notions, pulling us way out to a hardened mindset whether to the far right or left of radical political ideology for instance. The crux of it all, it has created a “gang mentality” that Martin Luther King Jr. once called “more immoral” and “unjust” than the individual. In one of the oldest democratic societies, the United States of America, our ethnic, racial, and ideological differences from our melting pot of cultures can be antagonized.

Much of social media’s influence has brought about the incessant rise of alternate realities and disinformation often manifesting themselves as conspiracy theories. The real-time distribution, spread, replication, and consumption achieved through social media has caused overwhelmingly excessive volumes of stories aimlessly out on the internet, leading individuals to pick at whatever they can put their minds on in a desperate attempt to be enlightened. It has overwhelmingly inundated our ability to be rationally informed, creating a vacuum of retention in which any news story, even if deliberately false, can fill the gap. Psychologists attribute this to Confirmation Bias, a tendency to seek stories that “confirm” what we desperately want to hear and satisfy our inner-consciousness even if radically distant from the truth. Social media’s citizen journalism platform with a lack of controls on what is being posted, whether by fringe groups or the common person, has made it easier for us to get one-sided stories at no expense. It’s astonishing how dangerous conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Q’anon and disinformation like a “stolen” election have gone unchecked, becoming so widely accepted without even a trace of the reason behind them. The end result, sadly, is a pattern of fear, insecurity, cynicism, and reactionary violence devolving into assaults on our democracy like the storming of the Capitol this January 6th, flinging sacred American democracy into a “death spiral”.

Until we come to identify and acknowledge social media’s menacing impact on the delicate fabric of society, we will never get out of this pattern of apprehension and skepticism. It is in natural human instinct to heed our immediate fears and suspicions. That is why our neanderthal ancestors figured not to walk into the bush if they suspected a viper. Today, a person who may have lost their job during the pandemic would register joblessness as immediate distress, leading to constant suspicion of the true fatality of Covid-19 and perusing stories that fit their alternate notion of the world. Social media has amplified our everyday suspicions and has helped us develop new suppositions about the world, causing antagonism between society’s members. So how can we prevent a disjointed society and a potential for violence to subvert our fears? Control and guidelines on social media companies are the paramount initiatives the government must strive for. Yes, social media has provided an expansive opportunity to exercise 1st amendment rights. It has constructed a level playing field for all people from all walks of life to share their opinions. But disinformation and blatant alternate realities fabricated to demonize another side/group and harp prejudices/skepticism is an abuse of these rights, harming another’s liberties and ultimately our nation’s egalitarian values. It’s simply that we should “never shout fire in a crowded theater” and point out an individual or group because they don’t align with or may express something contradictory to our own views. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act asserts that social media companies are not responsible for what their users post online, in a time at which upcoming companies like Facebook and Twitter did not have the means of vetting stories and maintaining virtual environments. This is understandable as social media is only the framework on which disinformation has emerged due to political and social climate. However, Social Media companies and the government still have an imperative role in mitigating its growth especially with new technologies like machine learning and data analytics in play. The Government and Social Media companies now have the means to police platforms, at least in a manner of bringing published content into servers and screening whether disinformation is present. Conspiracy theories sponsored with the intention to mislead or incite radical and/or violent rhetoric must be taken off of digital servers immediately before disseminated. To aid with the legal aspect of it all, the Government will need to establish an independent non-partisan department to hold companies accountable and institute standard procedures to be followed with ease for the identification and removal of misleading content. During the 2008 Housing Crisis, the government had put in place procedures and an oversight council as a part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform bill to ensure transparency in eth financial system, holding mortgage companies accountable from not acting overly on their self-interest, but also to guide companies through the process. The same must be done for social media companies.

And what can we as the citizens do? We need to be cognizant of our biases and identify what we feel strongly passionate about. This way, we can learn how not to inflame our beliefs through the digital world we live in while acknowledging the presence of others’ views. Insecurity develops from provincial attitudes when we are constantly force-fed content that confirms our passions and locked away from the perspectives of the rest of the world. Let us instead reach across the aisle, hear what others have to say and why a contrasting argument is so believed in. Let us understand one another and seek truth again, the only thing that will unite us.