Think back to your Facebook newsfeed on the night of November 8th. What did you see? It was probably dominated by the US presidential election. I scrolled past post after post of #imwithher tagged statuses, the irony being that the majority of these posts came from people who did not have a vote in the US election, did not live in the US and many who had never even been to the US. Most people have strong feelings about that election and its outcome. Afterwards, all of my friends were shocked and dismayed by the result. I also shared their concerns, and worried about what the result would mean.
The same thing occurred in June with the Brexit referendum. Our newsfeeds were clogged with bleeding-heart liberals preaching to the choir. A friend of mine rightly observed that the passion she saw amongst her friends on social media the day the Brexit result was announced wasn’t channelled into votes cast or campaigning before the vote. Similarly, in Ireland, the majority of my friends who use social media are liberal people who fully supported the 2015 Yes campaign in the marriage equality referendum. I was inundated with pleas to vote yes in the form of Facebook statuses. I was also guilty of posting, urging people, not just to vote, but to vote yes – a useless endeavour given the audience I was addressing, who were were going to vote yes regardless of my self-indulgent plea. However, I wanted to show everyone what a good ally I was, hijacking the moment for my own gain. It is understandable that social media is the platform on which we discuss dominant political issues, it is accessible, we use it everyday. But is it an appropriate platform?
The pleas of people to vote for Clinton to people in Ireland, who had neither the means nor inclination to vote for Donald Trump, was frankly narcissistic and self-indulgent
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Social media is a tool that can be used to create awareness on an issue. The campaign to repeal the eighth amendment is testament to this. But there are caveats. Social media operates within our personal spheres, we use it to connect with people we already know, people who share our interests and our background. Even from an algorithmic standpoint, our Facebook timelines are programmed to prioritise things that we “like” and agree with. Just take a look at the Guardian’s article comparing liberal and conservative Facebook timelines for very clear, and shocking, proof of this.
My friends did not know any Trump voters, and therefore the pleas of people to vote for Clinton to people in Ireland, who had neither the means nor inclination to vote for Donald Trump, was frankly narcissistic and self-indulgent. I am not innocent of this myself. It is easy to get swept up in a tirade on social media. One can appreciate that people like to feel that they are contributing to a debate. Many people may take objection to this article which will undoubtedly be viewed by some as hypocrisy, but the fact of the matter remains: social media is not the forum for sweeping political change. Certainly, it can be used as a means of organisation or creating awareness on an issue. But it did not prevent Trump being elected, it did not prevent Britain voting to leave the EU. By relying too heavily on social media for our politics we face two problems: either we interact only with like-minded people, blinded to diversity of opinion, or, if one does stray from their comfort zone, they spend their time lambasting individuals with strong views of the opposite opinion.
A twitter war with a fool of the “all lives matter” variety is neither useful nor productive. In using social media as our main form of political engagement, we fail to connect with a large number of moderate individuals who don’t share their political views online. They are excluded from this conversation, and this is dangerous and damaging. It is easy for people to feel alienated from a die-hard liberal agenda just as it is from conservative rhetoric, especially in the way this agenda is framed on social media. Politics is about everyone, because it affects us all, people from left to right and everyone in-between.
Social media is making us as lazy in our political engagement as it does socially
Using social media as a tool to gain information on politics is damaging for other reasons. It is inherently biased, as people choose what they want to share and highlight. We all choose to share the funny, interesting and exciting parts of our lives on Instagram and Facebook, not the mundane trips to the supermarket or waiting in the rain for a bus. All too often the reality of the situation is whitewashed, without nuance and painted as a stark black-and-white issue, regardless of the complexities involved. Often, we don’t even read the article, just take into account the headline. This enters our subconscious, and helps us form our opinion.
The controversy over the Facebook fake news stories is testament to this. Social media is making us as lazy in our political engagement as it does socially. It certainly has the potential to do good, but we need to reframe our approach to discussing politics on social media, because it has become increasingly one-sided, reactionary and, ultimately, fruitless.
