Introduction
During the last several years, the propagation of misinformation on social media has become a significant public concern. As a result, propaganda may now be disseminated on a massive scale thanks to social and digital media outlets. Understanding the mechanics of political disinformation and its link to public opinion formation is consequently an important task for pollsters. Misinformation in politics leads to two interrelated problems. First, Voters who are misinformed may make biased decisions about candidates and topics. Second, in the hands of opportunistic individuals, fake news has developed into a potent propaganda weapon. The paper thesis will be based upon the usage of social media by politicians to spread fear and speculation among the public. It is also going to analyze the role of misinformation in shaping public opinion, and how the latter influences policies. It will further look at why social media is used as the tool, and the role of social media algorithms to spread (mis) information.
Arguments
In the past decade social media has attracted huge traffic and gained massive popularity among the public. Technological advancements coupled with the busy lives of individuals has meant people rely on digital media for news and happenings around the world. In such circumstances spreading misinformation has never been easier. Political parties and other opportunists had already started resorting to social media to propagate their agenda. The outbreak of Sars cov-2 only further implied the issue. Volkmer (2021) in association with WHO surveyed 23000 respondents in the 18-24 demography across 5 continents to understand from where Gen Z millennials get their covid-19 information from. Their results suggested a majority of them were most willing to share scientific content on platforms, which is in contrast to the general trend found online. According study, emotional, funny and entertaining content are found to have a higher reach among users (Volkmer, 2021). The study also found that while more than half of the respondents were aware of the misinformation spread online, the tendency among two thirds of them was to simply ignore those sources.
In this age where the most popular opinion online is easily regarded as the truth, not speaking up against something which is false makes people believe in the misinformation faster. Users don't want to put in the necessary effort required to fact-check. As a result, that social media algorithms are based in such a way that one is likely to stumble upon something towards which he is positively biased (Cinelli et al., 2020). This creates a community of individuals with similar narratives, impacts the construction of social perception, influences political communication and public policies, and helps to propagate misinformation. This theme has been constantly highlighted during the pandemic. For instance, Al Zaman (2022) emphasized that in India, where the current right wing ruling party has previously been guilty of polarizing masses, used the pandemic to amplify the situation further. The minority Muslim group was often accused of spreading the virus faster due to their religious orthodoxies. Biased media outlets and supporters of the party online played a huge part in spreading these prejudices among the masses. Small scale local riots were also seen as a result. Similar themes were noticed in the US, where pro-Trump digital media outlets were hell bent on accusing China, and even Bill Gates for causing the outbreak of the virus, while at the same time they defended Trump by promoting a false rosy picture of the United States in regard to the health crisis. (Pazzanese, 2020) These examples back up research finding by Wang et al (2022) who shows how citizens of a country turn to politicians in times of crisis, and how the latter in turn use the crisis situation to their advantage to propagate misinformation.
Political parties are also aided by their analytics team which help them in identifying social media platforms where rumours to their benefit could circulate faster. For example, in the social media platform Gab where most its users are found to be politically far right, the increase in the number of posts went up exponentially since the WHO's publication of its first covid-19 situation report (Cinelli et al., 2020). Cinelli et al (2020) also found that while on mainstream platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, the number of interactions (likes, comments and shares) on reliable posts and questionable posts were similar, as well as the rate of their spread, on less regulated platforms like Gab and Reddit, the ratio of posts from questionable sources to those from reliable sources was strikingly high. Not just that, the volume of interactions on the former was 3 times more than the latter. This implies that different platforms are subject to different reactions from its specific users with regard to information from questionable sources. All the above political strategies are to imply the diversion of the attention from the failures of the respective governments in dealing with the crisis of the virus.
Rapid spread of information thanks to social media has also derailed the efficacy of public policies with regard to the Covid-19. For example, in Northern Italy, before the announcement of government lockdown, a rumor surfaced online regarding eminent lockdown measures which resulted in overcrowding of transportation services due to people wanting to leave the region (Cinelli al., 2020). This resulted in an outcome that was totally opposite to what the public policy had hoped, precisely to curb the spread of the virus. Political agendas aside, the pandemic also saw the dissemination of rumors related to the treatment and (self) diagnosis. A study found that there was little to no useful information to be found in 117 coronavirus related videos posted on Tik-Tok (with more than 1 billion views) (Li et al., 2021). Another study found that over a quarter of YouTube videos related to coronavirus contained misleading information. (Topf & Williams, 2021). False information was propagated regarding the positive effect of use of certain home-made remedies, non-prescribed chemicals and drugs, as well as the legitimacy of vaccines. In India this led to an increased demand for hydroxychloroquine, which in reality is an anti-malarial drug. (Al Zaman, 2022). People trusted social medias efficacy based on information available in Facebook, even though health experts never recommend it. Similar events were observed when a rumor spread online about how cow dung and cow urine could cure covid. Incidents of people gathering in communities, basking their whole bodies with cow dung, were observed, at a time when regulatory bodies were against mass gatherings (Al Zaman, 2022). False claims are also being made by widely known public figures also make matters worse. For example, when a Belgian physician made a claim to a newspaper that 5G was linked to coronavirus, attacks on 5G cell towers were observed across Europe (Ahmed et al., 2020). Influencers and celebrities on social media were responsible for inflating the claim, even when the newspaper deleted the article questioning the claim's legitimacy. According to Wang et al (2022) platforms like Facebook and Twitter, fringe conspiracy theories often represent the similar visual formats as the ones used by legitimate sources, which makes it harder for people to differentiate between correct and false claims. According to a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, false information’s leads to the crowding out of accurate public health guidance. He believes that there needs to be a change in the roles of public physicians. Previously it was deemed necessary for them to place their private and professional life apart. The need of the hour is for public physicians to face the public online and play their part in ensuring the propagation of accurate public health guidelines. (Topf & Williams, 2021) In the absence of the above, the spreading of the virus will be difficult to contain. It has also turned into the responsibility of public health organizations to regularly monitor social media so as to curb the spread of the misinformation virus. In the wake of such false claims being made online, social media companies are also becoming stricter in implementing their very own fact-checkers to help users identify dubious information easily.
Conclusion
The benefits of social media are for all to know. In this paper though, we have assessed the downside of social media, with reference to the covid-19 crisis. The various researches done on this topic back up my claims of politicians and opportunists using the contagious nature of social media to spread misinformation, at a time when the whole world was locked behind their homes and glued to their laptops or cellphones. Technically we are not totally out of the pandemic yet, so there's a case to be made for further research on the same when the wind settles down. Even though workplaces and educational institutions have reopened and stayed offline for quite some time, the importance of social media in the lives of people has not dried up. A global health crisis just helped in highlighting the issue with the ever-growing role played by media as a whole in shaping and transforming public opinion, for better or worse. People have inadvertently lost their sense of judgement, their right to question authority, and are slowly becoming mere puppets at the hands of the big players. To come out of the bubble needs a self-conscious effort on part of the community as a whole.
References
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