The main social networks, in an effort to provide only reliable information about the elections in the United States, sometimes go too far, but it is not worth talking about partisanship, in general, the measures are designed to slow the spread of disinformation, but it is not yet clear whether they will be successful, says the assistant professor at the University’s School of Management and Public Policy Arizona Yotam Shmargad.
Leading social networks – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – launched a number of election-related projects in 2020. In particular, they provide information on voting or encourage people to go to polling stations, helping to register voters. Facebook at the end of October reported that it helped 4.4 million people. Twitter has recently been paying close attention to the tweets of the US President Donald Trump and has repeatedly labeled them with a warning that the content may not be true.
FOLLOWED BY MANUAL
“I think you are probably right that they (social networks) purposefully track Trump’s tweets. And we can say that this is because he has so many subscribers”, – Shmargad told the reporters.
According to him, in social networks, a considerable share of users’ attention is influenced by a rather small number of very famous accounts – gatekeepers, and Trump can easily be attributed to them.
When asked about bias in issuing warnings, Shmargad responded in two ways.
“I have no opinion on this. I think it can definitely be interpreted in this way. But again, you can interpret it in a more factual way, that the messages that President Trump posts may actually be false, because he has more and more of these markers”, – he said.
According to the expert, the reason for connecting people to monitoring important accounts is the impossibility of automating the detection of disinformation to such an extent. However, according to him, even if algorithms were doing this without human intervention, it would still be formulas created by people for specific purposes.
CASE IN BALANCE
“I think these platforms see themselves as the arbiter who decides what gets attention. And they try to make people not just focus on the ‘bright things’, they try to build a balance. Well, I think you could argue that they are over-adjust and actually divert attention away from things that might be important to some Trump voters”, – Shmargad said.
Such “bright things” he calls a large number of catchy messages that divert attention from some basic issues. The main change in social networks compared to the 2016 elections, the expert believes, is more measures to prevent the dissemination of incorrect information.
“I don’t know if they’re better at stopping this, but they know better that misinformation is spreading quickly on such platforms, especially Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. And they are taking all kinds of measures to reduce the spread. Will they be successful, this is a big question, to which we do not know the answer now. I think this will be studied for years after the elections”, – the agency’s interlocutor said.
THE SCALES SWING
According to him, he would refrain from claiming that social networks are following the line of this or that party, although Trump accuses them of playing along with the Democrats.
“Not because this is not happening, but because I have no evidence. Everything that these platforms did, as far as I know, can be regarded as positive for democracy”, – Shmargad said.
“It’s hard to know if there is an obvious bias towards one of the parties in what they do, or in the results of it. But it is good to understand that in the past these platforms made decisions that benefited the other party. In 2016, one could argue that that the scales of social networks have been tilted to the right, now one can argue that to the left. But what needs to be done is to encourage these companies to be more transparent about their decisions and the reasons for what they do”, – he said.
WE ARE DOING THIS
According to Shmargad, such actions are not only civil liability.
“It’s a good question, what are their motives for making these decisions. Of course, partly for Facebook and Twitter and to some extent for YouTube, this is to give the impression to the public that they are dealing with this problem”, – he said.
According to him, unlike traditional media sites, where you can also leave comments, social networks are a medium where information can be disseminated very quickly.
“This is definitely a completely different world,” the expert said.
However, he did not agree that social networks play the role of verifying facts for veracity.
“They are trying to add more restrictions to the process when sharing (messages)”, – he explained.
TRUMP MAY BE RIGHT
Schmargad did not rule out that Trump may be right when he says that social networks are bringing Democrats to polling stations.
“Obviously, there is a connection between the voter turnout and the victory of the Democrats. The more people come to vote, it usually means that the more likely a Democrat will be elected”, – the expert said.
This, in his opinion, explains the efforts of the Republicans aimed not at lowering the level of voting: reducing the number of polling stations, adopting laws on voter identification, the load of mail with the volume of sent ballots, which it may not be able to handle.
What exactly drives Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, for example, when the social network launches a project to help in voter registration, remains questionable for Schmargad.
“I could only think that he is doing this to increase the degree of self-confidence, positive attitude, public perception among some people. I cannot imagine that this can directly increase his income, although he may think in the long term, on case if the user base loses faith in Facebook”, – he said.
In his opinion, the team of the social network may fear that they will be accused of going against democracy.
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN THE RACE IS NOT CLEAR
The role of social media in the presidential race is difficult to isolate separately, Shmargad says, because it is only part of a much larger set of actions on different fronts, and candidates have no shortage of funds for other tools.
“Also, we haven’t had that many presidential elections where social media plays a role”, – he added.
At the same time, social networks have real leverage to attract people to the sites, Shmargad says. According to him, even in the midterm elections in 2010, this was confirmed by a Facebook experiment conducted on 60 million users.
If the call to vote was accompanied by a link to the user’s friends who had already done so, then it worked much better than just a call.
“They found it had a huge impact… They’re not new to the game, what they’re doing isn’t new, but maybe it’s a more extreme option. So they don’t just encourage you to vote, they contribute to the electoral process by giving information”, – said the interlocutor of the agency.
According to Shmargad, each part of the audience sees the story or information through the prism of their perception – pro-Trump or vice versa. And this angle of perception simply enhances this or that aspect. And in this sense, neither the media nor social networks have an impact on the opinion of the audience, because they already have it, the expert believes.
“All they can do is shift attention”, – he says.