- 05/12/2017
- Category: Commentaries
Media has long been accused of contributing to political polarization throughout history. Nevertheless, in the digital era where news is dispersed via the extremely interconnected social media, the consequences are unprecedented. Multiple media reports, as echoed by the Oxford Internet Institute in 2017, have investigated how the forces of social media such as Facebook and Twitter may have influenced the 2016 U.S. election and propelled Donald Trump to triumph.[i] The problem becomes increasingly complex as the growing prominence of social media campaigns in political elections coincides with the era of post-truth politics, a less discussed phenomenon in the discourse of digital politics. Whereas hoax or fake news were aimed to mislead people into constructing irrelevant opinions, post-truth politics is referred to the phenomenon in which facts and objective data are not sufficiently considered by the political audience as much as their own emotions and existing belief systems. For the better or worse, social media plays a major role in the undercurrents of political events as manifested in various cases, from the Brexit voting in the U.K. to the 2016 Presidential Election in the Philippines. Indonesia is no exception in this case. So that begs the question, how exactly does an advanced digital technology influence political dynamics worldwide? And how is it manifested in the Indonesia context?
As political news can be effortlessly accessed on the tip of one’s hand, social media provides a convenient platform both for politicians and their audiences to shape the face of political events. Politicians are known to use this opportunity to steer voters towards their political agenda before an election. What is new is the use of technology to alter voters’ attitude regarding the election. Researchers have used the term “computational propaganda” to explain the accumulation of social media platforms, autonomous agents, and big data tasked with the manipulation of public opinion.[ii] News site Rappler conducted an investigation on the Philippines’s 2016 presidential election and discovered what it described as a “machine” of “paid trolls, fallacious reasoning and propaganda techniques” that has helped the shift of attitudes towards both candidates.[iii] Shifting to the national context, such problem becomes even more alarming with the proliferation of hoax amongst Indonesian society. A survey conducted by Masyarakat Telematika (Mastel) in 2016 revealed social media as the main channel of hoax dispersal in Indonesia (92,4%).[iv] These findings reaffirm the powerful role of digital technology in manipulating political dynamics.
On top of that, social media also enables citizens to influence the election, which is unparalleled to the pre-internet period. This is particularly true in the case of algorithms, which allows political news to be segregated based on its user’s behavior on social media that reflects their political spectrum. Merlyna Lim from Digital Media & Global Network Society called this dynamic as “algorithmic enclaves”. This phenomenon occurs as a result of constant interactions with algorithms, attempted to create a superficial shared identity online for sharing with each other, defending their opinions and protecting their resources from both real and perceived threats.[v] In other words, a significant amount of content any given user indorses to will never appear in their newsfeed. To illustrate, Facebook displays an algorithmic selection based on several factors, which includes how the users have interacted with similar posts in the past by as simple as viewing the post, and also how much other people in their network have done the same.[vi] Intuitively, social media platforms do this to increase users’ engagement to their products. Unfortunately, this feature has a dangerous side effect towards political polarization.
In virtue of these two phenomena, opinions that do not match one’s own were not equally enunciated on their respective social media. Social media algorithm prevents most alternating opinions to be delivered to users, while the post-truth politics shuts one’s eyes to the alternating opinions that do appear on their newsfeed. The manifestation of this phenomenon can be observed most vividly in the Jakarta governor election earlier this year. In this case, Indonesia witness how social media turned into a double-edged sword. On one side, social media managed to accelerate freedom of expression, enabling political discussion to flourish around the election. But sadly on the other side, social media also allowed hateful messages to disperse online, spreading fears among users. Merlyna Lim argues that this mutual shaping between users and algorithms is an example of ‘algorithmic enclaves’ that eventually generate multiple forms of tribal nationalism.[vii] The polarization between the two camps was so prominent that it silenced the rest of the society, an example of the “spiral of silence” theory that explains how opinions of the majority became dominant over time.[viii]
To conclude, social media has transformed into a platform where post-truth politics and computational propaganda overlap amidst the technology of algorithm, which has changed politics for good. Alas, irresponsible utilization of social media as a political tool will further intensify divisions between political groups, and even worse, could magnify narrow-mindedness among society. To some extent, it is safe to claim that social media algorithm contributes to the growing political polarization in Indonesian society. Nevertheless, blaming social media alone is erroneous as politics and social media is also strongly entangled with its users. Hence, instead of waiting for social media platforms to discover a technology which enables equal and reliable representation of political news, this problem might reiterate the indispensability of digital literacy among cyber citizens. Media impartiality might still be a long way down the road, yet it is much more feasible that common sense, rationality and simple fact-checking action are applied whenever a user encounters online political news. The ability to filter vast amounts of digital information should be a pre-requisite for all internet users in a world where social media is intertwined with electoral politics.
This article was released on The Jakarta Post Academia on 23 November 2017. Read the article here http://www.thejakartapost.com/academia/2017/11/23/how-social-media-is-polarizing-politics.html
Picture : pixabay.com
References :
[i] Oxford Internet Institute (2017). Social Media, News and Political Information during the US Election: Was Polarizing Content Concentrated in Swing States?. [online] Oxford Internet Institute. Available at: http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/1423/sites/89/2017/09/Polarizing-Content-and-Swing-States.pdf [Accessed 19 Oct. 2017].
[ii] Woolley, S. and Howard, P. (2016). Political Communication, Computational Propaganda, and Autonomous Agents. International Journal of Communication, 10, p.4886.
[iii] Tapsell, R. (2017). Post-truth politics in Southeast Asia. [online] Inside Story. Available at: http://insidestory.org.au/post-truth-politics-in-southeast-asia/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].
[iv] Masyarakat Telematika Indonesia (2017). Infografis Hasil Survey MASTEL Tentang Wabah HOAX Nasional. [online] Masyarakat Telematika Indonesia. Available at: http://mastel.id/infografis-hasil-survey-mastel-tentang-wabah-hoax-nasional/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2017].
[v] Lim, M. (2017). Beyond Fake News: Social Media and Market-Driven Political Campaigns. [online] The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/beyond-fake-news-social-media-and-market-driven-political-campaigns-78346 [Accessed 17 Oct. 2017].
[vi] Hern, A. (2017). How Social Media Filter Bubbles and Algorithms Influence the Election. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/22/social-media-election-facebook-filter-bubbles [Accessed 13 Oct. 2017].
[vii] Lim, M. (2017). Freedom to hate: social media, algorithmic enclaves, and the rise of tribal nationalism in Indonesia. Critical Asian Studies, 49(3), pp.411-427.
[viii] Ibid
