Article's Author: Farhad Manjoo
- Twitter - a social media platform that limits users to a 140-character count message. "Though the 140-character network favored by President Trump is far smaller than Facebook, it is used heavily by people in media and thus exerts perhaps an even greater sway on the news business...The service is insidery and clubby. It exacerbates groupthink. It prizes pundit - ready quips over sustantive debate, and it tends to elevate the silly over the serious."
- Facebook - "Facebook is the world's most popular social network, and millions of people look to it daily for news." In the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, "Facebook came in for a drubbing for its role in propagating misinformation" - or as Trump coined the phenomena, "Fake News."
- Seth Rich - a staff member at the Democratic National Committee
- Samuel Woolley - the director for research at Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project
- Emilio Ferrara - a researcher at the University of Southern California
- Alessandro Bessi - a researcher at the University of Southern California
Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are blamed for the propagation of Donald Trump-popularlized coinage "fake news" - the misinformation found in the unfiltered and unrestrained atmosphere and dialectical exchange of the entire interconnected online community. This article mainly focuses on Twitter's involvement in the social and politicized propagation of messages as "information" using Facebook as a comparative network with its own flaws of "fake news" dissemination.
Twitter is considered to be "insidery and clubby" - an environment that is meant for an elite or expert to generate clout through a mass of followers. Generally, significant messages or Tweets are only generated by those elites or experts; and it is those Tweets that receive the most clout through Retweets, Comments, and Likes by followers. Farhad Manjoo writes about the sort of disinformation ecosystem found on Twitter: "At the top end...enter raw materials of propaganda: the memes cooked up by anyone who wants to manipulate what the media covers, whether political campaigns, terrorist groups, state-sponsored trolls or the homegrown provocateurs who hang out at extremist online communities...Then way down at...the 'other end,' emerge the packaged narratives primed for wide-spread dissemination to you and everyone you know. These are hot takes that dominate talk radio and prime-time cable news, as well as the viral Facebook posts warning you about this or that latest outrage committed by Hilary Clinton." On an extremist to mainstream spectrum, on Twitter, you have facecitious sometimes satirical, sometimes absurd or slap-stick content with a little tie-in to social-political commentary being propagated through the Twitter-space mixed in with the tried and "hopefully" true lead-ins by journalist who are promoting their stories by gauging audience receptivity. There is a non-discriminant nature of the Twitter-space where both forms of content: the facetitiuous and the headliner Tweets are progated and digested with the same popularity - as long as everyone is in the "KNOW" - ignorant of key pieces of truth and detail or only retaining a surface-level understanding of the topic - an exchange of substantitial influence for mass viewership.
Samuel Woolley states about the influence of automated bots, "Bots allow groups to speak much more loudly than they would be able to on any other social media platforms - it lets them use Twitter as a megaphone...It's doing something that I call 'manufacturing consensus,' or building the illusion of popularity for a candidate or political idea." Twitter also presents another danger - it's highly prone to automated bots or fake accounts. These allow a specific individual who has control over these bots to flood the Twitter landscape with similar, repetitive, or consecutive messages - generating false popularity by saturating the Twitter's Trending Topics list.
When:
Published: Thursday, June 1, 2017
Where:
The World Wide Web - specifically in realms of social media, Twitter and Facebook.
Why:
The role of Twitter had seemed to grow more intense during the 2016 presidential campaign. Twitter now functions as a space where journalist can hang out and pick up their next stories, "meet sources, promote their work, criticize competitors' work and workshop takes." With Twitter, journalist are able to "gut-check" or test out a few story lead-ins and get a consensus on the world-perspective or receptiveness on the topic being led in. "If you can get something big on Twitter, you're almost guaranteed coverage everywhere."
A specific case pointed to in the article where Twitter propagated a conspiracy theory was the idea that the murder of Seth Rich - a staff member of the Democratic National Committee, last year was linked to the leaking of Clinton's campaign emails. This conspiracy story was push loudest by Fox News host Sean Hannity, but it was first the automated bots on Twitter who helped accumulate attention toward the conspiracy story. Emilio Ferrara and Alessandro Bessi found that about a fifth of the election- related conversation on Twitter last year was generated by bots.
Opinion:
Twitter is a great resource to get connected and stay connected to people you are inspired by, adore, and support. I've been known to openly Thank Biz Stone for his company, to which he "Liked" my message back. Not only is it uplifting that we have the resource to connect us to innovators, culture-shapers, leaders, and whoever else helps connect you to the human network, but we have an open and honest medium for updates on that person's life whether it be for business-related reasons or just plain interest. I find it be easy to pick out the automated bots or fake accounts on Twitter. Twitter has a "Verified" account feature which not all Tweeters have enrolled in, but that serves as the best defense against fake accounts. I also think it's important to pay attention to what is being Tweeted. If it is repetitive or seems a bit absurd or offers a piece of news, always cross reference from other news sources because Twitter and Facebook are not meant to be engines of news. The last bit of advice I'd like to add is to keep your following list small, only following those accounts you know are real and make an impact in your life. I personally have motivations for what I want to do with my life and that determines who I follow. I like to think that through Twitter, I can connect with people who share my values and present my ideas to people who could really make a positive impact, and then hopefully connect those people to other people I follow - unified by our common set of values.
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