A version of this article originally appeared in openDemocracy
When it comes to unraveling 2016’s ‘post-truth, populist and anti-expert’ political trifecta, analysts have squeezed all they can from the social sciences. But class divides, inequality, and globalization just seem too mechanical to explain entirely why the best educated and most informed generation in history is so close to electing the least qualified candidate ever to the highest post on the planet.
Technology — which remains alien to most socio-economic models — may offer a clue. The internet’s expanded space for public opinion and streamline media landscape only underscores the current state of our political discourse — particularly when 1 in 2 with online access use social media as a weekly news source, according a Reuters Institute worldwide survey. Sure we have more degrees, better schooling and fingertip access to information, but with our online lifestyles we are also more exposed to the cognitive biases that render the intellectual process moot.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have spawned a generation of self-styled ‘Wikis’ and ‘infotainment’ journalism with the platforms to engage in real-time public policy debates. And while filters, hashtags, and clickbait headlines have broadcast and ring-fenced their partisan, simplified and unsubstantiated viewpoints, nuance is growingly sidelined . Its outcompeted for pace and plainness in an online world that seeks trigger words, platitudes and 140 characters to make quick judgments, explanations and associations.
The result: a somewhat lazy, naive, and narcissistic internet intellectualism, serving as an echo-chamber for one’s beliefs, opinions and prejudices, while self-righteously blocking opposition. Democracy may be louder, but that isn’t necessarily better.
Agnotologists — who study culturally induced ignorance or doubt — find that misinformation spreads under conditions of weak understanding coupled with confusion-creation by special interest groups. And online, manipulating incomplete knowledge and emotion is child’s play with viral-prone memes, Tweets and posts, while cumbersome evidence is easier to dismiss in a somewhat Trumpian, or Govian, fashion.
But beyond embedding perception into political narratives, social media may also blind us to reality. A recent study published on the Social Science Research Network, which focused on climate change beliefs, found that when people were exposed to fictitious facts that contradicted their feelings on global warming, their sentiments were broadly unchanged. Yet in the face of supporting ‘facts’ their positions actually became stronger — deniers dismissed climate change more, while proponents thought it was stronger.
This selective confirmation bias is enhanced by the ‘Googleability’ of information we desire, customizable newsfeeds and ‘people who liked x, also liked y’ algorithms. We no longer need to expose ourselves to opposition, and instead, we become more tribal about what we think we know: some begin to find credence in Trump’s bombast. A 2014 study by the U.S. think tank the Pew Research Center which mapped U.S. Twitter discussions found that political topics formed distinct polarized groups — often liberal and conservative camps — which largely interacted separately. A similar analysis would likely ring true for the ‘Little Englander’ and ‘Little Londoner’ online camps post-Brexit. In sum, we’re largely ‘debating’ with people who agree with us—and our political opinions become evermore stubborn.
Social media’s raid on effective discourse doesn’t end there. It also bolsters our ability to ‘thin-slice’ — a term denoting our inclination to pigeonhole with bite-sized clues. A cursory glance at politics-into-entertainment news platforms illustrates the use of sensationalist headlines and conspiracy theory ‘journalism’ to enable snap judgments. And it works both ways. In a what you think, and not a how you think, culture, challenging opinions and ideas immediately places you in the bigot bucket. As Pew research finds, people are more willing to air their views online if they think their followers agree with them — such ‘groupthink’ only leaves us tethered to the status quo.
These online blindfolds are manifesting in our everyday. We’ve already begun to customize our public domains — with ‘safe space’ and ‘no-platforming’ rife across university campuses — while politics polarizes and feelings displace fact in debate. And not only are we outsourcing our cognitive capacity to the internet, but also our memories. A 2011 study finds that when people have access to ‘Googleable’ information sources they remember less as they can rely on searches to acquire them.
Testimony to the internet’s ability to legitimize half-truths, slander and speculation, is the ‘they’re just as bad as each other’ U.S. election meme. Really? Whatever you think of Clinton — arguably the most qualified presidential candidate ever— her shortcomings cannot come close to Trump’s sheer ineptitude and policy incoherence, not to mention a catalogue of remarks putting his temperament into question.
Social media, and the internet, are clearly a double-edged sword for democracy — it just depends on how we interact with it. That begins with renouncing some of the concessions in thinking that it offers us. Fact-checking websites like Politifact are a starting point. But why not also; follow both Breitbart and The Huffington Post, add caveating thoughts before sharing posts, bias-check articles, or challenge that post you disagree with, despite its century of likes? We all have a role to play, by not partaking in mass spreading of delusion, and by restoring reason.
Otherwise, the self-aggrandizement that social media offer us, will leave policy debates impeded by tribalism, and devoid of pragmatism—and post-truth, populist and anti-expert politics only thrives when everyone believes they’re on the side of the righteous.
Tej Parikh is a global policy analyst and journalist. He received his master’s degree from Yale University. He Tweets @tejparikh90