Social Media Are Ruining Political Discourse
YouTube is designed to catch you and not let go. Sometimes I access the site just to watch one thing, but then one of the related videos catches my eye. I watch that one, then another and another, and soon a five-minute visit has stretched far longer. If it’s half an hour of movie trailers, then I’m just indulging in a guilty pleasure. But what if I followed a link to “Q—The Plan to Save the World” and wound up staying for one outlandish conspiracy video after another? YouTube’s associative linking is designed to keep me clicking and watching. It has turned into a mechanism for political indoctrination, suggesting through sheer repetition that an international cabal is threatening to take over the world.
These false conspiracy theories can delude the public. But social media’s negative impact on the political process isn’t just a matter of their content—which includes, for example, intentional misinformation and hate speech directed toward ethnic and religious groups. The problem is also built into the structure of these digital applications.
Propaganda is nothing new; it has appeared in pamphlets, books, and newspapers practically since the invention of the printing press. But social media seem to spreading disinformation. That’s because social media
