Lisa Schirch Social Media Impacts on Social & Political Goods 15 28. Marketing for Social Good. Before social media, only wealthy groups could afford to put together an ad campaign that required buying newspaper, radio, or TV slots. Now, even the smallest nonprofit organizations can have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a blog without spending much money. Minority groups and small NGOs can amplify their voice even when professional news organizations ignore them. Social media creates vast new possibilities for how groups go about working for the social good, including new social marketing methods of crowdsourcing ideas, fundraising, broadening support, engaging the public and evaluating the impact of their work. (Kanter and Fine 2010) (Aaker and Smith 2010) (Mathos and Norman 2012) Challenges and Threats to Social and Political Goods Alerts about social media’s potential dangers began years ago. But these “techno-pessimist” concerns are escalating. Dozens of new books and research articles document a wide range of social media-related challenges to social and political goods. 29. Undermining Wellbeing. Social media undermines personal well-being in at least three ways. First, social media exposes people to money-making scams, computer viruses, weapons-making instructions, recruitment from violent extremist groups, hate speech, fake news, and unwanted sexual content. Second, social media is primarily a space devoted to increasing the sale of consumer goods. Corporations aim to hijack attention for corporate profit through constant exposure to consumer goods which can foster addictive consumption. Third, this flooding of information, both positive and negative, adds to “technostress” and fosters chronic distraction, taking people’s attention away from lifegiving relationships and activities. 30. Spreading Misinformation and Disinformation. Misinformation is the spread of information that is unintentionally inaccurate. People share misinformation on social media when they incorrectly think it is true. Disinformation is the intentional spread of false information or “fake news.” People share disinformation when they have tainted social and political motives. Caroline Jack’s Lexicon of Lies identifies an array of terminology relevant to “problematic information.” (Jack 2017) Social media’s role in spreading inaccurate information is unique in terms of the scale and scope. In his book #Republic, Cass Sunstein describes how social media disseminates inaccurate information and emotions, particularly fear and anger, through “cybercascades” that spread like wildfire through social media platforms. (Sunstein 2017, 98) In April 2018, a group of MIT researchers released a report, based on a data set of false "rumor cascades" on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. Researchers found that false news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people.