Is Social Media a Threat to Democracy? EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 6 KEY ISSUES: Echo chambers, polarization, and hyper-partisanship Manipulation by “populist” leaders, governments, and fringe actors Social media platform design, combined with the “Populist” leaders use these platforms, often aided by proliferation of partisan media in traditional channels, trolls, “hackers for hire” and bots, on open networks such has exacerbated political divisions and polarization. as Twitter and YouTube. Sometimes they are seeking Additionally, some social media algorithms reinforce to communicate directly with their electorate. In using divisions and create echo chambers that perpetuate such platforms, they subvert established protocol, shut increasingly extreme or biased views over time. down dissent, marginalize minority voices, project soft power across borders, normalize hateful views, showcase false momentum for their views, or create Spread of false and/or misleading the impression of tacit approval of their appeals to information extremism. And they are not the only actors attempting Today, social media acts as an accelerant, and an at-scale to use these platforms to manipulate political opinion— content platform and distribution channel, for both viral such activity is now acknowledged by governments of “dis”-information (the deliberate creation and sharing of democratic countries (like the UK), as well.2 information known to be false) and “mis”-information (the inadvertent sharing of false information). These two Personal data capture and targeted types of content—sometimes mistakenly conflated into messaging/advertising the term “fake news”—are created and disseminated by both state and private actors, in many cases using bots. Social media platforms have become a preferred Each type poses distinct threats for public dialogue by channel for advertising spend. Not only does this flooding the public square with multiple, competing monetization model drive businesses reliant on the realities and exacerbating the lack of agreement about capture and manipulation of huge swathes of user what constitutes truth, facts, and evidence. data and attention, it also widens the gap between the interests of publishers and journalists and erodes traditional news organizations’ revenues. The resulting Conversion of popularity into legitimacy financial strain has left news organizations financially The algorithms behind social media platforms convert depleted and has reduced their ability to produce quality popularity into legitimacy, overwhelming the public news and hold the powerful to account. In addition, square with multiple, conflicting assertions. In addition, advanced methods for capturing personal data have some social media platforms assume user intentionality led to sophisticated psychographic analysis, behavioral (e.g. in search queries) and conflate this with interest, profiling, and micro-targeting of individuals to influence via features such as auto-fill search terms. These design their actions via so-called “dark ads.” mechanisms impute or impose certain ways of thinking, while also further blurring the lines between specialists Disruption of the public square and laypeople, or between verified and unverified assertions, thus contributing to the already reduced Some social media platforms have user policies and trust in traditional gatekeepers. technical features that enable unintended consequences, like hate speech, terrorist appeals, and racial and sexual harassment, thus encouraging uncivil debate. This can lead members of frequently targeted groups—such as women and minorities—to self-censor or opt out of participating in public discourse. Currently, there are few options for redress. At the same time, platforms are faced with complex legal and operational challenges 2 Samantha Bradshaw & Philip N. Howard, Troops, Trolls and with respect to determining how they will manage Troublemakers: A Global Inventory of Organized Social Media Manipulation. Samuel Woolley and Philip N. Howard, Eds. Working Paper 2017.12. speech, a task made all the more difficult since norms Oxford, UK: Project on Computational Propaganda. vary widely by geographic and cultural context. http://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/ © Copyright The Omidyar Group 2017. All rights reserved. PAGE 4