Abstract
A key part of today’s polarized society is the polarized and polarizing world of social media. Although social media platforms bring the potential of more democratic involvement, greater public dialogue, and faster flow of news and information, the dark side of such Web 2.0 platforms also should concern church leaders and theologians. Already-existing polarization in society leads to a polarized use of social media as individuals seek like-minded online communities. Social media, however, also adds to that polarization by providing echo chambers, and features of social media encourage speed over accuracy and more aggressive communication. Three ways in which social media both represents and adds to polarization in politics, society, and churches are balkanization, as people separate into homogenous, polarized communities, the speeding nature of communication that allows inaccurate and overly emotional information to spread, and the flaming that occurs as anonymity and depersonalization of these communication platforms encourage aggressive and even violent rhetoric.
As the nation watched the US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that featured Supreme Court nominee—and eventual justice—Brett Kavanaugh and a woman, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexual assault, many people took to Twitter to offer their instant opinions on the dueling accounts. Millions of tweets poured in siding with Ford, and millions of others sided with Kavanaugh. That does not mean, however, that people actually saw such a debate. For President Donald Trump, perhaps the most important audience member as he could have decided to pull the nomination, the commentary on Twitter was more one-sided. Although more Americans said they believed Ford than Kavanaugh 1 and more Americans disapproved of his nomination at higher levels than any previous Supreme Court nominee, 2 in Trump’s Twitter world, the news appeared much different. Analyzing the tweets of the accounts he follows, the Washington Post concluded, “Reading through Trump’s Twitter offers a window into the information bubble that surrounds the president, and is especially revealing during his administration’s most harrowing hours.” 3 The accounts Trump follows critiqued Ford’s testimony and attacked Democratic senators questioning Kavanaugh. Afterward, Trump added his own opinion on Twitter, praising Kavanaugh and attacking the Democrats.
Trump is hardly alone. For nearly every topic, especially those of a political or religious nature, one finds tweets offering a wide variety of perspectives. But outside of researchers looking for tweets on a particular topic, no one really sees all those perspectives. Instead, users of Twitter and other social media platforms curate their own feeds by selecting which accounts to follow. Even feeds with thousands of people often still result in little ideological diversity. Thus, many Democrats found themselves shell-shocked on November 8, 2016, as they did not know anyone, in person or on Facebook, who supported Trump. Likewise, groupthink and conspiracy theories flourish as like-minded individuals click “like” or retweet ideas they like, while few others offer serious pushback. Such one-sided “echo chambers” on Twitter and other social media platforms represent both a symptom of political and religious polarization and a cause of more such polarization. Christians in particular need to understand—and combat—such polarization in order to fulfill their calling to live as salt and light, peacemakers, and followers of the Truth.
What hath God wrought?
On May 24, 1844, Samuel F. B. Morse sent the first telegraph in history from the US Capitol to Baltimore. It read: “What Hath God Wrought?” If Morse knew what the future held, he might have saved that line until now, as people send instant wireless messages read across the world. Although many people early on initially mocked Twitter (like other social media platforms) as just a joke and a waste of time, it has since shown serious societal and political impact, and demands attention from pastors, politicians, activists, and citizens. Launched by Jack Dorsey (@jack) in 2006, the first tweet, on March 21, 2006, does not quite have the same historical eloquence as Morse’s first telegraph: “just setting up my twttr.” However, Dorsey later offered interesting thoughts about why he and his co-creators decided on the name, Twitter. He explained, “So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word ‘twitter,’ and it was just perfect. The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds.’ And that’s exactly what the product was.” 4 He then quickly explained that the information does indeed have meaning: “The whole bird thing: bird chirps sound meaningless to us, but meaning is applied by other birds. The same is true of Twitter: a lot of messages can be seen as completely useless and meaningless, but it’s entirely dependent on the recipient.” 5 Although tweets may seem to be a bunch of random and pointless information, leading to Twitter’s being merely a late-night joke at first, in the midst of the chirping, meaningful information is influencing politics, culture, and even congregations, for good and for bad.
Dorsey went on to describe Twitter as a “new medium” that has brought “a new behavior that’s very different than what we’ve seen before.”
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Thus, Twitter is not a place just to write what one would write elsewhere but in fewer characters. Rather, it is a new medium that demands a new message in addition to a new messaging style. Dorsey added that perspectives from the new medium of Twitter even change based on where people are, online or mobile, when they use Twitter:
When you’re out mobilely and you’re probably at a party or you’re traveling, etc., you’re sharing that experience. When you’re in front of a computer, you have a little more time to compose yourself. You may have more thoughtfulness in your message, you may have more reflection. It’s a little bit less off-the-cuff. And maybe a little bit slower as well, but at the same time, in terms of consumption of the information, you can just take in huge amounts of information in a very rich way in a short time.
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The two different ways of using Twitter mean the platform is more like two new media, with each one having its own unique features that impact not only how one uses Twitter but even what one writes and reads there. Mobile usage continues to grow for Twitter and Facebook, however, particularly for mobile-driven newer platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.
Dorsey’s comments profoundly capture a famous idea developed by one of the pre-eminent mass communication scholars of the twentieth century, Marshall McLuhan. A university professor, McLuhan also became a cultural phenomenon when he was only the second person, after Barbara Streisand, to be on the cover of Newsweek and Life magazines in the same week. As a sort of prophet who warned about the problems of mass media, like television and even the Internet, which was not yet created, Wired magazine named him its “patron saint.” Although McLuhan developed many important ideas, chief among those was his popular saying, “The medium is the message.” By this, McLuhan meant the medium did not just change or impact the message, but it so dramatically altered the message as to make it a new message. Thus, he warned against believing a new medium simply meant updating the same old message. The television is not simply the radio with visuals, but the very nature of that medium, the visual focus, changes the message into something different.
One cannot experience the message apart from the medium; thus, one cannot separate the two. As McLuhan explained, “The medium is the message” because the “medium … shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.” 8 McLuhan offered as an example the creation of the railroad as a medium. He noted the railroad dramatically changed human movement and transportation, “creating totally new kinds of cities and new kinds of leisure.” 9 Furthermore, these changes occurred in various cultures and geographies and, most importantly, “quite independent of the freight or content of the railway medium.” 10 That is, what the trains carried did not matter; instead, simply how they carried it changed the experience. People, then, created time zones, planned trips to more distant locations, and communicated more quickly with those in other places. The nature of travel itself changed, therefore, because of the new medium.
Although each of the Web 2.0 social media platforms is its own unique medium and thus needs its own unique messages, Twitter seems to best capture McLuhan’s “the medium is the message” observation. After all, per the demands of the medium, the message can only be 280 characters or fewer (although the original limit of 140 proved this point even more). This limitation literally changes the message, as people write in shorthand and with poor grammar that would be unacceptable in other media but on Twitter is not only acceptable, but is expected. Moreover, Christians who are serious about engaging their cultures cannot ignore these platforms. Active monthly users of Facebook number more than 2.2 billion globally, while YouTube attracts about 1.9 billion, WhatsApp about 1.5 billion, Instagram over 1 billion, Twitter more than 330 million, LinkedIn more than 300 million, and Snapchat more than 290 million. 11 The global public square demands attention.
In their attention, however, churches and individuals cannot treat social media like any other communication medium. McLuhan offers four important questions to consider about any given medium in order to understand its strengths and weaknesses. First, what does the medium enhance or amplify? For instance, radio amplifies a focus on the spoken word and music. Second, what does the medium make obsolete or reduce? Radio, for instance, downplays the importance of the visual. Third, what does the medium retrieve or recover that other media made obsolete? Radio returned a focus to the importance of the spoken word, which is often lost in other media. Finally, what does the medium reverse or morph into when pushed to its limits? The danger of radio is that it paves the way for television as an attempt to add more to radio’s audio. Exploring these four questions can help individuals understand the benefits, limits, and dangers of a particular medium, which are important to know in order to craft a message. Such analysis, when applied to social media, quickly reveals how such platforms add to civic polarization.
First, however, a brief caveat: although the key premise of this essay remains important, it also represents a significant departure from the message about social media I normally highlight. Far from the role of a prophet of doom as found in this essay, I normally serve more as an evangelist for Baptists and other Christians to engage and utilize social media. Having led seminars at several events, including the 2018 annual gathering of Baptist World Alliance in Zürich, Switzerland, I often urge Baptists to create social media accounts and use them more frequently to share good news with more people. With this message, I have attempted to take up the mantle of the late Baptist ethicist Robert Parham, who argued in a session we co-led on social media at the 2015 Baptist World Congress in Durban, South Africa: “Not enough Baptists are on Twitter—and that needs to change. If ISIS can have 27,000 Twitter accounts, surely global Baptists can have 27,001.” 12
As Parham’s words about Baptists and ISIS imply, social media, like any technological platform, is not inherently or completely good or bad. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are not intrinsically or completely moral or immoral; rather, such technological advancements are amoral. Five hundred years ago, the new technology of the printing press helped the Protestant Reformation spread and flourish; yet, the same technology that allowed for mass printing of Bibles in the languages of the people also helped spread blasphemous texts, false Scriptures, and pornographic materials. One can say the same of social media today. Some people use Twitter to share about Jesus, while others evangelize for ISIS. Social media helped topple authoritarian rulers in some nations and install them in others. Despite the potential good from Baptists engaging on social media, three aspects of the dark side of engagement on social media require attention in light of warnings from McLuhan and others: balkanization, speeding, and flaming.
Balkanization
As the powerful Ottoman Empire split the Balkan region into several smaller states, and then collapsed elsewhere in World War I, the term “balkanization” emerged to describe the process of a nation splitting into many smaller nations. Often, this division occurs along ethnic and religious lines. Although the term was used to describe this process in other regions, it occurred again in the Balkans as Yugoslavia collapsed in the 1990s.
Beyond literal geographical splits, scholars also use the term to describe people dividing into polarized communities unconnected with other groups. The balkanization of cable news leads conservatives to Fox News, whereas liberals watch MSNBC. More than merely hearing a different “spin” on the news, these channels at times even present a different set of “facts.” What is true for the Fox News community may not be true for the MSNBC community. This media balkanization deepens the divide between the two groups as their ideological perspectives harden, and each one’s ability to communicate with the other “tribe” grows more difficult given their opposing understandings of reality. Media consumers tend to tune in to particular networks or sources of news to affirm, more than inform, their opinions. 13
Such polarized balkanization can, in turn, lead to more balkanization. Speaking specifically about the balkanization in social media, Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein explains, “If the public is balkanized, and if different groups are designing their own preferred communications packages, the consequence will be not merely the same but still more balkanization, as group members move one another toward more extreme points in line with their initial tendencies.” 14 Although media balkanization occurred before the Internet and the rise of social media, web and Web 2.0 platforms have increased the ease of crafting isolated, polarized communities—“echo chambers” with their own information based on ideological, political, or religious preferences. These ideological online communities create their own agendas, thus weakening the influence of traditional media. 15 Further, while social media can provide a way of attracting new people into a community, pre-existing beliefs generally drive Internet use. 16
Among religious communities, this balkanization can foster ideological splits and debates, when competing communities, such as conservatives and liberals within a denomination, huddle together in their own echo chambers. As users decide which accounts to follow and which accounts to allow as their followers, users can piece together a preferred community based on any ideological, religious, or other variable. Like Trump’s Twitter feed, each user on social media can create a homogenous community that both represents one side of the polarized continuum and also adds to that polarization and division. Such balkanization quickly can spiral, as people separate into homogenous communities and then, via such echo chambers, become even more different and separate from those “other” people. Add this phenomenon to existing fragmentation in religious contexts, as seen in the plethora of denominations, and religious communities particularly could face online balkanized spaces. This balkanization results not only in differing opinions about key theological or socio-political debates, but also in divergent, and even contradictory, understandings of basic facts. A difference of opinion can be discussed; a difference of facts remains nearly impassable.
Speeding
In 1848, after workers laid a telegraph cable across the Atlantic Ocean from the eastern coast of Newfoundland, Canada, to the western coast of Ireland, the time required to send a message from one coast to another dropped from several days to just a few minutes. With the Internet, much more information makes the trip in fractions of a second. Social media posts not only travel quickly enough for people to see them nearly instantaneously anywhere in the world, but the amount of information transmitted each second far outpaces human ability to consume it. Each day, users on Twitter send about 500 million tweets, about 6,000 each second. 17 Meanwhile, users upload about 300 hours of videos to YouTube every minute and watch more than 1 billion hours every day. 18 Instagram users upload more than 95 million photos every day; those photos receive more than 4.2 billion “likes” daily. 19 One cannot find a similar comparison with other non-web communication media. A foundational aspect of the web and Web 2.0 platforms is the ability of anyone to post content, and the people respond as the medium demands.
This mammoth amount of content occurs as a natural byproduct of the population of those connecting on social media. Users in the United States alone, more than 325 million, would create massive and near-constant information. Social media allows individual citizens with nothing more than a cellphone and Internet or data access to impact the public dialogue. Although most people will not make such an impact, social media at least makes it possible. Also, many more will use such platforms to have a say in a way that amplifies their voice beyond the influence they would have had prior to the rise of Web 2.0 platforms. As Steve Grove, the news and politics editor for YouTube, argued, “It’s a further democratization of the political process. It levels the platform of dialogue.” 20 Similarly, former US Vice President Al Gore has argued that YouTube and other Web 2.0 platforms are creating forums for “true dialogue.” 21 Gore states, “What we’re witnessing … is the rebirth of our participatory democracy.” 22 Perhaps a pure democracy with 325 million voices would produce what social media offers: a constant stream of opinions with too many comments to actually be heard, let alone meaningfully discussed and considered.
Although social media platforms allow more voices to participate, the speed of information also brings negative consequences that can add to the polarization of the platforms and of society. First, because anyone can post, unverified information can be posted and then “go viral,” as many others repost or share that inaccurate information. The model of traditional media (from newspapers to radio to television to even websites and social media accounts related to those traditional media outlets) sees a “gatekeeper” involved in the dissemination of information. That is, before releasing information, journalists decide what information is released based on a process of confirming the facts and deciding which information is more relevant, illuminating, or newsworthy. Like shepherds with animals, journalists and editors decide what information travels through the gate into the open. On social media, however, the gates are gone, as are the fences. Sometimes the inaccurate information is simply an error. At other times, someone posts deliberately false information. The latter gave rise to the term “fake news” during the 2016 presidential election, although Donald Trump’s frequent, and inaccurate, use of that label to describe real news he does not like has rendered the term ineffectual.
As posts pour into one’s social media timeline, the time required to determine a post’s accuracy inherently works against the design of the medium. Twitter’s format pushes one to either quickly retweet the information or forget it and move on. Yet, accuracy does not determine the likelihood of whether a post will go viral. Emotionally charged tweets are generally retweeted more often and more quickly. 23 The inaccurate claims often include more emotionally charged tones than those employed by traditional journalists with fact-checked data and a neutral or more balanced approach to reporting such information. For example, inaccurate Facebook posts about the Zika virus during the 2015 epidemic outperformed ones that provided accurate public health information. 24 Similarly, during the waning months of the 2016 presidential election, most Americans saw fake stories on social media, and more than half believed at least one fake story. 25 Building on the problem of balkanization, people were much more likely to believe the fake stories that favored their preferred candidate; furthermore, those following ideologically segregated or one-sided social media networks were even more likely to believe fake stories favoring their side. 26 The more segregated and polarized pockets of society are more likely to accept the deliberately fake stories designed to play on emotions and further polarize society.
While some inaccurate posts accepted by others may simply be an innocent error, others may be posted by partisans deliberately playing on US culture’s polarization to win acceptance within their own ideologically segregated community, therefore also adding to the polarization by emotionally creating other reasons to oppose a certain candidate or idea. This polarization also allows other actors, like Russia, to interfere with campaigns by flooding social media platforms with fake information that partisans gleefully amplify. This information flood even includes attempts to magnify religious divides. Some social media posts spread by Russian online trolls during the 2016 US presidential election included biblical messages. One paid Facebook ad showed Satan and Jesus arm-wrestling and captioned: “Satan: If I win Clinton wins! Jesus: Not if I can help it! ‘Like’ if you want Jesus to win!” 27 Text accompanying the Facebook page named “Army of Jesus” declared “Hillary is Satan” and urged people instead to “elect a president with godly moral principles.” 28 Other posts by Russian trolls played on anti-Islamic themes, while still others reportedly crafted profiles designed to impersonate Baptists. The already-existing political and religious fault lines provided fodder for creating more polarization.
Conspiracy theories provide significant content for the acceptance and redistribution of fake information. Via Facebook and other online platforms, conspiracy theories grow in the echo chambers of homogeneous and segregated communities created by polarized balkanization. In fact, as the theory of “confirmation bias” explains, the main determinants for predicting “whether a news item, either substantiated or not, is accepted as true by a user may be strongly affected by social norms or how much it coheres with the user’s system of beliefs.” 29 People believe things they want to believe are true. Thus, the main determinant of a rumor or false claim spreading online is the extent to which the community within which it is shared is homogenous and polarized. As scholars studying this phenomenon in science news explain, “Users tend to aggregate in communities of interest, which causes reinforcement and fosters confirmation bias, segregation, and polarization. This comes at the expense of the quality of the information and leads to proliferation of biased narratives fomented by unsubstantiated rumors, mistrust, and paranoia.” 30
Such homogeneous and polarized communities can create dangerous situations. On December 4, 2016, a man drove from North Carolina to Washington, DC and entered a pizza restaurant with an AR-15 assault weapon, a revolver, and a knife. He fired his gun multiple times into a locked closet to release the children he believed were being held there as sex slaves. Finding no children, he surrendered to the police, pleaded guilty, and received a four-year prison sentence. The shooting occurred after a viral Twitter conspiracy theory in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election claimed Hillary and Bill Clinton (along with some aides) were involved in an international child sex ring that included the family restaurant as a key location. Even before the shooting, the restaurant faced death threats and harassment, as did bands who had played there and unrelated pizza restaurants in the area mistaken for the one in the conspiracy theory. Even prominent personalities believed and tweeted about the conspiracy, such as Michael Flynn, who shortly after the shooting became Trump’s first National Security Advisor. Similarly, other individuals targeted in inaccurate conspiracy theories propagated online have faced harassment and death threats. While conspiracy theories existed long before social media, the new technology allows them to spread more quickly and to more people. Furthermore, a larger community’s serving as an echo chamber for a theory can reinforce the belief as not merely a “fringe” idea. Conspiracy theories do not slow down for facts, even if people start shooting.
Flaming
A third major problem on social media, both sparked by polarization and adding to polarization, is “flaming” or cyberbullying. Even before the rise of social media, “flaming” was identified as someone sending electronic messages, via email, for example, with a more strident or angrier tone than that individual would use in person. With social media, however, the ability spreads. Now, one can easily go after someone else with name-calling, harassment, and even violent threats. Our political and religious polarization multiplies the opportunities to view someone from an opposing tribe as inherently evil rather than merely misguided. Responding aggressively on social media becomes easier with that polarized mindset and, with a spiraling impact, increased incivility online can spark greater polarization among those merely reading, even if not participating in, the uncivil comments. 31 Once again, social media enables polarization to create more polarization.
In addition to the ease and speed of being able to post on social media, the anonymity of many social media platforms plays a large role in flaming online. Creating an anonymous account and interacting with nearly any other content on the site is easy on most social media platforms. For instance, one can create an anonymous Twitter account with a fake name and image and then respond to any other public Twitter account. A few social media platforms, like Facebook, are designed to create less anonymity. An anonymous account is not likely to attract many friends and, therefore, would be locked out of engaging with Facebook content limited to friend networks. Not surprisingly, that lack of anonymity reduces incidents of flaming. Social media platforms in which users are more likely to be identified and to interact with people they know, such as on Facebook, generally contain more polite dialogue than other platforms, such as YouTube, where one can easily set up an anonymous account and interact with people one does not know. 32 Similarly, in comparing identical news articles posted on Facebook and the news organization’s website, Facebook comments are generally more civil than the mostly anonymous comments sections on the news website. 33 Anonymity helps foster cyberbullying 34 and can spark more sexist and harassing tweets. 35
Even in platforms where users are not anonymous, online communication still can spark flaming and aggressive communication, in part due to the depersonalized nature of the medium. Typing words on a computer or cellphone does not bring the same level of intimacy as talking with someone in person. This depersonalized medium can thus lead someone to write more aggressively than he or she would communicate in person. Additionally, written comments easily lose tone, as they lack inflection, facial expression, and other aids to in-person communication.
Another factor adding to the incivility on social media platforms is the rise of digital mobs. Once a conspiracy theory goes viral, many of their victims find their social media accounts inundated with numerous attacks. Another example occurs when someone is filmed while engaged in a dumb or unkind action, such as spouting racist comments toward a hapless victim, and the person’s social media accounts quickly receive comments, ranging from support to mild criticism to violent threats. For instance, in 2013, publicist Justine Sacco tweeted a joke many found offensive. In just a few hours, her tweet spiraled from her small Twitter following of 170 people until she was the top trending topic worldwide on Twitter, with tens of thousands of angry tweets in response. Sacco lost her job as a result of the public controversy. 36 Many people suddenly caught in such a conspiracy theory or a viral moment will lock or delete their social media accounts to stop the digital mob from lobbing threats directly. Furthermore, being caught up in a digital mob can lead to loss of a job and severe depression from the trauma. Sometimes, people even have to hide or move when personal information is posted along with threats.
Political topics are not the exclusive domain of flaming. Sports figures experience such criticism for poor play. Religious topics also spark flaming and digital mobs. When anonymity is added to speed, ease of access, and already-polarized people, anyone’s worst moment or comment can suddenly “go viral” enough to bring in hundreds, if not thousands, of angry, even threatening comments.
Conclusion
Charles Dickens’s words have been borrowed often because they accurately capture the nuance of so much of life. With social media, one can also say:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
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Social media can spark revolutions, topple dictators, and manipulate information to install them in power. Social media can create friendships and destroy them. Social media can inspire meaningful dialogue and prevent it. Social media can extend the witness of a church or an individual and can damage that witness.
Such duality does not call for an either/or approach, however. Christians should not embrace social media without concern, nor should social media be completely condemned and ignored. McLuhan rightly urged consideration of the unique aspects of a medium. Such analysis should offer warnings about how social media builds on an already polarized culture and then determine ways to change the medium and, therefore, the message. One response could be to branch outside ideological or other segmented groups on social media platforms, including following and engaging with a diverse group of people. A second response could be to attempt to slow down, not just double-checking information before sharing, but also stopping to ponder the information on the screen. A final response could be to model Christian civility, looking to the warnings in James 3 about the dangers of the tongue, and to determine which sources may not be accurate or healthy to continue following. The dark side of social media provides an opportunity for a lamp, not hidden under a bushel, to appear even brighter.
Footnotes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Sarno, “Twitter Creator Jack Dorsey Illuminates the Site’s Founding Document. Part I.”
6.
7.
Sarno, “Jack Dorsey on the Twitter Ecosystem.”
8.
Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York: MIT Press, 1994), 9.
9.
McLuhan, Understanding Media, 8.
10.
McLuhan, Understanding Media, 8.
11.
12.
13.
Shawn Powers and Mohammed el-Nawawy, “Al-Jazeera English and Global News Networks: Clash of Civilizations or Cross-Cultural Dialogue?” War, Media & Conflict 2 (2009): 263–84.
14.
Cass R. Sunstein, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 70–71.
15.
Sharon Meraz, “The Fight for ‘How to Think’: Traditional Media, Social Networks, and Issue Interpretation,” Journalism 12 (2011): 107–27.
16.
Dennis K. K. Leung and Francis L. F. Lee, “Cultivating an Active Online Counterpublic: Examining Usage and Political Impact of Internet Alternative Media,” International Journal of Press/Politics 19 (2014): 340–59.
17.
18.
Smith, “121 Amazing Social Media Statistics and Facts.”
19.
Smith, “121 Amazing Social Media Statistics and Facts.”
20.
John Frank and Rodney Thrash, “YouTube Takes Turn on Stage,” St. Petersburg Times, November 27, 2007.
21.
Jose Antonio Vargas, “Politics is no Longer Local. It’s Viral,” Washington Post, December 28, 2008, B01.
22.
Vargas, “Politics is no Longer Local.”
23.
Stefan Stieglitz and Linh Dang-Xuan, “Emotion and Information Diffusion in Social Media—Sentiment of Microblogs and Sharing Behavior,” Journal of Management Information Systems 29 (2013): 217–48.
24.
Megha Sharma, Kapil Yadav, Nitika Yadav, and Keith C. Ferdinand, “Zika Virus Pandemic—Analysis of Facebook as a Social Media Health Information Platform,” American Journal of Infection Control 45 (2017): 301–2.
25.
Hunt Allcott and Mathew Gentzkow, “Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (2017): 211–36.
26.
Allcott and Gentzkow, “Social Media,” 211–36.
27.
28.
Brown, “Online ‘Trolls’ Target Baptists.”
29.
Michela Del Vicario, Alessandro Bessi, Fabiana Zollo, Fabio Petroni, Antonio Scala, Guido Caldarelli, H. Eugene Stanley, and Walter Quattrociocchi, “The Spreading of Misinformation Online,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 113 (2016): 558.
30.
Vicario et al., “The Spreading of Misinformation Online,” 558.
31.
Ashley A. Anderson, Dominique Brossard, Dietram A. Scheufele, Michael A. Xenos, and Peter Ladwig, “The ‘Nasty Effect:’ Online Incivility and Risk Perceptions of Emerging Technologies,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 19 (2014): 373–87.
32.
Daniel Halpern and Jennifer Gibbs, “Social Media as a Catalyst for Online Deliberation? Exploring the Affordances of Facebook and YouTube for Political Expression,” Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013): 1159–68.
33.
Ian Rowe, “Civility 2.0: A Comparative Analysis of Incivility in Online Political Discussion,” Information, Communication & Society 18 (2015): 121–38.
34.
Paul Benjamin Lowry, Jun Zhang, Chuang Wang, and Mikko Siponen, “Why Do Adults Engage in Cyberbullying on Social Media? An Integration of Online Disinhibition and Deindividuation Effects with the Social Structure and Social Learning Model,” Information Systems Research 27 (2016): 962–86.
35.
Jesse Fox, Carlos Cruz, and Ji Young Lee, “Perpetuating Online Sexism Offline: Anonymity, Interactivity, and the Effects of Sexist Hashtags on Social Media,” Computers in Human Behavior 52 (2015): 436–42.