Anaylsis : The Role and Impact of Facebook

 


Before the graduation of instagram and the birth of snapchat, there was facebook. The eldest sibling to the social media trinity. Before instagram took its first high school exam and snapchat taking its first steps, facebook was the platform to be on. After its grandparent, myspace settled in for retirement, facebook took on the role of carrying social media into the 21st century. If you wanted to connect with people from your 1985 high school graduation senior class, you could find individuals on facebook. People posting family and old time pictures. No, people were not taking photos of everything they ate and posting it to their stories (that's insta during their teenage years.) People were most focused on connecting with family members, past friends, and the news. Now between now and then, news seems more reliable than it does today. You could say there was not much clickbait or fake news spread, and if there was, it was not in abundance or obvious to the viewer. In recent years, it seems people have become more engaged and passionate about politics and its climate. There are a few things to consider, number one is facebook churning political warfare or altering the political discourse? The answer to this is a 50/50 split. Remember, facebook is the platform that users use to share pictures, videos, and messages. They regulate what is shared due to social media guidelines. They do not have affiliation with any political standing or party. The users are the ones that share important ideals and values on the platform. Determining if facebook is churning or altering is hard to decipher because the platform has, in recent years, become unpopular. But one definite way facebook could is by making money off of ads (Bolter 2019). Facebook is a business that needs money to continue. Political interests and individuals pay facebook to showcase their ads. This could definitely churn/alter because viewers would pay attention to how many ads they see from certain political affiliations. Viewers would agree that maybe they see more ads from one political affiliation than they do from another and vice versa. The platforms that would be considered more for churning and altering would be instagram or X. And this is because of their rise in popularity although X’s popularity recently has also dropped to 10% for news activity (Newman 2024).


Everything posted to the facebook social platform related to politics reflects the mood and beliefs from the users and those who choose to respond to the posting. But the ads do play a crucial role in creating and possibly intensifying the online political environment. Political climates are always filled with tensions and with platforms such as facebook, the tension is able to take form and spread at a larger and faster rate. With people having different beliefs and values then sharing them on the platform, this creates a sort of debate environment that can get heated at times. Facebook is intensifying politics by giving it a space for freedom of speech and expression but with the expense of individuals either forming new relationships or dissolving pre-existing ones due to different perspectives.


Bolter David Jay. “The Digital Plenitude: The Decline of Elite Culture and the Rise of New Media - Social Media Are Running Political Discourse.” Reuters. May 19, 2019. 


Newman, Nic. “Executive Summary and Key Findings.” Reuters Institute Digital News report. 2024.


Comments

  1. Isabella RamirezSeptember 17, 2024 at 2:42 PM

    To start off, I love your comparisons of social media to life because I do believe that each platform captures a particular time period of each person's life, especially in the digital age. You made some fantastic points, specifically referring to economic implications and content algorithms. Frankly speaking, there is money to be made when Facebook allows ads to be published on the app. Therefore, the likelihood of Facebook completely stopping these ads is very little, so the company needs to invest time, effort, and some of that money into regulatory procedures, like you hinted at. In this, there may be a chance to resolve some of the backlog that occurs. Additionally, though creating an algorithm based on one's likes and interests is good in theory, it has obviously proved to be a function that promotes and spreads misinformation. When these apps cater to an individual, there is going to be some form of bias based off of the user's engagement. It is a never-ending cycle, and I think that Facebook really needs to crack down on this!

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