Social media has become the battleground for elections. Candidates are guests on popular podcasts, campaign teams are utilizing trends for exposure and politicians are able to get their message out faster than ever. Feeds have the ability to shape opinion, and, ultimately, dictate who gets elected into power. And politicians are aware.
One problem that social media exacerbates is what is known as “confirmation bias.” This is when new information confirms an already existing belief. This is an issue because your feed is programmed to show you posts that it believes you will like. When people turn to social media for information, they’re often exposed only to content that aligns with their views, with little to no exposure to opposing perspectives. This leads people to become more fragmented or polarized in one belief system.
This also plays into AI-driven campaigns. This is when political efforts use artificial intelligence to target and influence their audiences. One example is microtargeting, when AI learns the behaviors of people and targets certain messages to align with what it believes will influence them the most. For instance one user may see an ad focused on the economy while another immigration. This is all based on a person’s history of clicks and likes.
Which brings us to bots, automated accounts with often little to no human control. They are tasked with amplifying certain messages in people’s feeds by spam posting, liking certain messages or commenting on posts to increase engagement. Their goal is to boost messages from one party and drown out posts challenging outside ideas. Bots can also easily spread misinformation and cause people to think things are true because it is widely accepted as fact. This can distort public perception of the popularity of opinions and influence users to think (and vote) in a certain direction.
Technology used in these ways can spread misinformation and manipulate public opinion in dangerous ways. Users need to become aware of how politicians are capitalizing off social media, or they will not be able to form an opinion based on unbiased and factual information.
