By Mia Cho
Managing Editor
In this day and age, many young people who have social media platforms voice their opinions on current events. Although this has been helpful in spreading awareness to movements and ideas that are overlooked by the mainstream media, social media activism undermines principles of journalistic integrity and ultimately causes more harm than good.
Social media activism is a form of activism that uses posts and shares to promote different beliefs and ideas, supporting a certain cause or movement. Social media activism often consists of using news or statistics to sway one’s followers to believe in a certain cause. These posts typically consist of images and infographics, making them digestible for young, impressionable audiences. Because of this, many young people use social media as their source of news to keep updated on current events instead of relying on traditional news outlets.
This can be detrimental because social media activism undermines principles of journalistic integrity. When delivering news, journalists are held to a standard of impartiality and objectiveness, otherwise the publication loses credibility. Additionally, in order to have the position of educating the public by being a part of an established publication, journalists typically must have an education in journalism. This ensures the news is an impartial source the public can rely on to learn about what is going on, and then form its own opinions. Relying on social media as one’s primary source of news because it is easier to understand discredits the precedent and legacy of impartiality in journalism.
Additionally, unlike a publication such as a newspaper, there are no editors to edit, correct or fact-check a story on social media platforms. Anyone can make an Instagram account and begin posting “news” that supports a certain ideology or movement. Inherently trusting news from social media is dangerous because there is nobody overseeing or verifying the validity of the information being posted. This is especially dangerous for the young and impressionable, who are generally the audiences of these posts. Moreover, there is no policy of impartiality on social media.
Since anyone can post anything without any credentials on social media, it allows for anyone to present a biased view of a certain event or occurrence to support their own beliefs. This is dangerous because it expresses current events in a manner that is partial to a certain side or belief. Using social media as a news source does not help young people stay informed; it merely sways them to believe in a certain opinion baselessly.
Aside from the journalistic perspective, relying on social media as a news source is problematic because of the strategic way social media is designed to function. On social media sites such as Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, the sites use algorithms to promote content to users who have responded positively to similar content. According to Instagram, these algorithms use users’ follows, hashtags, likes, shares and comments to determine recommendations for users, which are suggested through the Explore page function.
Similarly, TikTok uses likes, comments, replays, hashtags and the Duet function to suggest content through the For You Page. Through these algorithms, social media platforms suggest content users have a history of reacting positively to, keeping them engaged with the social media platform. Relying on social media as a news source is dangerous because the sites are designed to recommend posts that will only reaffirm one’s existing worldview.
Those who partake in using social media as a news source will typically be recommended posts they agree with, promoting extremist views. This only furthers the divide between parties on partisan issues.
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