Social Media Communication. Bu Zhong
without fighting back, she said (Herndon, 2020).
Of course, there are many factors contributing to the success of a political campaign, but politicians agree that a major one is the way the campaign team uses social media to raise money, motivate voters, and win support. In a networked society, a revolutionary social media strategy must be an integral part of any political campaign. Despite the power of social media being widely recognized, many people lack a coherent and analytic account of why certain social media strategies work while others do not. Fewer understand the mechanism of social media usage, for instance, how political views, participation, and voter behavior may be swayed by information disseminated on social media.
Another big lesson we learned from the 2020 US election was that social media could be used as a venue to spread weaponized misinformation, making people lose confidence and faith in those with different political beliefs. There was a time of distrust after the election caused by a profound lack of trust in the US political system and the mainstream media. Some even exhibited distrust in the future, which shocked the world, as Americans have been known for their persistent optimistic belief in the future. As a hallmark of their nation, Americans have long held the rosy assumption that the arc of justice moves inexorably upwards, and that the future could be and should be brighter than the past (Short, 2020). After that optimism weakened, more people faced a fearful future filled with constant anxiety and indignation. Some people believe that social media caused the problem of social distrust.
Social Media in a Time of Distrust
Social scientists argue that social media should not be perceived as the culprit that caused a time of distrust. For many, the advantages of social media have been misdirected, which is in contrast to what we have known for decades about these information platforms. In those good old days, we marveled at how much social media had changed the way we lived. They changed how we communicated, how we consumed news and entertainment, and how we worked and conducted business. These changes have been taken for granted, especially for those who grew up with the rise of social media. However, many people fail to understand why hate speech, conspiracy theories, and other types of disinformation flourish on social media, thus compounding the surge of the exhausting period of distrust.
Hate speech is not merely a narrative that can hurt people’s feelings. Such “hate stratagems” work, like tactics of war to inflame the emotions of followers, denigrate the outclass, and inflict permanent and irreparable harm on an opponent (Kirk & Martin, 2020). The abusive, insulting, intimidating, and harassing disinformation could easily lead to violence, hatred, discrimination, or distrust. By using labels, epithets, threats, and lies, producers of misinformation could destroy political opponents, manipulate public opinion, and disrupt a democratic system like an election. Unfortunately, such misinformation and disinformation can go viral easily on social media.
The “Us vs. Them” Mentality
The proliferation of falsehood and conspiracy theories on social media is partially due to the mechanism of these platforms, which can easily promote self responses, self beliefs, and selfish recognition. Because millions of users can stay connected on social media, scholars used to applaud the fact that social media could promote the return of a “public sphere” proposed by Habermas (1991), where “private people come together as a public” for the purpose of using reason to further critical knowledge that may lead to political change (p. 27).
The public sphere requires unlimited access to information, equal and protected participation, and the absence of institutional influence (Kruse et al., 2018). The idea is integral to the healthy existence of a participatory democracy, leading to action in the way of social movements (Habermas, 1991). Some scholars argued that social media are organized in ways that meet the requisites of a public sphere (Fuchs, 2008).
As shown in the 2020 US presidential election, social media have failed to promote unlimited access to information, equal access and participation, and these spaces have not been free of institutional influence. Instead, the platforms were ideal for developing an “us vs. them” mentality among users, especially in an election year. Heavy social media users are more likely to shut down media channels offering information from “their side,” reinforce selective exposure and the silo effect, and drive us into echo chambers or information cocoons.
Some go even further and believe that an unworthy other side can be a threat against “us.” They must be defeated politically, destroyed, or locked up, which requires “us” to cast aside traditional norms and commitments like trusting others and diversity. “Us vs. them” opposes these commitments as it does not fit an “us vs. them” mentality.
Digitization and Digitalization
Since the first digital message was sent out from a computer at the University of California in Los Angeles to another at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, California on October 29, 1969, marking the start of the internet, the world has been significantly transformed by the internet and computer-based technologies, including social media (Zhong, 2020). It is hard to predict the future of social media and how they will advance. Problematic use of social media may be a growing social concern, for example, hate speech or cyberbullying. Social media were not originally designed to protect users from abuse, misinformation, or disinformation. As a result, people will be vulnerable to more harm on social media in the coming decades. These digital nuisances, unfortunately, will keep harassing users for a long time.
Facing the potential perils on social media, users are encouraged to search for solutions for new challenges and overcome them. One of the solutions is to study them. However, the future of social media usage can be exciting, too. There are ample positive effects associated with using them. Many researchers believe that social media usage can change the world for good. It will be interesting to witness how social media-dependent human societies will evolve in coming decades.
What is the future of social media? Niels Bohr, Danish physicist and Nobel Laurate, once said, “It is difficult to predict, especially the future.” However, if we have to predict the future of a social media-dependent human society, people in such a society will universally embrace the trend of digitization and digitalization. The use of social media represents the digital transformation development of social life, a societal process requiring people to prepare, adopt, and integrate digital changes. Meanwhile, people are subject to develop and are confronted with old and new digital models in life and business.
To understand the future of social media, it is useful to define and differentiate digitization and digitalization. Digitization describes the analog-to-digital conversion of existing data and documents, in which the data are not changed in any substantial way, but simply are encoded in a digital format. For example, when an old black-and-white movie is converted to a digital version, the resolution may be improved and even colors can be added, but the movie remains the same movie, just in a digital format. Digitization can reap efficiency benefits when the digitized data are easily circulated and shared over the internet.
In the business world, digitalization is defined as “the use of digital technologies to change a business model and provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities; it is the process of moving to a digital business” (Garner, 2021). In this vein, we define digitalization at the societal level as the use of digital technologies to change human communication and social life, providing new benefits and value-added opportunities for human societies. Thus, digitalization moves beyond digitization (see Table 1.1), leveraging digital information technology to transform social life and business models – evaluating, reengineering, and reimagining the way we live and do business.
Table 1.1 The differences between digitization and digitalization.
| Digitization |
Digitalization
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