What is social media’s effect on free speech, the news, and social norms overall? Great Talk Inc gathered a group of experts for a panel discussion at University of Baltimore, Baltimore County (UMBC) on these questions.
Dr. Mark Feldstein, Richard Eaton Chair of Broadcast Journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park moderated the discussion. The panel comprised Dr. Jennifer Keohane, Associate Professor & Program Director, Digital Communication, Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences, University of Baltimore; Dr. Elizabeth M. H. Newbury, Director of the Serious Games Initiative for the Wilson Center; and Dr. Lance Yong Jin Park, Professor at the School of Communications at Howard University, and Faculty Associate at Harvard Law School.
The panel began by defining social media. Newbury considers it an interactive network of connectivity, whether social, news, or entertainment. Keohane agreed, adding that different demographics gravitated towards different platforms. Park’s definition of social media focused more on its ability to collect data, calling it a “personal data surveillance machine.”
Feldstein asked how social media itself has changed, and how it’s changed our society politically, economically, culturally, and socially. Regarding our relationships with other people, Keohane said there’s good that can come from social media, but spoke predominantly of the dangers. Among them: loneliness, online bullying, emotional contagion, reliance on affirmation of our content, inability to extricate oneself from rabbit holes and addiction, character assassination, and more.
Keohane added, “[W]e’ve studied character assassination and found it in every culture and in every era that we have studied. So like, I guess I say all of that as a way of saying like humans have always been pretty nasty to each other,” citing ancient Egyptian desecration of an unpopular emperor’s sarcophagi. Social media adds anonymity and democratization to these attacks.
Newbury believes concerns about obsessions and over-immersion in a medium has also been the case for a long time before social media.
“Fun fact, when fiction books first came out, and were widely published, there was also a concern that the kids today were going to be lost in these fantasy worlds and lose track of reality,” Newbury said.
Feldstein agreed, noting concerns existed for comic books and television, but that there is a ubiquity to cell phones that people have with them all the time.
Park spoke in personal terms, at first, describing how because of Facebook he’d connected with an old high school friend from South Korea. He also spoke in global terms, noting that social media played a signficant role in the Arab Spring movement in the 2010s.
Park agreed the negative political ramifications are huge, when disinformation or misinformation spreads with the intention to harm someone’s reputation and can be disseminated so quickly. With television, local television stations would not let people spread such lies or false information.
Keohane recalled the journalistic debate about whether Donald Trump’s tweets were newsworthy, and the impact of spreading his lies in the name of journalism – a debate which had no clear resolution. She also acknowledged the role social media plays in nations where information doesn’t flow freely and an independent press doesn’t exist, and the positive net impact of social media in those situations. She cautioned, however, about the lure of the dopamine hit people get from seeing their posts get liked and shared, and putting undue emphasis on the chance one might achieve their 15 minutes of fame.
Feldstein asked the panel how social media has affected social norms in terms of changes to what we expect and accept from others.
Newbury remarked that one doesn’t need to be an active contributor on a social media platform to be listening and observing. This lurking phenomenon may be the result of anything from Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) to wanting information about recent earthquakes or momentous news events. Newbury also pointed out a disconnect between what people say they’d never post and what they actually do. For example, a person might say they’d never post medical information, but also think it’s fine to post that they’re staying home from work because they’re sick.
Park pivoted from this issue of privacy to boundaries between teachers and students in a college setting.
“There is a public kind of boundary. But nowadays because of social media, we have to really renegotiate those kinds of lines,” Park said. “How much is it really acceptable for me to actually post given some of my graduate students [are] there, which is sometimes really the issue?” He later said it seems even once he’s a graduate’s adviser he feels like he’s always the teacher.
Newbury agreed, noting that a colleague of hers has a policy of not friending undergraduate students, explaining to students that it’s for the students’ protection.
Park observed that throughout the history of communication technology, even the telephone raised similar privacy issues. Phone calls were not made directly; a caller reached a call center where an operator would hook up the caller to the person being called.
Users’ concerns vary regarding how their data is guarded and used, what levels of privacy (if any) truly exists on any social media forum, and what users understand about what they agree to when they sign up for these social media sites.
Feldstein then asked the panel to consider showing violence live on social media sites is protected free speech.
Keohane compared these sites to the “town square of yore.” While not a lawyer, she taught a class on First Amendment’s law and ethics. Through the centuries Supreme Court justices held sacred the idea of a free flow of information being essential to democracy.
“And that raises a lot of interesting questions, because obviously Twitter is not a place in the same way that a town square and Twitter is not public land, right?” Keohane said. “But, you know, thinking philosophically about what we want those spaces to do, and how that relates to democracy, I think, is an impossible question to answer but a useful one to think about when we start getting into questions of content moderation and content neutrality and all of that.”
Park brought up Jan. 6, 2021, and that the violence on that day was politically significant in the context of our history and democracy, though “freedom” does not mean it lacks regulation or intervention.
“In the US history of First Amendment and, in fact, that was not the case. Freedom is actually regulated in a very certain way, especially immediate danger and national security reason,” Park said. “And certainly, I think at least many of our colleagues would agree that the riot on Jan. 6 is qualified as such.”
Does Twitter and/or Facebook hold the same rights as the press? Did they play a role in instigating violence or attempts to overturn the government? The issues are immensely complicated. Feldstein remarked that social media companies wish to be both technology companies and media companies, which muddies the issue of how to hold them accountable. Can they be sued for libel? From where does regulation come?
The conversation shifted to media literacy and transmission of misinformation and disinformation. Newbury described efforts to teach users to identify disinformation or misinformation to keep the internet a bit safer through games.
“American University, right in our backyard here, to the Department of State, also in our backyard, but their games are for embassy usage, not for domestic usage, that focus on how we can help identify and train people to identify disinformation online when they encountered it on social media. So, a lot of focus is on media literacy, which all ages benefit from,” Newbury said.
Park agreed that promoting digital literacy could be part of a solution to the disinformation. Keohane spoke of a reward system for sharing accurate information, and studies incentivizing people to do things differently. Feldstein, however, felt that was not enough to squelch the problem, especially given how journalism is shrinking economically while technology companies are earning billions of dollars in profits.
“It just seems to me that we need some kind of regulation. You look 120 years ago, to the Industrial Revolution, and there were all these abuses taking place by big corporations in the railroad industry, Standard Oil,” Feldstein said. “And Theodore Roosevelt in the trustbusters came in and they passed all kinds of reforms that led to government regulations of these industries that have gotten out of control.”
In predicting social media’s future, all agreed it was here to stay, and discussions of privacy, data ownership, globalization of platforms, and other topics will be open for debate for decades to come. Keohane is interested to see how the social norms play out in terms of “emotional well-being, mental health, educational attainment, whether there are kind of long-term impacts of being incredibly active on these sites from an early age.”
Feldstein concluded that it’s a “gigantic, real-time social experiment” before opening the floor to questions.
