How the Internet is Driving Political Polarization, and Influencing Politics During Trump’s Presidency.
“The Internet will be the Congress. The Internet will be the Parliament. The Internet will be the election.” -Dick Morris, 2000
Dick Morris was not wrong in his prediction: the internet is a powerful digital tool that has been able to shape the way society views, participates in, and even perceives politics — for better or for worse. That is what we are going to be exploring today, specifically focusing on the political era of Donald Trump and political polarization within the U.S.
The introduction of the internet and its associated digital tools have greatly impacted every aspect of our lives as we know it. One thing in particular that the internet has had a fair role in, is the driving of political polarization that is dividing our country more and more everyday. Political debates, events, discussions, and campaigns all function in one way or another, through the internet in order to advance the message that is wanting to be sent. Political polarization can be referred to as the divergence of political attitudes to ideological extremes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_polarization) , directly translating to the extreme siding we’re seeing in today’s political culture: you’re either a democrat or a republican, a liberal or a conservative, a white supremacist or a communist, and so on. Our political identities have intensified with the surge of polarization, and we all witnessed this intensity during the 2016 presidential election. But what exactly is the cause if this intensified political polarization? The republican and democratic parties have been around for years, but why are we now seeing these extreme and opposing sides? It is fair that the internet, and more specifically social media, may be the culprit to blame.
It is not specifically social media that drives the intense polarization of our political beliefs, but rather the algorithms designed and used in these social media platforms, to influence and reinforce political beliefs and ideologies. In Emilie Robichaud’s Medium article, she defines an algorithm as a set of mathematical instructions or rules that, especially if given to a computer, will help to calculate an answer to a problem (Robichaud, 2020). Algorithms in social media platforms, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook use persuasive algorithms to influence what users buy, who they follow, and even who they vote for (and in terms of younger users, who they support, and which end of the political spectrum do they favor). These social media platforms explicitly used what Robichaud refers to these as persuasive algorithms, which have an underlying motive of modifying a certain attitude or behavior, by exploiting psychological and sociological theories (Robichaud, 2020). The algorithms work in a way to show the user content that is curated to their interests, and reinforce their beliefs. If a user is interested in right-wing ideologies (by liking/engaging with content and creators also interested in the same), persuasive algorithms are designed to curate their social media feed specifically to their interests, as well as suggest friends and those to follow with similar beliefs, and in turn are more likely to reinforce those right-wing beliefs. These algorithms help to drive political participation polarization, by increasing homophily between individuals, which according to Myers and Lamm (1976), individuals that participate in homogenous discussion groups tend to adopt more extreme positions after deliberation swift their like minded peers (Robichaud, 2020). Persuasive algorithms used in social media platforms are key to understanding why we see the U.S. general public becoming so politically polarized, and is just one example of how digital tools can influence political ideas and decisions.
Social media’s algorithms don’t only influence how voters and the general public behave, but they also can be used to the benefit of politicians and political campaigns. Due to the accessibility and wide use of social media platforms today, elected political officials and candidates are much more accessible and accountable to voters (Murse, 2019), which makes it easier for larger numbers of the population to be able to engage with politics, on the community, state, and country-wide levels, in addition to the being able to expose younger generations to politics before they are able to vote. Candidates and campaigns are further benefited by social media platforms, due to the ability to be able to share and broadcast information to the entire country simultaneously, and can in turn carefully manage their image at no cost (Murse, 2019). Political advertising has never been so cheap, thanks to the relatively lower costs for airing commercials and ads on social media platforms, in comparison to airing content on television. Trump’s presidential win was likely due to some of these factors in which social media platforms allowed him to directly engage with voters and supporters, as well as share campaign content and ideologies with everyone on the internet.
The rules and norms surrounding political campaigns’ online presence, have not yet been widely standardized, and as some campaigns (Specifically Donald Trump’s) possess a larger online presence than others (Hollinger, 2018). Because of this, we can understand how Trump used his online presence to increase voter engagement, as well as information regarding his presidential campaign and his political ideologies, to increase partisan gain and win the 2016 presidential election. Trump actually gained most of his popularity through his online presence, as we can see that continuously being online and posting/tweeting/sharing, benefitted his overall campaign. By posting multiple times a day, Trump and his opinions stayed trending, and he was able to continuously reinforce his strong online presence (Hollinger, 2018), giving him enough momentum and support to harness enough votes to take the win, especially in comparison to Hillary Clinton’s lack of online presence and engagement. This goes to show that it is extremely beneficial to have a continuous, and possibly even aggressive, online presence, in addition to tailoring your political campaign to social media’s algorithms and audience (Hollinger, 2018), as we saw more so with Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election.
Going back to Dick Morrison’s quote, we can now start to understand what he meant by “the internet will be the parliament…the internet will be the election”. He meant that the internet will grow in such a capacity, that it will begin to be a primary driver in elections, voter behavior, campaign outcomes, and candidate behavior. The internet has begun to influence most actions within politics, and will continue to evolve as we progress into the future and as technology becomes more advanced. In order to evolve to these new forms of political engagement, Hollinger suggests that future political opponents will HAVE to become more tech savvy and have a significant online presence to stay trending and win (2018), in order to best stay engaged with voters and the general population.
References:
Hollinger, Jordan, et al. “Trump, Social Media and the First Twitter-Based Presidency.” Diggit Magazine, 7 May 2018, www.diggitmagazine.com/articles/Trump-Twitter-Based-Presidency.
Murse, Tom. “Social Media in Politics — Twitter and Facebook as Campaigns Tools.” ThoughtCo, 29 Aug. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/how-social-media-has-changed-politics-3367534.
Robichaud, Emilie. “How Social Media Algorithms Drive Political Polarization.” Medium, The Startup, 11 Oct. 2020, medium.com/swlh/how-persuasive-algorithms-drive-political-polarization-75819854c11d
