How Social Media Impacted The 2018 Midterms

Image taken by Daniela Curi

Have you voted for the 2018 Midterms? Did you see any social media promotion about the importance of voting? If you answered yes, then think about this – has anything or anyone influenced you to vote for a specific political party? Take a step back and think. How did you come to the conclusion in deciding who you were going to vote for? Have you been influenced by an endorser, a celebrity figure or even by your friends? 

 Why do I ask? Well, I attended a panelist discussion that talked about the social media impact on the 2018 Midterms. I received some insights from amazing speakers – Jon Keegan, Jessica Baldwin-Philippi and Arvind Diddi. The main topic in this discussion was the transparency that the public needed when it came to reliable and factual news. 

If you recently read an article about a political figure, did you think about who wrote it? Have you considered if the article written was factually true? The panelists voiced their concerns about how people seemed to believe almost anything because they saw the article on social media. Some of these articles that you read were probably written and exaggerated from the opponent.

How can this issue be addressed? Jessica brought up a point about how many social media platforms should, in some way, have a role in this situation. She mentioned how Facebook has been trying to self-regulate political ads for future elections. Although, Jessica states that Facebook has identified the problem as technological and left it at that. While there have been controversial issues pertaining to the whole Russian Facebook ads back in the 2016 presidential elections, Jessica points out that Facebook’s role is and has always been editorial. Therefore, who can we trust to clear out the fake news?

Arvind states that it is up to us to research and verify the information that is presented to us. A resource that he mentions is Factcheck.org, a nonprofit that aims to reduce the deception in U.S. politics. It is easy for us to find information about anything, but it is difficult for us to actually figure out if what we read is trustworthy. That is why using this kind of resource can help expand our knowledge of what is really going on in the news.

Why is this important? Why should we care if what we read is true or false? Democracy. Arvind states that the people have the right to exercise their power by voting on policies that they believe will do good for our country. Without trustworthy journalism and access to factual information that will give us a proper chance to decide if we want to vote on those policies, then what is the point of democracy? What’s our purpose in this country?

Due to what happened in the 2016 elections, “there is more awareness on the importance of having transparency between the media and the public,” according to Jon. What we should do now is continue on having conversations about this issue. It is up to us to stop the deceitful news from coming in our news feed that disrupts our democracy.