Pol Comm & Tech

Climate Change is a pressing issue in modern society, especially with how divisive the responses to it are from both sides of the political spectrum within the US. With the advent of the internet, this issue has only been given a bigger platform to be discussed, and the #ClimateChange campaign was an effective & efficient utilization of social media to help a social movement.

One important thing is that social media facilitates the exchange of information. This means that the movement could cut through the red tape that would incur from spreading information through the mainstream press. “#ClimateChange” is a well publicized movement, so climate activists have used nearly every popular social media platform to advocate for their cause [1]. Many hashtags were employed by this movement, including “#ClimateChange”, #ProtectOurWinters” and “#FridaysForFuture”

An example of how this can contribute to the flow of information includes instagram posts like the one below from National Geographic:

The image showcases the negative effects that climate change would have on animals like a polar bear. This would be an effective tactic to have people join the cause as it would appeal to their emotional senses, and as it was liked over 1.7m times it was clearly a success.

Another great way that the social movement employs social media is through celebrity endorsement. Leonardo DiCaprio and former President Barack Obama are both prominent Climate Change advocates, and have both tweeted out hashtags and voiced their support. This makes it an effective tool in bringing about awareness & action towards the cause.

Finally, social media can contribute to protestors being informed on any protests being organized near where they live. The hashtags could act as a solid hub of information, and it provides a greater ease of convenience than ever before. Like the BLM movement, #ClimateChange protesters can mobilize quicker, and more effectively, with the advent of new technology.

Sources:
[1] https://moveme.berkeley.edu/project/climate-change/

The Black Lives Matter movement saw a resurgence in the summer of 2020, following the untimely death of George Floyd, and a lot of this can be attributed to the advent of social media and cell phones in the modern day.

The reason why this technology was so imperative to this resurgence was because the video of Floyd had been uploaded to popular social media platforms like Twitter, where it served as a call to action for followers. More importantly, cell phones played a huge role in orchestrating protests and marches across America to show solidarity and further the cause. Much like Hong Kong protesters had done earlier in the year, BLM supporters used platforms like twitter to mobilize rallies and protests in an efficient manner. By using the “BLM” hashtag, they were able to efficiently communicate when and where protests would be taking place. This resulted in an easy platform of information. An issue with this, however, was that the hashtag could become cluttered – as seen on “Blackout Tuesday”, where supporters were encouraged to post a black photo with the BLM hashtag attached. This “caused more harm than good” [1], as it resulted in information being clogged up, which would negatively impact the flow of important updates coming through.

Another important reason for cell phones being used during this movement was through the advent of camera phones. Citizen footage kick-started the resurgence, and it played a pivotal role throughout. Protestors at marches shouted out “This revolution won’t be televised! It’s going to be streamed!” [2], and that was true. This shows a shift in how information that captivates protests and civic action has changed, with bystanders being able to control the narrative that they are taking part in. Another reason why this was important was because it could disprove any statements or videos published by the mainstream media, which might have depicted the protestors as nothing but rioters and shied away from the severity of police conflict taking place. The use of easy internet access that cell phones provides means that the time between documenting and uploading this footage has been greatly reduced, to the point where twitter live videos can capture these moments almost as soon as they happen. This can help boost the speed through which citizens can process this information and engage in civic action than ever before.

Sources:
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/02/us/blackout-tuesday-black-lives-matter-instagram-trnd/index.html
[2] https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2020/0617/Black-Lives-Matter-movement-A-case-for-camera-phones

Pepe the Frog started life as an anthropomorphic webcomic character and morphed into a symbol for the alt-right over the course of a few years [1].  This was a gradual shift, and one that was largely in part due to its status as a meme being used as a gateway to spread right-wing ideology.

Benjamin Burroughs argues that memes, especially in the 2016 election cycle, were used as a “stitching device” for ideology [2].  This means that, as memes were under the same fair use act as parody pieces, they weren’t under the same level of scrutiny for presenting the truth as an information piece would be. Trump supporters and agents working for Trump could spread his message with a level of “plausible deniability”, and therefore circumvent the kind of criticism that would de-legitimize campaign ads which run the same message because they could simply argue it was done for comedic effect.

The ‘Pepe Trump’ meme was a popular version of this meme that kicked off the association between Trump, the alt-right and Pepe – with the then-Presidential candidate retweeting a video featuring the meme in 2015 [3]. From there, the links between Pepe and the right just kept growing – with more Conservatives being encouraged to make variations of Pepe with values they aligned with. This resulted in a simple cartoon frog acting as a launching pad for ideological warfare taking place on social media.

The most prominent example of this was when the Alt-Right co-opted Pepe for their own cause, and started using him to spread anti-Semitic and racist rhetoric under the guise of parody. Due to the ‘plausible deniability’ of memes, these images wouldn’t be taken down as hate speech as easily, and therefore played a role in indoctrinating more young members into their ideology. This resulted in Pepe being labelled a “symbol associated with white supremacy” from Trump’s political opposition of Hilary Clinton [4].

Pepe’s creator, Matt Furie, frequently condemned this use of his character, to the point where he filed a copyright infringement case against InfoWars for using his IP to promote their causes. This didn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, as it was far too late to reclaim the perception that had already been set for the character.

On the bright side, this isn’t the only connotation that Pepe inspires around the world. During the recent Hong Kong protests, the character was used as a symbol of resistance to totalitarianism [5]. In contrast to his response to the Western co-opting of his IP, Furie called this example “great news! Pepe for the people!”

Perhaps that’s the power of memes. Something as simple as an image of a humanoid frog can inspire so much passion from both sides based on which ideology it represents.

Sources:
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/29/pepe-the-frog-alt-right-mascot-racist-anti-semitic
[2] Fake Memetics: Political Rhetoric and Circulation in Political Campaigns – Benjamin Burroughs
[3] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/20/4chan-4-trump.html
[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-pepe-frog-instagram-breitbart-white-supremacist-alex-jones-milo-yiannopoulus-a7240581.html?
[5] https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/in-the-media/activists-adopt-pepe-memes-in-hong-kong-protests

What defines the public sphere? What factors need to be considered before labelling any discussion forum as being “the” public sphere?

If we ask Jürgen Habermas, one of the defining architects on public sphere theory, it’s composed of private people gathered together as a public entity and articulating the needs of society with the state. Sounds simple enough, and modern day venues such as Twitter should, in theory, ascribe close enough to those ideals to be considered a public sphere. In practice, however, it’s a little more complicated.

A lot of the factors that Habermas laid out in regards to the success of public spheres feel idealistic at best, and outright naive at worst. There needs to be a great extent of access to the sphere, as close to universal as possible. Except that… universal access is impossible. Even something like Twitter, which feels like a slam-dunk for Habermas’ criteria, requires access to new technology and the internet – which not all Americans have access to, with the latter not being used by upwards of 10% of the population [1]. This becomes an even bigger issue in Less Economically Developed Countries, where the internet is less accessible and forums such as Twitter are the only venues to spread ideas about bettering their respective societies. This is especially bad in countries where freedom of press is an issue, such as China or Iran, and there’s no alternate to turn to.

Another issue that makes Habermas’ definition incompatible with modern social media platforms is the idea of rejecting a hierarchy. While it could be argued that Twitter doesn’t have a set hierarchy per say, and that all users have their voices heard at an equal footing, functions such as verification badges give greater validity to some voices over others. Additionally, follower count can only further this division, as users with less followers get a smaller window with which to spread their ideas compared to bigger accounts. Habermas’ also argued that a degree of autonomy is necessary for these spheres to be a success, but Twitter’s nature of being a private company goes against this idea – if you violate the TOS you’re immediately banned from the site, which some view as a blanket statement to silence Conservative voices.

Finally, Habermas claimed that quality of participation was vital for a venue to be considered a public sphere, and you just need to skim through your own twitter timeline to see that that’s not the case at all. Even beyond the 280 character limit restricting nuance in the ideas being spread, the surplus of bots on the site ensure that there the discourse on the server remains disruptive and reductive. Additionally, “quality of participation” is such an intrinsically subjective statement that it’s nearly impossible to define it without resorting to simply gatekeeping conversations to keep out those that you don’t agree with.

Ultimately, Habermas’ utopian worldview on what a public sphere should be feels overly idealized, and doesn’t consider the differences in people and the world around us. Twitter is, by all accounts, a contemporary public sphere – and recent events such as the Arab spring and the revitalization of the Black Lives Matter movement only further cement its status as such. Our perception of what is and isn’t a public sphere should reflect the world we live in, and recognize the increasing social complexity we experience today. A more fragmented public means that we need to adapt with the times, so perhaps we need new ideals with which to define what constitutes as a public sphere.

Sources:
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/22/some-americans-dont-use-the-internet-who-are-they/

Selective exposure is the theory that people will try to actively seek and engage with news stories that re-affirm their own world-view and beliefs, while disregarding anything that contradicts  or challenges them; regardless of how accurate either news story is.

InfoWars was founded in 1999 by far-right conservative and known shock jock Alex Jones, and is infamous for peddling conspiracy theories and fake news. Despite this, its readership levels have remained consistently high, with Jones himself admitting that it was pulling in over $20m a year [1] in 2018.

One of the reasons for this is because InfoWars specifically targets a segment of the right that no other media outlet does; conspiracy theorists who believe that the Left is run by pedophiles and demons (whether Jones was literal about this statement or not is unclear), and that events like Sandy Hook were false flags staged by the Left to hurt the second amendment [2].

This demographic already has a level of distrust in the mainstream media, and InfoWars takes full advantage of this by not only creating a filter bubble for its audience, where every news story is specifically targeted to confirm their pre-conceived notions, but also create an eco-system of its own; on-site advertisements and official merchandise is specifically designed to support that perception too. One of the most prominent product lines they sell is a series of water filtration systems, which sells well due to their frequent fear-mongering of how the government has put “chemicals in the water” that changes your sexuality [3]. Another successful brand of products is their line of supplements, and considering the level of distrust that both InfoWars and its readers have for mainstream medicine, it creates an alternative with products such as “Super Male Vitality” and “Brain Fuel”. These sell “500 [units] in an hour” according to former employees, despite them being scientifically proven to be ineffective [4].

InfoWars is, of course, no stranger to being proven wrong. As one of the pioneering websites for yellow journalism and the spread of disinformation, with famous examples including false claims against the HPV vaccine [5], the 2017 Las Vegas shooting [6] as well as the aforementioned controversy regarding Sandy Hook. This has led to backlash and mass black-listings for the site, from prominent platforms such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter [7], which still hasn’t seemed to deter its usual crowd from accessing it. While most news outlets would take a big hit from this kind of publicity, Jones & co. seem to thrive in it. This is because their primary readership has been so accustomed to what they’ve read that anything that challenges it, regardless of it coming from certified experts, is incorrect.

By continuously pumping out misleading articles and hit-pieces, InfoWars has created a culture of constant confirmation bias; where anyone who disagrees with you is a government pawn trying to further the Leftist agenda, and it doesn’t matter what the truth is as long as it’s something you believe in – no matter how far-fetched it might sound. Including the government trying to turn the “freaking frogs gay”.

Sources:
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/us/politics/alex-jones-business-infowars-conspiracy.html
[2] https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/sandy-hook-families-are-suing-alex-jones-what-he-said-about-shooting
[3] https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/internet/2017/03/they-re-turning-frogs-gay-psychology-behind-internet-conspiracy
[4] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/charliewarzel/we-sent-alex-jones-infowars-supplements-to-a-lab-heres
[5] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/6/15160486/alex-jones-vaccines-autism-gates-fungus-health-conspiracy-theories
[6] https://www.newsweek.com/alt-right-conspiracy-theories-blame-antifa-mass-shooting-las-vegas-677075
[7] https://money.cnn.com/2018/08/06/technology/facebook-infowars-alex-jones/index.html