I believe that our society’s shared understanding of misinformation, the role social media platforms play on it, its consequences, and the weight it has on elections, is wrong. I also think that the understanding around the root causes why people believe misinformation is wrong. Most people are not stupid, yet they still believe in wrong information. This piece isn’t meant to absolve social media platforms of responsibility – their failure to moderate and stop misinformation from spreading is astonishing; while I recognize determining truth is a complex matter that most platforms can’t do; some can. The large ones have the money and resources for it, and they should be doing better. That said, let’s get into it
There is a certain weight that is given to misinformation and its capability of majorly altering election results and I believe that weight is not correct. I believe its role is far more nuanced, and that most misinformation online is not as harmful to democracy as it’s portrayed to be – and rather the harm to democracy comes from elsewhere. To get to my point around misinformation, I first must talk about how democracy has been failing people.
Democracy has failed people
The industrial revolution majorly shifted people’s lives, there was a huge migration to cities, and work paradigms massively shifted. Decades later, there was a certain living standard that workmen in factories could get – a car, a house, caring for their family. They had stability, and while not rich by any means, their needs were met. Hard manual labor paid off; it was good enough. Wealth was created through manufacture, and workers benefited from a part of it.
I am a millennial, so that was only true for my parents’ generation – see the Simpsons’ many memes about Homer being able to afford all of that in a single salary from a husband who never went to college. It doesn’t matter if that is true or not (or if the profession that Homer holds pays well today but requires a college degree), the Simpsons’ memes are shorthand for a sentiment: the sentiment that the current generation is worse off than our parents. That hasn’t been the case in… forever. Yet it’s the case now.
More than that, even older blue-collar workmen are now struggling to make ends meet when they thought they were fine for life working in an industry because their parents (my grandparents) were fine. The truth is that, for those people specifically, life isn’t better. Democracy has failed to make their lives better; it has gotten worse from a financial stability perspective. There are many legitimate and complicated reasons for this, populational growth and ageing, home ownership becoming more and more expensive, the creation of wealth majorly shifting to technology development rather than manufacturing, etc. But these are not those peoples’ problems, these are problems that democracy has not been able to solve (yet).
In contrast, lots of people have had many perceived “gains” under the democratic process. LGBTQ+ rights have expanded, same-sex marriage is a reality, woman’s rights have expanded, universal suffrage is a reality in most of the western world, civil rights have majorly expanded. These are all extremely positive things, I’m certainly happy not having to fear being beaten up in the streets because I’m holding hands with my husband, or fear not being able to have a career because I’m queer, or fear being imprisoned because my sexuality is a crime. But; put yourself in the straight white cis-dude who’s a factory worker shoes, life’s worse for him. He can no longer provide for his family, his wife likely has to work too, and even then, it’s not enough. There’s a big mythos in masculinity about him having to be the provider. These failures taint these men’s self-image in a major way, even their perceived masculine worth (toxic notions of masculinity, of course, but that doesn’t matter for men who their peers and themselves adhere to it).
What he sees is that his life is worse, democracy has failed him, and yet there are all these other “minorities” whose lives have gotten better, and on top of it all, he’s culturally blamed. “Cis white man” becomes a derogatory term, he’s told he has privilege. That he should check his privilege and listen to other people who have the right to speak because they’re oppressed. I’m not saying that any of these things aren’t true, nor am I saying that LGBTQ+ people, women, and people of color don’t have a structural equality issue. But what I’m trying to convey is that democracy has failed to meaningfully improve the life of a portion of the population, while it has improved others, and the messaging around it has been felt to them as if we’ve made gains at the expense of others who we accuse of having privilege.
I believe this to be important to write first because it plays into “why” vote for far-right autocrats then if not because of misinformation and lies.
The internet and finding people who share our values
While all of that has been happening, the internet has allowed us to more easily than ever connect with people who share our values. Since the internet became a cultural thing, we’ve not been forced to live and share communal spaces with people who disagree with our beliefs and values as much as we did before. Neighborhoods and local communities have become deprioritized in favor of online communities. This isn’t the view of someone who’s “critically online”, but rather a statement of the world as I observe it, not just for myself, but for a majority of people. The internet has allowed us to find our peers nation-wide (or world-wide) for we’re no longer solely reliant on geographical commonality anymore to find our people. That can be wonderful on an individual level (see my statement on the internet quite literally having saved my life in my first post), it allows us to understand that we’re not alone, that there are many others like us, and especially as minorities, find our people and live our truth. When the world told us we were wrong, defective, sick, we found out through online communities that we weren’t – those were just bigoted views. Or at least, I did (I didn’t live in a city that had a LGBTQ+ offline space).
However, that easiness of finding your people and your truth can be said for someone who rejects traditional – many times even scientific – claims. It has also allowed them to find their peers and live their truth apart from the expectations of their geographical peers. While social science was spousing truths about how minorities were oppressed, civil rights were important, and so on, people who didn’t believe that found their peers too.
This new reality of easy findability of peers who share our beliefs and values is not conducive to the environment of concessions that need to happen for the slow machine of democracy to work. For make no mistake, democracy is slow, and the democratic process has failed many people as discussed above. Consensus based democracy needs concessions to be made, it needs opposing views to be able to meet, discuss, and come to a path forward. That’s why it tilts to the center and extremist governments have a lot of trouble getting into power. This is kind of by design, and that’s also why liberalism usually is (or was) a centrist position in a lot of the western world. This thing we call “Democracy”, the political system with branches of government, differentiation of executive, legislative and judiciary functions, with checks and balances, is actually called “Liberal Democracy”, after all. It’s rooted in liberalism.
This consensus-based, slow, machine gets destroyed when people can so easily find peers who share the same values as they do. If there isn’t a need for debate, only certainties, and if you’ve become sure that the others are simply wrong and there’s nothing of value to gain from talking, then there’s no need for consensus.
But, when consensus-based democracy fails, people turn to majority-based democracy instead. And if things continue not to improve, they’ll accept authoritarian governments. It’s no wonder we see the rise of far-right populism and their empty chants of “democracy” today. In truth, the politicians that spouse those empty chants are authoritarians seeking to rule from the executive. Unchecked executive power is a typical sign of a majority-based democracy. (You can read more on the positive aspects of consensus-based democracy over majority-based in “Comparative Political Regimes: Consensus and Majoritarian Democracy”). Majority-based democracy doesn’t need concessions, it doesn’t need to protect minorities, and it certainly doesn’t need to care about inclusion and diversity. Majority-based democracy is forceful, it wins votes through numbers, not through representation, debate, and compromise. Minorities get fucked.
You can now read Part II of this post, it deals with radicalization, misinformation, conspiracy theories and how those are intrinsic to what makes us human, as well as which role social media platforms and newsfeed algorithms play.