Popular opinion isn’t always what we are reading and listening to on social media.
Really.
“But… it is.”
Not necessarily.
It’s a point recently addressed in the article, You Know Who Posts on Social Media? Hardly Anybody, by Andrew Hutchinson, the content and social media manager at Social Media Today.
His findings might make you think and reconsider the conclusion about what we are seeing as being the pulse of America.
Reporters and writers have written about their social media observations, providing the appearance that what is being communicated are the hottest buttons and triggers for a large part of the country. Yet it’s deceptive.
“For years now, people have been using social media as a focus group, as an indicative measure of relative popularity and trend-worthiness,” Hutchinson wrote. “But for several reasons, social media discussion likely doesn’t reflect the perspective of the populous.”
He delves deeper to present those reasons:
Algorithmic amplification tilts the scale in terms of what’s deemed newsworthy and what’s not. This comes down to the incentives of news organizations based on engagement, and how that then drives their decision-making in what they cover, and how they cover it.
Social platform algorithms are based on engagement, because the more likes, comments, and shares the platforms can drive, the more that’ll keep people engaged in their apps.
The key driver of social media engagement is emotional response, in that you’re more likely to comment on something if it triggers a reaction. And the most powerful emotions in this respect are fear, anger and joy.
Think about that for a moment. Informing people isn’t the top priority. Objectivity isn’t the task. Responsible media isn’t either. These infotainment sites (social media) are about invoking a strong emotional response to give us a hit of dopamine or push our buttons to inspire arguments, even if they are illogical, angry and lead to fighting.
What gets posted most and amplified is communication that “spark these responses,” Hutchinson wrote.
He concludes that this means that we are going to have presented before us is content that is “more partisan, disproportionate and bombastic” and “coverage of issues that elicit such (emotionally-charged) response.”
Platforms are playing with their users like they are puppets.
Hutchinson comes back to a point in his article’s headline:
“Most people don’t post in social media apps. Ever,” he wrote.
Where’s the proof, you ask or demand.
“On X, for example, 20% of users create all of the content,” Hutchinson reported. “The other 80% never post, like, comment. They just read.”
That last sentence was a much larger number than I would have imagined.
Media and commentors posting content and those liking and commenting on it are but a small amount of people, yet on the platforms and in media coverage that uses platforms as a societal signal, it seems as the noise is from a much larger number and thus is communicating how the majority think and feel.
That’s not the reality.
“… the commentary that you’re reading isn’t indicative of the majority,” Hutchinson states. “If the X example holds, what’s trending on social media, and what opinions gain traction, are only really reflective of around a fifth of the population in any given region,”
So it’s reasonable to believe, he adds, that, “… you’re not getting a balanced perspective of what most people are thinking and what most people are interested in, or what’s relevant to their day-to-day lives.”
It’s not as it seems. It’s deceptive. That’s helpful to keep in mind.
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