The Societal Implications of Social Media
Over the last decade social media have emerged as one of the most powerful forces shaping the future. It is where a set of very powerful macro and micro forces collide shaping society, the economy, politics and especially individual identity. The universe of social media is where user generated content shapes self-defined groups operating in global networks. The number of Facebook users already exceeds the population of the largest countries on Earth.
Before the 20th Century most people lived in villages or small towns. Their identity was shaped by that community. Deviance from social norms usually led to ostracism or worse. The great wave of urbanization, industrialization and globalization beginning in 1900 changed all that. In the cities and their environs cultural DNA from many tribes mixed and drove social evolution and sometimes revolution. Mass media was the one great homogenizing force. Everyone watched the same TV. What got to the masses was the result of careful consideration with both commercial and editorial interests driving those choices.
Mass media was the medium of one to many. But the Internet is the medium of many to many or even all to all. Those of us who were there at the start of the Internet imagined a creative and informed global conversation unconstrained by the economic realities of the mass media. To be sure you can find that thoughtful conversation, but the bottoms up media also stirred up the dregs. Brutal behavior and algorithmically enforced communities of hate were also made possible.
YouTube rather than BBC is the future of media. Anyone can be a producer or a journalist or a musician, all with an audience in one form of social media or another. Audiences can range from minuscule, a few friends to Internet superstars with millions of followers. In this world, there are no editors…everything gets out. In this world algorithms have become the editors, but those algorithms based on social choices now reinforce narrow identity boundaries as McLuhan’s global village has emerged. So, while social media have allowed many new forms of political expression to escape the narrow judgment of editors as, for example, activists in Vietnam have exploited to Donald Trump tweeting to his self-reflecting followers.
Thus, we have both forces going at the same time, boundary spanning and boundary building. In some places and with some people boundary building will dominate…Trump supporters for example. While for others, like young people and new media producers like Netflix, it is the boundary spanning aspects of social media that will dominate. The outcome of the balance between these two forces is uncertain. Will a more global perspective win out? Or will narrow tribal attitudes break down the global network into warring villages? It is this struggle between a more open vs closed vision that will give form to the politics of the decades ahead. Radically different worlds will be the result of the outcome of that war for the future.