In the "Digital News Report 2016" our class learned that more than a quarter of 18 to 24 year-olds said that social media is there main source or news. Since social media has rapidly become the main source of news, it is not surprising that this has also caused a large increase in political coverage of elections on these social media platforms as well.In an article I discovered online, I found that now many congress members are now wanting to create new election rules to regulate social media. Many lawmakers are eager for these regulation due to the recent discovery that Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms, possibly interfered with the elections by allowing foreign countries to buy political advertising on the site. Russia was behind these particular political advertising purchases on social media and it in the article it was described what the firm behind this did. Boylan, the author of the article explained, "...the Internet Research Agency drove a disinformation campaign during the election, spraying out waves of of divisive 'fake news' focused on controversial American social issues including gun control, immigration, race and gay rights" (Boylan 2017).
This discovery is very disconcerting due to the fact that social media is proven to be the main source of news for many young adults and only seems to be growing. I agree with the fact that there needs to be some type of regulations set in place for social media platforms regarding elections, so that these can be places where news is more unbiased and factual.
*News Article: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/11/congress-members-want-social-media-platforms-to-ha/
I think this is an issue that needs to be discussed but I'm worried that it'll be taken too far and they'll try to limit more than just ads. If they try to limit what accounts can post and say it could limit free speech. The news of these fake ads though is disconcerting and makes me want to know more about the full extent of these ads and how many there were.
ReplyDeleteThis is an issue that is very concerning to me because if taken too far it can begin to infringe upon peoples rights. I think that there does need to be some limit as to what can be campaigned on social media however, I do not think that congress will actually ever try to regulate it. For the time being, there needs to be an effort made to educate people about social media and what to believe and what not to believe.
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