The Wall Street Journal; see also John Brown. "Twittering; or, Where are the Emily Dickinsons at the State Department?" Huffington Post (2009)
PHOTO: OMAR MARQUES/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Editor’s note: This Future View is about the mob mentality on social media. Next week, we’ll ask students to reflect on what’s missing from college education: “What is your school not teaching or emphasizing?” Students should click here to submit opinions of fewer than 250 words before April 23. The best responses will be published that night.
Dream On
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups,” said George Carlin. Fortunately for Carlin, he died before the advent of the now-canonical large group of stupid people: the social-media mob.
Social media seems, prima facie, good for democracy; to democratize is to make something accessible to everyone, and for our purposes, this something is political discourse. Social media seemed destined to bring about Jürgen Habermas’s public sphere, John Rawls’s deliberative democracy, and Oliver Wendell Holmes’s marketplace of ideas, a prized forum for debate and discussion, open to all.
To wake up from the democratic dream of social media, I recommend visiting the Twitter page of any halfway-prominent political figure. Most instructive are the replies to their posts, supplied by ordinary citizens like you and me, engaging in free, open and direct discussion with each other and the gatekeepers of power. Witness hordes of what are likely otherwise nice people—shielded by anonymity, informed by echo chambers, restricted by character counts, incentivized to provoke shock—give in to their feral impulses and vomit abusive nonsense onto the web for a world-wide audience.
Social-media mobs feed on the stupidest parts of our nature, a lemminglike tendency to either appease or antagonize, shunning complexity and accountability.
—Micah Cash, Stanford University, philosophy and physics
Twitter’s Skewed Incentives
Social-media mobs present a problem of adverse selection. The political and cultural battles of Twitter attract the hyperpartisan and combative among us—the people who actually enjoy that sort of thing. Fortunately, this means that the hostility on Twitter is likely not indicative of the culture at large. Unfortunately, it can make social media unpleasant and devoid of thoughtful discourse.
Twitter rewards mobilization. Even relatively small numbers of people, a few thousand, can boost each other’s signals with likes and retweets to appear much more numerous and representative than they really are. The content they propagate can be intellectually dishonest and divorced from reality, but it won’t matter. Expertise, moderation and cogent arguments can be drowned out by the noise erupting from the most politically polarized factions in the country.
These dynamics are then exploited by political grifters on the fast track to fame. Any effort to humiliate the opposition will be rewarded by the partisan warriors. If it means digging up decade-old embarrassing tweets, then so be it. If it means slandering the Covington high-school students for the unspeakable sin of wearing Trump hats, then so be it. Without the right institutional structures and societal guardrails, the wrong people and messages rise to the top.
—Ethan Lamb, New York University, economics
Close Your Computer
When protesters shouted “We are the future!” at then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, he replied with a simple line: “I’m selling my bonds.” Today, when social-media mobs yell, “This is what democracy looks like!” I say, “I’m deleting my account.”
The culture of outrage-fueled denunciation is exhausting and dangerous. Many social-media platforms are arenas for blood sport, torpedoing careers and reputations. Empathy? The Twitterverse has never heard of it. Redemption? You’re an irredeemable fool for suggesting such a thing.
The domination of a few loud, nasty voices has made it particularly challenging for Americans to understand one another. In a world of routine, digitized shaming, misconceptions abound. Fortunately, social media is not America. Want to distance yourself from the vitriol? Close your computer—or, more to the point, delete your account. Read a book. Talk to your neighbors. You will find fulfillment not in piling on in the latest culture war, but in actively learning from those around you.
—Nicholas Tomaino, University of Michigan, public policy
Popular Justice, Isn’t
Social-media mobs bring to mind the terror unleashed in the French Revolution—the spontaneous, howling demands for justice, the speed and viciousness of the sentencing.
Consider the words of Maximilien Robespierre: “Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.”
In lieu of a guillotine, we now have the internet. In place of a human head on the chopping block, we have reputations. Be thankful for that, but this process of instant judgment proclaimed by the people is true to neither democracy nor justice. The accused deserve a fair trial, the benefit of the doubt and charity, not lasting public humiliation.
The greed for social justice, that lust for power, is unsustainable yet overpowering. That’s why even the best intentioned of mobs eventually turn on themselves, searching for a new king to topple. Don’t believe me? Look to Robespierre, who was executed in the same revolution he once championed, by the same mob he once led.
—Aaron Schnoor, Campbell University, trust and wealth management
Two Minutes Hate
The introduction of the printing press amplified the voice of the individual, driving world-historical changes, including the democratization of Christianity. The world gained a megaphone, with an explosive potential for both good and evil, which empowered those who used it effectively. Social media is likewise a megaphone—and it’s up for grabs.
Unfortunately, many social-media platforms seem to have been co-opted by the mob mentality and used for group shaming. One is reminded of the Two Minutes Hate in “1984,” as the cacophony of voices grows louder and more frenzied, each trying to make the most outrageous statement and outdo the last. In the mob’s wake, far from democratic unity, we find tightened circles of in-group loyalty and renewed aggression toward those outside the tribe.
—Caleb Kroese, Dordt College, mechanical engineering
Social Media vs. Democratic Moderation
In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville tells a story in which an irate group of citizens track down and kill the editor of a Baltimore newspaper. The editor’s crime? He published an unpopular opinion.
The anecdote marks an extreme, but reminds us that mob instinct has long been present in America. To an extent, we must learn to live with it. The democratic urge for all citizens to remain vigilant in defense of their freedom encourages fiery participation. America’s methodical political system tempers this instinct and facilitates a more deliberate form of politics.
Unfortunately, social media inhibits this curbing influence by giving an outsize voice to the loudest and most passionate participants, those most adept at “going viral.” A few well-worded tweets or posts can shape public opinion by giving the illusion that the author’s view represents the majority. Consequently, politicians and corporations are overeager to quiet the mob’s bellowing, harshly condemning the dissenting opinions that mobs seek to suppress.
A democracy can be rendered decidedly less functional if ideologies become entrenched through confirmation bias and polarization; if civil discourse is rejected in favor of vicious attacks launched from behind the phone screen; if a moral minority determines what speech is or isn’t acceptable for the entire populace.
Less social media—and less mob instinct—would be a welcome development in American politics.
—Anthony Ciaccio, Loyola University Maryland, political science
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