What data reveals, next episode. A social media survey in the U.S. throws a harsh spotlight on the negative social consequences that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter & Co. trigger according to their own users. Those who do not want to watch the disintegration of societies through social media inactively can learn from the study: We need differently constituted new media. Why not a "social digital economy"?
Bob Hoffman is an institution in the media industry. His newsletter The Ad Contrarian is recommendable, his style not necessarily. What he means has substance. He has built it up over decades, in media consulting (TV consulting) for the very big US advertisers. From Hoffman's newsletter comes the reference to current results of the annual "National NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll."
The result of an annual survey on social media
The representative telephone survey of U.S. Americans by two institutes revealed a clear picture. One of the study leaders explains:
"If Americans had to rate their "social media" like they do on Yelp, the majority would give zero stars"
You don't necessarily have to agree with this pointed summary. Nevertheless, the results are a clear call to change something and to stop letting the operators of social media platforms run their course unregulated.
- 70% of US Americans use social media on a daily basis.
- 57% say social media tends to divide us (35% think it brings us together)
- 82% think social media wastes our time (15% think it helps use time better)
- 55% accuse social media of spreading falsehoods and lies (31% think it's news and information)
- 61% of Americans think social media spreads unfair attacks and rumors (32% think it helps hold public institutions and businesses accountable)
A suggestion for what new media could be oriented towards
Where there is danger, there also grows what can be saved. So if you take a closer look at the results, you can use them to diagnose problems and derive possible therapies. That's what we're trying to do in this chart. It's a suggestion of what newly written media could use as a guide.
There is no way around more control
One thing is clear, social media should not continue to be so inadequately regulated. We need more control. Anyone who denigrates control as censorship, as many Twitter kings do, is disregarding democracy, in which rules and organs of control must be embedded. At least, that's the case here.
But disregarded democracy does not exist everywhere. China, above all other countries, shows what horror scenarios authoritarian and non-democratically controlled social media can lead to. No travel, no job, no apartment, no insurance, in jail - for lack of compliant social media behavior. This is not a misuse of Internet technology, it is its misuse in the original military purpose, but without embedding it in a democratic constitution.
The danger of democratic societies being dismantled is therefore inherent in technology. Those who want to dismantle them need only encourage as many small groups as possible to form identities and protest on inadequately controlled social media platforms - regardless of what they are for or against. Nothing else was the result of the US Senate's investigation of Russian manipulation of the US election campaign.
Bring on social media written differently!
So we need new, differently structured media. How about a "social digital economy" that balances different social interests as successfully as the social market economy?