This essay interprets the schism in American society by linking it directly to political confrontation in social media. The aim of this work is to try to form an objective unbiased idea of what modern political censorship in social networks is. Mutual misunderstandings between the citizens of American society are rooted in excessive measures to censor conservative media, as a result of which the right to free speech is hurt. The reason for the disunity of society is how often political contradictions express themselves in the media, which is both overflowing with information and subjectively censoring it.
The lengthy process to ban radical speech on social media began after the storming of the Capitol Building by supporters of former President Donald Trump. This event is largely due not only to civic activism, but also to waves of disinformation on social networks, some of which are on the responsibility of Trump himself. The possibility of anti-state riots inspired by information on social media has forced large corporations to use a tougher strategy to combat such statements (Castillo, 2021). Trump’s own account was blocked, and from that moment a legal battle began with conservative platforms.
There are two points of view on this problem. On the one hand, Republicans still have the right to speak out, as they do not find themselves completely isolated from the Internet as a giant platform. On the other hand, this situation can be interpreted as a direct encroachment on freedom of speech. The unfair distribution of space for public expression speaks of political opposition that can take place both because of the danger of the disseminated information, and simply because of the struggle between two political camps. The division of a nation thus turns out to be interconnected with a split in the information field. The media agents themselves are fighting for supremacy. Liberal media and network technologists in the context of the United States are presented as a kind of totalitarians who own a monopoly on a single information narrative. On the other hand, there is a conservative camp of political thought, which positions itself as marginalized precisely because it says the blatant truth. This situation really speaks of a confrontation in the space of political thought and culture – and this cannot cause cognitive dissonance in the American nation.
In the context of the current unstable situation of a pandemic, the problem of access to verified information becomes even more problematic. On the one hand, Internet resources do promote specific political worldviews, isolating and denying access to audiences for a large number of conservative media outlets. It can be assumed that this restriction on freedom of information leads to a lack of knowledge and multilateral understanding of many political contexts. The number of protests, looting, and violent civil demonstrations did increase in the pandemic era. This can be attributed to the retention of information by media holdings.
However, on the other hand, many conservative media do disseminate fake news, that is, knowingly false information produced for purely political purposes. Given the aggressive nature of many conservative political public actions, such as the storming of Capitol, it can be assumed that fake news still serves as a catalyst for such behavior. The impression is that the lack of false information cannot be the cause of political rebellion in and of itself. On the contrary, the presence of compromising news or provoking protest behavior does indeed have the potential to control the frustrated and aggressive masses. Indeed, it is rather misinformation if the lack of news on certain subjects can induce citizens to rebel behavior.
Pandemic reality at the moment is an extremely fragmented social space. But this is precisely the moment when the American people need unity for the sake of common goals most of all. Anti-conservative censorship is primarily aimed at removing radical ideas from the civic consciousness. Most of all, this activity justifies itself when it comes to the need for vaccination. For many conservative media outlets, the vaccine is one of the main topics of speculation. It seems that creating a mythical panic around vaccinations is a way of psychological manipulation. The fear of the unknown generates potential discomfort in any civil society. When combined with conspiracy theories designed to accommodate an anti-liberal narrative, anti-vaccination messages have the effect of a charged bomb. The division of the nation is actually facilitated not only by censorship in the media, but also those conspiracy theories with which it fights.
It can be assumed that by responding with aggression to aggression, that is, displacing conservative media and fields of public space, Big Tech corporations are doing themselves a disservice. Taboo, forbidden information, especially in the context of the modern, almost transparent world, can be perceived as a special value against which dishonest censorship fights. At the same time, the struggle of Internet corporations with conservative media really has an impressive, seemingly excessive scale. Statistically, the blocking of conservative media and restricting their access to the audience happens dozens of times more often than liberal ones (Parrott, 2021). In general, the split of opinions within the country seems to be directly related to the confrontation overdue in politics and the media between the opposing parties.
It would probably make sense to tie the increased level of censorship to the dominance of incumbent President Joe Biden. The recent pressure on the Facebook office is proof of this. According to the president’s initial statement, which was later withdrawn, Facebook disinformation about COVID is literally killing people (BBC News, 2021). The president’s argument would have seemed weightier if there was no context for the enormous pressure that is being exerted on the media representatives of the party opposing him. In such a situation, it is not surprising that the level of mistrust in the established state system, which had previously been destabilized by information wars during the Trump administration, only continues to grow.
Information gradually becomes less reliable or credible due to perceptions that large platforms are integrating it into one ideological narrative. Comparison of the corporate platform Google and the independent search engine DuckDuckGo demonstrates this difference in the selection and organization of results. The political use of Google search algorithms was recorded back in 2018 (Tiku, 2018). People may simply not know that the information available to them is carefully filtered, which is certainly a reason for distrust of large platforms.
Thus, the split within American society can be connected with political opposition, which is only periodically associated with the struggle for the truth of the information provided to the public. The fight against online disinformation is currently criticized as totalitarian precisely because of the connection between conservative ideology and the spread of anti-virus fakes. While some conservatives do indeed use vaccine myths as a way to spread panic, government-sponsored media filter information for this reason in ways that ideologize their narrative. The split in the nation and its division in this way is also the division artificially created in the minds of its representatives. The right to freely express and evaluate information should be assigned primarily to the citizen and not to the system. Opposing this right, statesmen continue to increase the distance between themselves and the people.
References
BBC News. (2021). Covid misinformation on Facebook is killing people – Biden. Web.
Castillo, M. (2021). Misinformation increased after Capitol riots despite social media bans. Cheddar News, Web.
Parrott, J. (2021). Conservatives & social media: Are free speech rights being violated? DeseretNews, Web.
Tiku, N. (2018). Study revives debate about Google’s role in filter bubbles. Wired, Web.