Election result reflects the ascending power of social media

Social network feeds were filled with partisan news, conspiracies and fake articles

LOS ANGELES— Hillary Clinton was the choice of nearly every American newspaper editorial board. It didn’t matter.

When it comes to influencing pub- lic opinion, the 2016 presidential election demonstrated with sobering effect the weakening role of traditional media and the ascendant power of social networks like Facebook.

Forty-four per cent of Americans get their news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, filling a void left by the declining ranks of newspapers. By comparison, only two in 10 U.S. adults get news from print newspapers today.

The consequences of Facebook’s growing sway became clear during an election cycle that saw the rise of partisan news, conspiracies, fake articles and a winning candidate who fully embraced social media as a way to circumvent the media establishment and its proclivity for checking facts. The problem with rumours and fake news grew so acute that President Barack Obama felt the need to address it at a Clinton rally Monday in Michigan.

“And people, if they just repeat attacks enough, and outright lies over and over again, as long as it’s on Facebook and people can see it, as long as it’s on social media, people start believing it. And it creates this dust cloud of nonsense,” he said.

The question now is whether Facebook and other social-media platforms have the responsibility to stop, or at least identify to readers, phoney news. That’s eliciting some reflection in Silicon Valley, which has always advocated a laissez-faire approach to information.

Facebook has long argued that its news feed is a reflection of a user’s wider world. The company said Wednesday it would continue to tweak its news feed algorithm, but declined to address bogus journalism on its platform.