Why we should blame social media for Brexit and Trump train wrecks

Since the emergence of the smartphone, society has begun to experience high levels of activism, writes Conor Skehan

WE are currently watching the runaway trains that are Brexit and the Trump presidency as they become train-wrecks. How can this have happened?

Brexit was voted for by over 17m citizens of one of history’s most remarkable nations. Donald Trump was elected by 62.9m of the most decent, hard-working people in the world. These are not stupid people. If it could happen to them, it could happen to us. We need to understand how the politics of two apparently stable democracies became runaway trains in a period of less than three years.

A ‘runaway reaction’ occurs when an increase in energy changes the conditions in a way that causes a further increase of energy, like a firestorm when a forest fire grows so hot that it creates its own winds that fan the flames even higher. This is the force that destroys stars — when a supernova occurs — or when a nuclear reactor’s controls fail, like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

Over the last five years, society seems to have begun to experience a series of such runaway reactions, seemingly out of the blue, involving issues and opinions that have suddenly developed energetic momentum, like a firestorm, often leading abruptly to high levels of activism, seeking to have their objectives implemented.

These runaway reactions are all characterised by a rapid mobilisation of a large section of the population demanding that established practices should be changed to satisfy their demands.

They usually identify a great wrong that needs to be addressed — an unmet universal right or entitlement or a grave injustice. Usually the proponents argue that they are speaking for everybody; that the evidence is clear; that the time for discussion is over because without urgent action there is no hope of improvement.

These reactions are usually highly polarising — leading to, or requiring, identification with the opinion-holders or risking becoming the subject of vilification.

Evidence to support any other point of view can be strongly suppressed by opinions and emotions — and holders of opposing views, labelled ‘contrarians’, are subjected to immediate ad hominem attacks, playing the man and not the ball, in sports parlance.

Examples include Trumpism (2016), Brexit (2016), #MeToo (2017) Independence for Catalonia (2017), Yellow Vests (2018), Extinction Rebellion (2019), Hong Kong protests (2019), or more recently the Chilean cost of living protests.

What made all of these upheavals happen, all in the same short period of time, in such widely separated places about such very different causes? Where did people get such ideas and how did the ideas spread so very rapidly? Did the media have a role?

Though having no formal powers, the media is very powerful. It is estimated that there are around 18,000 newspapers in the world, selling around 500m copies every day.

Furthermore, there are around 33,000 TV stations and, globally, more than 1.4bn households that now own at least one TV set. Finally, there are around 44,000 radio stations in the world, estimated to reach over 70pc of the world’s population.

The smartphone was released in 2007 — five years later over a quarter of a billion had been sold globally.

Today, there are 3.3bn — over 40pc of the world’s population have smartphones, used for social media by one-in-three people in the world (Facebook alone has over 2.2bn users).

What are they looking at and who are they listening to?

There are over 1.6bn websites in the world, with more than 500m blogs with over two million daily posts — 20 times more than the combined broadcasts of all of the newspapers, TV and radio stations in the world. A lot of these sites have no editors and no fact-checkers.

So, if the media has a role to play — it would appear that traditional media can only share a very small part of any blame. Social media, it seems, can be remarkably effective at drowning out the real world. Look at the recent march in London against Brexit, one of the biggest in British history, with almost a million people on the streets. It was completely ignored both by large sections of the media and by the UK government itself. Perhaps those people would have been more effective if they had stayed at home and blogged?

There is less truth online than many realise.

This can be confirmed by the simple party-trick of asking a room full of people with smartphones to each search for the word ‘hotel’ and to see the range of different suggestions different people get — each fuelled by a search engine’s ability to detect the phone’s price (and the owner’s supposed income).

All online facts need to be treated with the greatest caution. This would be fun except that an increasing number of people now turn to social media for news as well as facts.

It appears that social media, especially when used for news, may be a significant factor in contributing to the emergence of the type train wrecks caused by runaway reactions that have occurred around the world since the advent of the smartphone.

There is hope. It is true that the internet and social media are dangerous, but useful too. When cars were new, they were deemed so dangerous that each had to be preceded by a man carrying a red flag.

Since the UK’s Red Flag Act of 1865 we have learned to better harness the benefits offered by cars while reducing risks to acceptable levels, though cars still kill over one million people around the world every year.

The internet and social media will always be useful, but dangerous. We are starting to develop rules for safer social media and internet use. We need media that we can trust.

The late 18th century was another time of great social upheaval, facilitated by the rise of literacy and the printed press. It was a time of ‘pamphleteers’ — some were visionaries, some were scoundrels. John Philpot Curran proposed a cure, still relevant today, at a speech in Dublin in 1790 in which he said: “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.”

We need rules for providers as well as rules for users. The most obvious and fundamental change must be the removal of anonymity, users must be clearly identified and accountable — just like a car registration number. Providers will need to be governed to identify and remove the access of the ‘amplifiers’ who deliberately and systematically produce fake and malicious news — in the same way that there are rules about false advertising.

The biggest change, however, needs to be in our own behaviour. This can only begin by cultivating an awareness of the potential threats of social media, in the same way that we are beginning to become aware of the risks of unrestricted online access to minors. We need to learn to develop the reflex of mis trustfulness of online information and opinions.

The 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that in Ireland trust levels in traditional media remain high at 62pc, whereas trust in social media remains low at 27pc — a healthy state of affairs — but it is still worrying that nearly 40pc do not trust traditional media.

The Royal Society — Britain’s oldest scientific institution, founded in 1660 — has its motto ‘Nullis in verba’, which advises us to take nobody’s word for it — to question everything.

We should never trust anyone who advises us not to ask questions.

‘We need rules for providers as well as users’