Power, how much, or how little we have, shapes our view of social networks, writes Hanna Chalmers for Research-Live.
Former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt recently described social networks as serving as “amplifiers for idiots and crazy people”. This comment marked the apex of a growing concern, panic even, about the damaging effects of social media on culture and society – particularly in relation to the most recent elections in the UK and the US, and of course, around the pandemic and the spread of conspiracy theories and fake news.
But alongside really valid and important questions about how we control misinformation, or how algorithmic tendencies to harden our belief systems, there is something else present in the way in which social media is often talked about. Read on…
