Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss
How Has The Online Landscape Transformed the Dynamics of Public Opinion Formation and Communication Strategies?
As I find myself spending a lot of time on social media platforms like X (formerly twitter) or TikTok, I have also come to notice the difference in how people argue online compared to debates or arguments you would see in person. I see a common theme of logical fallacies being present when it comes to online communication on social media platforms.
The use of communication fallacies create an untrustworthy platform for communication and makes it so hard to believe anything you see on social media these days. I would like to talk about the presence of the ad hominem fallacy as well as bandwagon as I feel those are two of the most commonly seen on social media. Personal attacks are easy to be made as all you need to do is hide behind a screen and stay anonymous. How would anyone ever find out it was you? This then creates a sort of fear of getting “attacked” by someone online for simply stating your own opinion that differs from others. This could lead to someone wanting to agree with the majority, jumping on the bandwagon, to avoid getting attacked. They would rather put on a mask than stand strong on their own opinions. Authenticity is very rare and hard to find now on social media. Good arguments pay attention to their audience and purpose and put a big emphasis on using logic and reasoning to back up your points (Campbell 2014). The lack of logic and reasoning in online communication makes it difficult to trust everything you see or read.
Having easy and immediate access to other people’s opinions takes away from the opportunity to formulate your own and think for yourself what you really think as an individual with unique thoughts. In addition, short videos like the ones you see on TikTok have taken over a lot of social media. These videos get straight to the point and as soon as you lose interest, a simple scroll down brings a whole new experience to you immediately. Unfortunately, exposure to these short videos can bring down your attention span which takes away from the value of movies and books that require a little bit more attention and thought than those simple videos that give you all the information you need to know immediately.
How do the Narrative Paradigm and Gatekeeping Theories Apply to These Platforms?
With the narrative paradigm, I’m sure we’ve all seen at least one video on say TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube shorts, or any platform with short from videos, where someone is telling a super captivating story and just before it gets to the climax they hit you with the “check part two for the rest!” and so you go to their account and part two is nowhere to be seen. Was the whole story made up? Was it all just for traction? You start to get suspicious and distrust almost anything you see online. All the components of the narrative paradigm (coherence, fidelity, and rationality) are easily disregarded when story telling online.
The gatekeeping theory describes the filtering of information, before it reaches its audience. Social media platforms create an algorithm designed specifically for you based on content that you’ve shown interest in before. This can lead to algorithmic gatekeeping, where content shown to people are only based off of engagement and activity rather than truthfulness and reliability. Deleting and blocking certain comments that may be trying to prove someone spreading misinformation wrong, using proper evidence and research, would also be considered filtering of content and gatekeeping true information. The term “gaslighting” could also be used to described this phenomenon.
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