Reader Beware: Consider the Source

The aftermath of last year's presidential elections brought a running conversation on the role played by "fake news" that was largely presented via social media. A thoughtful editorial on The New York Times' website discussed how such deception could have impacted the election.¹

The author cites two studies supporting her theory that social media (Facebook in particular) could be utilized to impact the election process and conceivably the results. Setting aside the issue of manipulating an election, these two studies present some sobering truths about social media and how it can be used to influence readers.

The first study was published in 2012 by researchers working with Facebook. It involved voting messages to "61 million users in the United States right before the midterm elections." Users were encouraged to vote using either a plain message or one with pictures of Facebook friends. The authors noted, "Our results suggest that the Facebook social message increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly through social contagion by another 280,000 voters, for a total of 340,000 additional votes."

The authors concluded: "[T]he results show that the messages directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. Furthermore, the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends. The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves, and nearly all the transmission occurred between 'close friends' who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship."²

In the second study, Facebook's "Core Data Science Team" tested whether they could manipulate the emotions of their users by increasing and decreasing the positive and negative posts on their newsfeed. The authors noted:

"[I]n an experiment with people who use Facebook, we test whether emotional contagion occurs outside of in-person interaction between individuals by reducing the amount of emotional content in the News Feed. When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks."³

When challenged by critics that these "fake news" posts impacted the election, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted in his own post:

"The problems here are complex, both technically and philosophically. We believe in giving people a voice, which means erring on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible. We need to be careful not to discourage sharing of opinions or to mistakenly restrict accurate content. We do not want to be arbiters of truth ourselves, but instead rely on our community and trusted third parties."⁴

All of the above leaves the average reader in a bit of a quandary about what to believe. We have always known the media has the power to influence the way people think. But journalistic integrity has been replaced by unaccountable posters who are using the generally unrestricted power of social media for their own designs – a power Facebook has shown can impact actions and influence emotions.

Sadly, we see some of this in our own profession. There is a tendency to want to overstate research results in order to support the effectiveness of chiropractic in general or a specific viewpoint related to a particular approach. While I am adamant in my belief that chiropractic care is key to wellness, I am sharply aware (and have been for almost six decades) that much of what I believe is not currently supported by viable studies.

Yes, there have been numerous times in my life when new findings have edified my understanding of how chiropractic works. But silence in the literature doesn't change what I have come to know as a 61-year chiropractic patient.

All of which brings us to an old adage that is true now more than it ever was, regardless of whether it applies to political "news" or chiropractic research: "Consider the source." Not every voice is trustworthy.

References

1. Tufekci Z. "Mark Zuckerberg Is in Denial." The New York Times, Nov. 15, 2016.
2. Bond RM, Fariss CJ, Jones JJ, et al. A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization. Nature, 2012 Sep 13;489:295-298.
3. Kramer ADI, Guillory JE, Hancock JT. Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks. Proc Natl Acad Sci (USA); 2014 Jun 2;111:8788-8790.
4. Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg, Nov. 18, 2016, 9:15 p.m.

Read more findings on my blog: http://blog.toyourhealth.com/wrblog/. You can also visit me on Facebook.