This Just In – Reflecting on the 2021 American Insurrection

Well that escalated quickly

I’ve just finished reading Isoifidis & Nicoli (2019), Johnson (2018), Xu & Saxton (2018) and Rampersad & Althiyabi (2020) and let me tell you, I am shook!

Firstly, there’s this idea rolling around in my mind that:

• the cycle of becoming more open and more progressive as a society has
• spurned the creation of and an increase in our social media use and platforms which have been
• subverted by deliberate misinformation, ‘deep fake’ propaganda and advertising, scams and attempts to steal identities and fraud, which in turn has
• created or strengthened a ‘populist culture‘ who are disconnected from real-life human connections in their personal lives and who
• find connections in and devotedly follow misinformation groups like ‘QAnon‘ (or perhaps the ‘MAGA‘ supporters) and who then
• do wildly subversive things like commit domestic terrorist acts of violence and insurrection at the American capital and similar acts all over the world,
• followed by claims that the ‘Black Lives Matter’ or ‘Antifa‘ groups were responsible for actions from what were clearly ‘QAnon’ or ‘MAGA’ supporters. (And why am I using the word ‘supporters’ rather than ‘fanatics?’ I want to be impartial. Yet, we are not discussing sporting teams, but more the socially de-railed and disenfranchised).

In fact, just typing the misinformation groups into this post sends shivers up my spine and I am at a loss at how to help solve what has become a terrible global situation. The Iosifidis & Nicoli (2019) research was particularly prophetic, pointing out that social media platforms would not be able to do the culling of misinformation and violent / violence promoting groups or individuals and that governments will need to step in to legislate means to protect the majority from these sorts of acts of the minority. Yet, if governments step in, they will try to control the information to suit their own ends. They will try to propagate their own power and profit, we know enough about history to know this to be true.

It’s a sticky situation! And just like I was glad that I was taking Digital Citizenship during the COVID outbreak, so too am I glad that I am taking INF506 in the social media outbreak of 2021! I am definitely going to include discussions on building relationships offline, how to build information literacy skills and how to use social media in a healthy way into my library lessons in the future.

References

Iosifidis, P., & Nicoli, N. (2019). The battle to end fake news: A qualitative content analysis of Facebook announcements on how it combats disinformation. International Communication Gazette, 82(1), 60-81. doi: 10.1177/1748048519880729

Johnson, B. (2018). Archiving Al Qaeda- The role of libraries in protecting free speech and open systems. Computers in Libraries, 38(7), 22-25.

Rampersad, G., & Althiyabi, T. (2020). Fake news- Acceptance by demographics and culture on social media. Journal of Information Technology & Politics, 17(1), 1-11. doi: https-//doi.org/10.1080/19331681.2019.1686676

Xu, W., & Saxton, G. D. (2018). Does stakeholder engagement pay off on social media? A social capital perspective. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 48(1), 28-49. doi:10.1177/0899764018791267