As the internet has progressed over recent decades, so has its involvement in our lives. Social media has boomed into platforms that have tremendous influence on everything in society, including politics.
We see politicians, news channels, and legislation ideas all the time when we open any social media platform.
As social media progresses in society we see what is happening with politics in real time, and we also see every different point of view on different political topics. Social media was created with the goal of entertainment, so when topics and ideas are being spread it triggers some form of entertainment for people.
Social media is similar to the telephone game, where one person says something and by the end a completely different idea has been spun. Misinformation is abundant when you enter any social media platform for this reason.
The ability for misinformation to spread like wildfire online has caused a massive amount of political divide throughout the country. People share things on social media that are extreme or shocking because that is what people find entertaining, so as those ideas become more shared they gain influence and people become more exposed to them.
They become more normalized and widespread and the idea of political parties becomes less of a central or general idea of what they may believe to these harsh, specific ideas that somebody has to believe because they are a part of a certain political party.
With the mesh between social media and politics, there has been this new wave of celebrity turned politicians, which in the long run I think will severely hurt politics. It has been shown with Kayne West running for president in 2020, and in current elections where Dr. Oz, the former host of the Dr. Oz Show, running for senate in Pennsylvania.
This shift in political candidates is causing people whose job was to entertain to now people who plan to run the country. It takes people who have little to no political experience and throws them into politics, where they have an advantage by their name, not by ability to actually contribute to politics.
People look up to celebrities and have the ability to be influenced by celebrities more than anyone else, so when they take a turn into politics people have a tendency to push aside and not look into their real ideas but gravitate towards a recognizable name.
Social media is a place that breeds extremism. As time has gone on politics has also become so extreme and divided, that people now go to social media as a way to re-enforce their ideas.
As the social media and politics become extreme separately, they have started to blend over since people have begun to share their views more and more on social media.
Social media’s new position in our life has also taken a large stance in politics causing an influence that is doing more harm than good. This shift with social media has made it so that ideas spread at an exponential rate with the goal of causing outrage.
