Has anyone noticed since politics has become a hot topic for social media sites that things have gone to the extreme? Constant ads, comments from those in the running, updates from every political party and blow upon blow from one opponent to the other? The way in which we handle most political uprisings now are through our multiple social platforms and many news sources. As much as I would love to say none of these sites are biased, this simply is not true.
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SNAPCHAT: According to Business of apps, “Snapchat North American DAUs accounted for 83 million” DAUs being daily active users. That is a lot of people being exposed to Snapchats explore page which does have political ads and updates on drama within the political field. Just today, there is a story that The Washington Post made explaining the entire timeline of Trump's mistakes during the Coronavirus outbreak. Now, although this is an opinion piece, it wasn’t meant to be. The language being used within the snap story is definitely something I wouldn't consider to be unbiased by any means and popular apps like Snapchat are influential. If 83 million active accounts are looking at this snap story, that means that 83 million active accounts are being influenced by biased media. Snapchat had been known to be more left leaning than other apps but could this be because of the targeted audience? Typically the younger generations (young millennials and Gen Z) are the people more likely to be active on their accounts, that also means the younger generations are being fed different information. |
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FACEBOOK: To counter Snapchat and their left leaning bias snap stories, we have Facebook. Ah, yes. The center of allllll means of connection. Facebook is where we have all of our family, our bosses, old teachers and a lot of our moms friends asking to be our friend. This is where we choose carefully what is acceptable and what is not acceptable only, it's not. There have been countless times in which there was a political ad, typically right leaning, to vote for our president. Fox News is all over Facebook, as if it was the Holy Grail of news sources, and as we all know Fox is definitely more right leaning. Now, as mentioned above in the Snapchat section, this is all most likely because of the targeted audience. On Snapchat the bigger audience is younger generations that typically are left leaning. This is quite the opposite for Facebook. There is a much older demographic on Facebook than on Snapchat, like I said earlier this is all family members grandmas, grandpas, moms, dads, uncles, cousins, bosses, co-workers...the list goes on and on. According to Statista, there are “almost 2.5 billion monthly active users” on facebook. That is significantly higher than Snapchat and with the amount of political ads being thrown left and right on this particular platform, it is easy to see why the older generations are more right leaning than younger generations who lean left.
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TWITTER: Yes, it has come to this infamous app. I have previously mentioned two really popular apps in which the age gap is pretty large and the political biases are opposite of one another. Over the years, Twitter has become the place for immediate communication between the President and the people. This trend started surfacing during the Obama administration, with encouraging updates to political issues. It seems to have taken over during the Trump administration, tweeting almost daily. These tweets range anywhere from side comments about political issues to completely inappropriate language for a president to use. This is a new trend that we haven’t seen in our history before and although this seems less professional than letting various news sources hash it out for rights of the same information, this is a direct source of information that the world hasn’t seemed to have a grasp of. Imagine the amount of information the public could have without the middleman making the information screwed, creating bias apps. Imagine being able to have word for word what is happening, who is doing what and what is happening from the government itself.
I think what I am trying to say is the middleman (various news sources), makes the story they heard their own version which influences different groups of people depending on the app. Fox news is just a news source, like any other business looking for revenue. This stands for all news sources that are still running like any other business, looking to make a profit on their end, no matter the consequences. They are being paid for headlines and controversy, bad publicity is still publicity and even through things like political campaigns, the end game is still just winning. Nothing more and definitely nothing less. Making sure that everyone is making money and making it to the top is the goal even for politicians. Although there are plenty of social media sites that change the story, I chose to only list those two because these are the apps that I have experienced the most issues with. It’s not the politics we don't like, it’s the news sources we see.
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