Stop using social media as an easy explanation for the violence at the Capitol

Barely hours after crowds rioters left the Capitol, commentators began formulating their responses to the extraordinary events of January 6th. Many of these focus on the role played by social media. “Internet platforms — FB, Instagram, Google, YouTube, Twitter, etc. — enabled this,” businessman and investor Roger McNamee said. “They amplified hate speech, disinformation, and conspiracy theories because it was profitable.”

On The Atlantic, meanwhile, one writer made the glib point that “the internet is real life.” A piece on Protocol made a similar point: social media platforms “know now, more than ever… what happens online doesn’t stay there. There’s just no denying it anymore.” Those are just a few examples. There are plenty of others out there, and the number will grow in the weeks to come.

The case against social media

Broadly, most of the arguments go like this: from the way the networks facilitate and encourage extremism to grow, to the simple fact that they (Twitter and Facebook) have provided Donald Trump with an immediately accessible platform to communicate without filter or, indeed, consequences, social media has been instrumental in setting forth a chain of events that led to a guy in viking headgear quite literally breaking into the centre of American politics.

I’m not going to pretend that none of this is true. It’s clear that social media platforms have teared the rule book to shreds when it comes to political communication. They’ve also failed to take responsibility for their place in the information ecosystem – and they should be held accountable. The fact that Twitter has suspended Trump isn’t a final nail in the coffin of the American far right. It’s simply the end of its first chapter.

And as the new chapter begins, we need to resist the urge to simply explain away far right extremism and violent populism by placing the blame on social media platforms. Platitudes that point out ‘the internet has consequences’ let people off the hook who really do have violent and fascistic intentions.

This means it’s important that we do more than just point the finger at tech bro billionaires (as appealing as that is). We need to ask where conspiracy theories emerge from, and what encourages aggressive nativist racist politics. For all their faults, it doesn’t start at Twitter and it doesn’t start at Facebook. Content agnosticism allows such perspectives to thrive, but it certainly didn’t invent them.

We also need to ask about the conditions that allow platforms to grow to such prominence in the first place. What makes them popular? Who really benefits from them? The likes of Zuckerberg and Dorsey need to take responsibility, but the suggestion that the buck stops with them is plainly daft.

The ascent of the far right has been a decades-long media spectacle

Broadly there are three key elements in helping us to understand the deep rooted causes of this absurd situation. The first is that white supremacy and far-right politics have always been embedded in US exceptionalism. The second is that this brand of politics has developed its own style and rhetoric that has allowed it to thrive across the media. Finally, the technocratic approach to politics that began in the nineties has been unable (or unwilling) to properly offer an alternative to this evolving spectacle of far right rhetoric and the beliefs that spread from it.

Although it might be tempting to think that right wing conspiracism was ushered in by new media, the talk radio boom nearly two decades ago could hardly be said to pull punches when it came to right wing politics. Sure, perhaps the lack of visuals made it somewhat less pugilistic and aggressive, but Rush Limbaugh and his hundreds of imitators around the U.S. set the template for the types of content and opinions that circulate across social media platforms today.

In an essay published in 2005 – around the time that most social media platforms were launching as mere internet curiosities – David Foster Wallace takes a close look at the conservative talk radio phenomenon. Reading it is striking – the parallels with today underline that our sense of historical exceptionalism demands reflection.

With some 1,400 US stations now broadcasting talk radio, with 14.5 million regular listeners to Limbaugh and 11 million to Hannity, 2.5 million each to Boortz and Gallagher, and well over a million each day to Liddy, Humphries, Medved, and Ingraham, part of what is so unsettling to liberals and moderates is that it is unclear whether (a) political talk radio is merely serving up right wingers their daily ration of red meat, or (b) it’s functioning as propaganda that causes undecided listeners to become more conservative because the hosts are such seductive polemicists, or (c) both.

Given how events panned out 15 years after this was published, it’s not unreasonable to suggest that (c) was the correct interpretation. Neither is it unreasonable to suggest that this pre-social media landscape helped to foment the conditions for Trumpism and the mainstreaming of far right politics.

Wallace also notes an irony that continues today: “the increasing control of US mass media by a mere handful of corporations has created a situation of extreme fragmentation, a kaleidoscope of information options.” Our sense of historical exceptionalism, then, is misguided.

Wallace’s argument develops to suggest that this fragmentation and proliferation of news media demands a level of editorializing and commentary that talk radio is built for. He describes this as the ‘meta-media’ or ‘the explaining industry’. We rarely think in those sorts of terms today, preferring instead to focus on the veracity of information – is something true or false? Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, most of the problems we face today aren’t so much about accuracy, but more about intent – the politics behind editorial curation and commentary.

To reiterate: the media landscape as we know it today has been decades in the making. Social media platforms merely ratified the dominance of conservative voices, all of which expressed beliefs that are deep rooted within American culture and politics. Pretending anything different is revisionism, and lets right wingers of the 9/11 era off the hook.

Okay, but what about the impact of the ad-driven model of digital publishing?

Of course, the way social media has facilitated the continuing growth of far-right media can’t be overlooked. The ad-driven model of publishing has pushed publications to move towards more extreme views in a bid to win attention from people with an increasing array of options when it comes to news and entertainment. Modern analytics makes audience engagement even more pressurized, while also giving media companies the ability to target users in a more precise manner. Messages can be better tailored, but they also need to be shown to deliver attention at the drop of a hat.

From this perspective, yes, social media platforms have made the media ecosystem toxic in a way that it probably wasn’t back in 2005. But let’s not pretend that far more belligerent actors have been looking to exploit discontent, fear, and ignorance to shore up their wealth and power for years. They saw the hubris and naivety of companies like Facebook and Twitter and took their chance.

Technocrats can’t communicate

But what of that final element: the failure of liberal technocrats? While part of the explanation might stem from the fact that mainstream liberals have struggled to really build a rhetoric that speaks to individuals – one which grants them agency, and tells them their struggles and emotions are real – we probably need to go deeper and look at how they failed to restore any economic basis for social solidarity after the Reagan years. The atomization that was crucial to the society that emerged in the 1980s was never really challenged. This allowed players in a fragmented media and information landscape to exploit feelings of isolation and social estrangement years after the concrete reality of those solidarities receded into memory.

Although recent years have seen left voices begin to better utilise the opportunities afforded by new media, established mainstream progressives have been wallowing in nostalgia for institutional renewal. In other words, pining after some kind of imagined ‘civility’ and seriousness.

We need to refuse easy explanations about the rise of the far right

What do we do about all this? That’s a different discussion. But we need to start by refusing easy explanations. The platforms and technologies that structure social relationships matter, but we can’t forget that there are people, politics, and ideas working within them.