A ‘democratisation’ that is more a fallacy

Source– The post is based on the article “A ‘democratisation’ that is more a fallacy” published in The Hindu on 18th February 2023.

Syllabus: GS1- Society

Relevance: Impacts of changing social media landscape

News- The Social media has democratised self-expression. But, it has mixed effects on the public sphere.

How has the social media landscape changed in recent times?

There is a trend towards increasing brevity and homogeneity.

The early days of online discourse centred around long-form text on blogs and message boards. It required conscious engagement from the writer and the reader. The reader spent time reading and making her/his own expression in her own words.

With the advent of social media, long-form text has changed to shorter versions. There is a shift from posts to tweets to retweets, likes, memes, and emojis.

One of the most striking things about online communication is little speaking by people.

Social media also forces brevity(accurate and shorter expressions) due to its format and the larger ecosystem associated with it.

What are the impacts of social media  on different spheres of life?

It puts constraints on the possibilities of what can be said. This limits the scope of self-expression.

The incentives of social media privileges antagonism, outrage over dialogue and reason. It compels individuals to become more antagonistic and outrageous. The effect is that the medium dictates the message.

The ability of social media platforms for short messaging is impacting the “creator economy”. In order to improve user engagement, social media platforms have started compensating users for original audiovisual content.

Platforms have increasingly moved to shorter video formats ranging from 15 to 60 seconds. There are many reports of creators trying to hack the algorithms.

With the emergence of generative AI such as ChatGPT for text and images, there is a high possibility that “self-expression” will be further diminished. It will  make it easy to generate content without requiring the individual to apply herself in any meaningful manner.