What are Facebook and other social media doing about Donald Trump?
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/06/donald-trump-facebook-social-media-tv
Google is investing in tools to help bring more facts to the fore and backing projects to build “trust in media”, Facebook and Twitter talk openly about wanting to promote higher quality information through better curation or algorithms. However the point Rushkoff makes is the right one: the quest for “sharing”, “likes” and opinion favours feelings over facts every time. Digitally native outlets themselves fashion headlines of the “you’ll never guess” nature to engage Generation Swipe Left (or millennials as they are more often known). The question then that we ought to be asking is: “What is Facebook (or your social platform of choice) going to do about Donald Trump?”.
- It is the same question that Arthur Brisbane, the former public editor of the New York Times, wrote in a column asking if journalists ought to be “truth vigilantes”. What he meant was, should reporters report something even if they know it to be false?
- “On the internet, information streams can be isolated, almost meaninglessly decontextualised triggers
- $217,000 on broadcast advertising, compared to the eye-watering $28.9m spent by Jeb Bush, currently languishing at 3% of the poll compared with Trump’s 36%.
There is not yet any real danger of him being elected president. The questions raised by the mechanics of his campaign, however, and what it means for the future of news, are going to be with us for some time to come.
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