The Online Battle for Public Opinion

The online battle for public opinion can be defined as the struggle of individuals, businesses or other organizations to influence or form public opinions, beliefs or prejudices through online platforms or other forms of social media. There are many key factors that contribute to the online battle for public opinion. This can range from the spread of misinformation, targeted advertising ad discussing a certain viewpoint or idea, or even the use of bots and trolls. To take a deeper look, I'd like to focus on the spread of misinformation and the use of bots and trolls. As we read in our textbook, Fareed Zakaria shared his story of being trolled on the internet. To give a quick recap, it started with an obscure website publishing a post that was not based in facts. This post lead to a downward spiral of other people online posting and tweeting, jumping on the bandwagon. Zakaria emphasizes, "It would have taken a minute to click on the link and see that the original post was on a fake news site, one that claims to be satirical". The reaction to the post shows how quickly people can take something and run with it, with what seems to be no critical thinking or desire to check if the post was based in reality. Another caveat that contributes to the online battle is the use of internet trolls. Internet trolls use many different tactics to gain reach: amplification through social media, hashtag hijacking, emotional manipulation, astroturfing, targeting influential individuals, creating and spreading memes, deep fakes and manipulated media, or exploiting existing divisions (Global Investigative Journalism Network, 2023). This article describes how trolls can skew a certain agenda or belief into one way, benefitting a political leader or organization for example. These factors greatly affect our society, democracy and interpersonal relationships almost in the same way, it let's false information and hate take over without seeing things for how they actually are. Some arguments aren't based in reality and come out of falsehood. One example of what one could call an successful use of trolling is the 2016 election, where a Russian troll factory started a campaign to undermine the Clinton campaign (NPR, 2018). This caused a major uprise and greatly affected the election as a whole. When participating in this battle I believe it is important that we do our own extensive research to make sure that the things we agree with or believe in are based in facts and reality, and not manipulated in order to sway opinions.

Sources:

https://gijn.org/resource/investigating-digital-threats-trolling-campaigns/

https://www.npr.org/2018/02/22/587921536/how-a-russian-troll-factory-waged-an-aggressive-campaign-to-disrupt-the-u-s-elec