Path to Civil Conversations on Social Media

    To many of us including myself, social media is/should be designed for users to express their beliefs and opinions in a way that is civil. While it sounds easier said than done, the ability to have meaningful conversations with people with different viewpoints allows for a collective society to grow is extremely beneficial. As I have mentioned before, political polarization is evident on social media and has negative implications on those who want to prove their point. The problem is not proving a point, it is doing so with unreliable news stories and not allowing the opposing voice/s to describe their point of view on whatever topic it may be. Having the knowledge of knowing how to point out potentially false new stories/sources can help to start to bridge the divide. Pluralism is key in a democratic society and civil conversation is needed to improve the government.

    In order to use social media as a breeding ground of pluralism, the online world was thought to be, requires users to have an openness to viewpoints from all angles. It doesn't mean they need to believe others' opinions, but instead see where their viewpoints are rooted from, allowing to look at the deeper picture of the argument. In the research done by (Gaultney, Sherron, and Boden 2022) talks about the action of teaching college students the act of learning media literacy for improving civility in the future. There should be great importance to teaching the younger generations and especially college students on how to interpret if a media story is false or not. Becoming more tolerant in conversation and understanding people have different beliefs is key if pluralism is to break up the political polarization on social media.

    One of the main problems facing be able to hold civil conversations online is due to the cause of echo chambers and filter bubbles. Echo chambers can be seen as a way in which individuals self-segregate due to them not wanting their viewpoints challenged. The research article Modeling the emergence of affective polarization in social media society by Peter Törnberg and others talks about the role and power of echo chambers as well as filter bubbles on social media. Törnberg believes how social media forcing interactions between different political viewpoints does not reduce polarization but rather can further increase biasedness (Törnberg et al. 2021). The inability to have meaningful open dialogues relates to individuals not having the media literacy to be able to distinguish what news stories are valid. In summary, just because social media sites like Facebook create interactions between users with different mindsets, doesn't mean they will cooperate to have a civil discussion a lot of the time. While media literacy helps in distinguishing what stories are real from fake, there still needs to have open dialogue in which users want to listen to opposing views on a subject in order for the collective society to grow. Once we understand we are all citizens with different customs and cultures, we can learn how to grow together and reduce the political polarization that is plaguing our democratic society.

References

Gaultney, Ira Bruce, Todd Sherron, and Carrie Boden. 2022. “Political Polarization, Misinformation, and Media Literacy.” Journal of Media Literacy Education 14 (1): 59–81. https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-2022-14-1-5.

Törnberg, Petter, Claes Andersson, Kristian Lindgren, and Sven Banisch. 2021. “Modeling the Emergence of Affective Polarization in the Social Media Society.” Edited by Ali B. Mahmoud. PLOS ONE 16 (10): e0258259. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258259.

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