Although globally there has been very limited empirical evidence to definitively show the effects of social media usage on society, most would agree that it has impacted the masses in a significant aspect.
Augusta University’s Lance Hunter, an associate professor of Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, recently participated in a study that highlights evidence linking social media to political violence – including domestic terrorism and civil conflict.
Augusta University’s partnership in two studies involved over 150 countries between 2000 and 2019. Hunter said countries where people spend the most amount of time on social media are shown to correlate with increased domestic terrorism.
“It really does matter in affecting the amount of domestic terrorism within countries,” said Hunter.
While many are focused on domestic effects, Hunter also admitted to finding that some countries, who have more social media usage compared to the U.S., have varying levels of political violence.
Hunter said he believes social media becomes “dangerous” when it increases polarization.
“When it’s used to spread disinformation, that disinformation can have a polarizing effect on citizens around the world, and that polarization is associated with political violence,” he said.
The studies showed that socio-economic factors can also play a role in social media and its effects on people within a country.
“Looking at our research and data and looking across democracies and non-democracies, with different income levels of countries – most developed, less developed – we see there is a noticeable effect that social media can really influence political violence, especially if it’s used for disinformation purposes,” he said.
With multiple instances of violence occurring in the U.S. and armed with data gathered until 2019, Hunter said researchers have continued speculating about the relationship between social media posts and the activity of domestic terrorism.
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In the last couple of years, some forms of social media platforms have also identified these relationships, and have increased fact checking programs to prevent the spread of misinformation by flagging to hinder the sharing of such posts.
However, global usage of so many apps makes it much more challenging to prevent the spread of misinformation.
Additionally, due to a possibility of more potentially harmful effects appearing in the future, Hunter said he thinks people could very well see further negative impacts on society, because of the variety of social media platforms and their worldwide usage.
Liz Wright is a staff writer covering education, lifestyle and general assignments for The Augusta Press. Reach her at liz@theaugustapress.com
