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2017-2018 UIL 2 Social Media

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2017-2018 UIL 2 Social Media 1 UIL LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE RESEARCH SERIES VOL. 23 SPRING 2018 NO. 2 RESOLVED: THE USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA AS A NEWS SOURCE UNDERMINES THE MARKETPLACE OF IDEAS. There can be little doubt that the motivation for choosing this topic is the controversy surrounding the phenomenon of “fake news” and its impact on the 2016 presidential election and beyond, but the topic invites discussion of numerous other issues as well. The growth of social media has been breathtaking over the past two decades. Julie Seaman, professor of law at the Emory University School of Law, describes this growth in a Winter 2016 article in the Arizona State Law Journal: “The Internet's takeover of the global communication landscape was almost instant in historical terms: it only communicated 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunications networks in the year 1993, already 51% by 2000, and more than 97% of the telecommunicated information by 2007. Facebook was created in 2004; it currently has 1.7 billion monthly active users. This sea change has transformed society and changed the way people think about and interact with the world and with each other. (p. 1013). The focus of the Spring 2018 topic, however, is more specifically on the news sharing function of social media. That function too has experienced dramatic growth. Joel Timmer, professor of digital media at TCU, reports on a survey indicating that 44% of U.S. adults now say they get their news from Facebook (Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 2017, p. 672). The question raised by the Spring 2018 topic is not precisely about whether this use of the social media as a news source is good or bad. More specifically, the topic asks whether such use is undermining the “marketplace of ideas.” The “marketplace of ideas” is usually associated with philosophical writings in the late Renaissance. But Nima Darouian, writing in the Cardozo Public Law, Policy, and Ethics Journal, claims that the notion actually started with the ancient Greeks: While the "marketplaces of ideas" theory is commonly attributed to John Milton and John Stuart Mill, the actual practice began with Socrates. It was in the Athenian Agora that Socrates would meet with people to debate ideas through a process of asking questions, and then questioning the answers, until a general agreement could be reached. The speech of Socrates in a literal marketplace of ideas was a speech that challenged the life of the community. It was Milton's Areopagitica (1644) and Mill's On Liberty (1869), however, that provided the theoretical predicate for the metaphor Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes introduced in his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919): But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas - that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. ANALYSIS OF THE TOPIC As you will recall from The Value Debate Handbook, every proposition of value consists of two components: the object(s) of evaluation and the evaluative term. The object(s) of evaluation is that which is being evaluated or critiqued in the resolution. The evaluative term is the word or phrase in the resolution that is evaluative in nature. This resolution contains two objects of evaluation: “use of social media as a news source” and “the marketplace of ideas.” The evaluative term/phrase is “undermines.” Debaters should take note of the fact that the Spring 2018 resolution does not ask for an evaluation of whether the “marketplace of ideas” is a good or bad thing. The resolution does not call for an assessment of whether the “marketplace of ideas” is just or advances the common good; the question is whether the “marketplace of ideas” is undermined by the “use of the social media as a news source.” Accordingly, debaters are called upon to decide what kind of properties are contained in the “marketplace of ideas” and then debate about whether the “use of social media as a news source” undermines or supports those properties. What is meant by the term, “social media?” Debaters will be able to name numerous examples of the digital services that are commonly called “social media” – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Snapchat, Instagram, Flickr, etc. Arriving at a non-example-based definition of “social media” is a bit more difficult, but there is an official government definition that 2 can provide a starting place. Rachel Vanlendigham, writing in the October 2017 Cardozo Law Review, provides this definition: “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security defines social media as ‘web-based and mobile technologies that turn communication into an interactive dialogue in a variety of online fora.’ The technologies' architecture provides numerous benefits to their users: massive exposure to a large audience, anonymity, ease of publication both technically and in cost, and speedy content dissemination. The companies that maintain and provide such technologies, often referred to as social media platforms, consist of private corporations such as Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram; such services allow us to connect with family and friends and interesting events from around the world. Image and video sharing websites such as Flickr, Instagram, and YouTube are also considered as falling within the social media rubric” (LexisNexis Academic). The following paragraphs illustrate the effort of numerous authors to provide definitions of “social media” for the purpose of their own books or articles: Daniel Joyce, (Prof., Law, U. of New South Wales), Intercultural Human Rights Law Review, 2013, p. 233. In this article, I am primarily focused on the news-generative forms of digital media and the information networks of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. But it would be a mistake to view 'social media' only in terms of certain platforms with current popularity. Social media can be seen as a dimension of new forms of digital media including "websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking." The term 'new media' conveys a sense of the ability to broadcast in digital media beyond the traditional categories of radio, newspaper or television and to do so instantly and to a global audience 'online.' Amy Cattle, (JD), Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, Winter 2016, at Note 3. The term "social media" as used throughout this Note will draw from the definition put forth by Hunsinger and Swift [in the Social Media Handbook], referring to "networked information services designed to support in-depth social interaction, community formation, collaborative opportunities and collaborative work." Michelle Zappavigna, (Postdoctoral Fellow, Linguistics, U. Sydney, Australia), Discourse Of Twitter and Social Media, 2012, 2. Social media is an umbrella term generally applied to web-based services that facilitate some form of social interaction or 'networking'. This includes websites where the design-principle behind the service is explicitly about allowing users to create and develop online relationships with 'friends' or 'followers'. The term also encompasses platforms where the focus is on generating and sharing content, but in a mode that allows comment and, potentially, collaboration. Sarah Joseph, (Prof., Law, Monash U.), Boston College International and Comparative Law Review, Winter 2012, 146. Social media is defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content." "Web 2.0" refers to Internet platforms that allow for interactive participation by users. What is the significance in the resolution of the phrase, “as a news source?” Social media serves many purposes, only one of which involves keeping up with current events. Other purposes, of course, include sharing personal or family pictures, describing the minutia of one’s daily activities, sharing a favorite recipe, or just keeping up with the activities of friends. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “news” as “a report of recent events” or “previously unknown information” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/news). The Longman Dictionary defines “news” as “information about something that has happened recently” (https://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/news). “Source” is defined by the Oxford-English Dictionary as “a place, person, or thing from which something originates or can be obtained” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/source). While the contextual phrase, “news source” is very commonly used in the literature, finding a definition of the entire phrase is very difficult. There are numerous surveys attempting to measure the extent to which persons turn to social media as a source of news; the most prominent such survey is conducted annually by the Pew Research Center (http://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07/news-use-across- social-media-platforms-2017/). The 2017 survey concludes that “more than half (55%) of Americans ages 50 or older report getting news on social media sites. That is 10 percentage points higher than the 45% who said so in 2016. Those under 50, meanwhile, remain
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