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Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media

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Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media Partisan Platforms: Responses to Perceived Liberal Bias in Social Media A Research Paper submitted to the Department of Engineering and Society Presented to the Faculty of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia • Charlottesville, Virginia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelor of Science, School of Engineering Luke Giraudeau Spring, 2021 On my honor as a University Student, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment as defined by the Honor Guidelines for Thesis-Related Assignments Signature __________________________________________ Date __________ Luke Giraudeau Approved __________________________________________ Date __________ Richard Jacques, Department of Engineering and Society Introduction In the United States, public opinion about tech companies’ political biases is divided along partisan lines (Vogels, Perrin, & Anderson, 2020). In the U.S. since 2018, 69 percent of Republicans claim that technology companies favor liberal views, whereas only 19 percent of Democrats say that technology companies favor the alternative view. Over 50 percent of liberals believe that perspectives are treated equally, whereas only 22 percent of conservatives feel this way. Critics who allege bias have organized to promote legislation such as the Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act (2020) as well as an executive order (Executive Order 13,925, 2020). Furthermore, conservative entrepreneurs have produced new social media platforms such as Gab and Parler that claim to honor users’ freedom of speech (Fair, Wesslen, 2019). According to Feuls, Fieseler, and Suphan (2014), “Although social networks are typically positive stimuli, social media are not generally utilized when the individual’s perception of social media is negative.” Perception can be affected by mass media, data security distrust, personal motivations, competencies, experiences, and “most notably, the individual’s social network.” This study draws attention to the social and psychological effects that occur when social media users are shunned. Kirdemir (2020) recently found heightened polarization on Twitter during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most Twitter users primarily receive information consistent with the views they most endorse. By deploying neutral bots to observe social media behavior on individual accounts, Chen et al. (2020) found evidence of algorithmic content shifting and of content ranking that aligned with individuals’ personal biases. Turning Point USA, a conservative student action organization, has alleged that “Twitter/Facebook/Instagram regularly restrict conservatives’ reach and suppress any news that could be potentially damaging to the Left” (Smith 2020). The Heritage Foundation, a 1 conservative policy forum, has also claimed that they have seen “firsthand how Big Tech companies block or otherwise limit the reach of (our own) content… because that information doesn’t agree with certain platforms’ social or political agendas” (James 2020). Conservative Facebook groups that support Trump, such as the “NJ Women for Trump” group, believe that their group’s page was removed because of the tech companies’ political biases (Fruen 2020). PragerU, a conservative organization with a YouTube channel, filed a lawsuit in 2017 that alleged Google’s “censorship is entirely ideologically driven” (PragerU 2017). Conservative author Charlie Kirk has charged that he was in a “kind of hostage situation with Twitter” after Twitter allegedly locked him out of his personal account (O’Reilly 2020). Conservative writer and activist Brent Bozell has claimed that “if they can do it to the president of the United States, they can do it to anyone …every platform in Silicon Valley today is censoring conservatives” (Flood 2020). Social Media Cancelling Social media “de-platforming,” which is the act of being “cancelled,” banned, or removed from a platform, has resulted in unique response and activity by conservative users who perceive it as issuing from liberal bias. One response has been a “calling out” of the perceived bias through further posting on the platform, changing influence strategies, or as Rogers (2020) found, many people who are deemed unfit by Twitter and YouTube, often migrate to less regulated platforms such as Telegram or Gab. Sometimes the “de-platforming” is a direct ban bestowed by the social media company itself, as is the case of the controversial banning of Donald Trump from Twitter (Twitter 2021), but it can also be social pressure from users on the platform. This social pressure is known as 2 online shunning, or cyberostracism. Social media shunning has pertinence in media and entertainment, such as a television show plot being altered or cast member removed through backlash on social media (Anderson-Lopez, Lambert, Budaj 2021). An example of this is seen in the de-platforming of Gina Carano, an actress cast by Lucas Films starring in the popular Mandalorian film series. After a series of controversial political tweets by Carano, Disney was prompted by the ensuing outcry on the platform to fire Carano (Victor 2021). After being terminated, Carano announced plans to collaborate with the conservative news media organization, The Daily Wire to produce an upcoming feature film (Pearce 2021). In an interview with Deadline (Wiseman 2021), Carano said, “The Daily Wire is helping make one of my dreams — to develop and produce my own film — come true. I cried out and my prayer was answered. I am sending out a direct message of hope to everyone living in fear of cancellation by the totalitarian mob. I have only just begun using my voice which is now freer than ever before, and I hope it inspires others to do the same. They can’t cancel us if we don’t let them.” In Carano’s situation, de-platforming resulted in transition of influence, by creating media elsewhere. Another way conservative social media users counteract perceived bias is by moving to different platforms. However, migrating to alternative social media may not offer as much apparent benefit to the individual. It will be important for researchers to continue to analyze the social effects of this transition. Users may respond in multiple ways; moreover, the result carries a slew of consequences for these individuals. To quote Rogers, “Being cancelled by Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and/or YouTube has stark consequences for the maintenance of a fan base, following and revenue stream.” However, as mainstream social media corporations de-platform 3 and shift what content is to be considered acceptable, business is meanwhile being sent to less regulated platforms (Rogers 2020). One such example of a low-regulation platform is Gab, the self-proclaimed social media platform that protects free speech. Gab been accused not only of housing de-platformed conservatives, but many in the alt-right. This has escalated to the point of major technology providers such as GoDaddy and Stripe pulling resources from Gab, such that they have had to build their own (Robertson 2018). After the January 6th Capitol march occurred in Washington D.C., Twitter decided to ban numerous social media accounts of people who supported the actions taken place during the march. Gab reported that as these bans took place, their userbase increased at a rate of 10,000 user per hour, which significantly boosted platform activity (Brandt, Dean 2021). Echo Chambers A common criticism of Gab and similar platforms is that they are “echo chambers.” This title implies ideological uniformity resulting in unwanted behavior, primarily that of political polarization (Abril 2021). A recent scientific report published by a collaboration of Italian researchers analyzed the reproductive nature of information on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Gab, and Reddit (Cinelli, Quattrociocchi, Galeazzy, 2020). They noted that whether a media post is flagged as questionable has little to no influence on its potential to spread. Instead, they suggested that the primary cause of spread is “driven by the interaction paradigm imposed by the specific social media or/and by the specific interaction patterns of groups of users engaged with the topic.” 4 By considering COVID-19 media as a use-case, a 2020 study found “that the way in which users process information in a segregated environment such as Gab is homogeneous and does not depend on the source. The unconcern of Gab users with respect to the source in terms of endorsement and sentiment dynamics seems to provide further evidence for a mechanism of reinforcement that tends to interpret every news within a collective narrative that is typically found in echo chambers.” For users on the platform Gab, the methodology to sort through news media was not through the validity of the source, but rather by shared narrative and premediated thought processes. This implies that either notions of trust were developed apart from the platform and perhaps prior to use, rather than through discourse on the on platform itself. A comparative analysis was done using 1B pieces of data from over 1M users showing that in comparison to Reddit and Gab, Facebook and Twitter were dominated by echo chambers in the observed datasets. By analyzing the method of news consumption on these platforms, the study found evidence that platforms which incorporate social networks and user preferences into content feeds, increases the presence of these echo chambers and adds to polarization (Cinelli, Morales et al. 2020). This indicates that on some scale, Facebook and
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