The possibilities in social media are well-documented and immense. There are the primary functions of connecting and reconnecting. There are the resulting real-life actions and results—the lives saved and people reached through new communication mediums. More importantly, there are the new channels of information and discourse, or access to data, facts, and most often, opinions that add nuances to our own mindsets. There is, indeed, a lot to learn and discover through social media.
However, as much as social media has made more information accessible, the medium has also enabled the reinforcement of unfounded biases and distorted worldviews. As much as social media has become a tool to keep governments, social movements, and individuals intellectually accountable, it has also become a tool to build echo chambers—places where the only voices heard are those that affirm one’s own preconceived notions.
These echo chambers are built by the process of filtering, the most basic example of which we do every day: Following and unfollowing social media accounts. Duterte supporters purge their friend lists of those who accuse him of supporting death squads; extreme leftists ban those who reflect “capitalist” opinions. Even the average Atenean can be tempted to block out opinions deemed stupid and irrelevant.
In these cases, social media only serves to further dissuade these communities from interacting with each other. The information that they make available to themselves is already biased, and they become even more convinced of their views because they see so many others reflect them in various ways—anecdotes, infographics, and links to articles and studies.
What social media provides us with, however, is an actual choice. In ages past, information was limited by either physical factors or restrictive controls, exposing a person to very few perspectives. The internet has given us a way around both, and that can translate into actual political change—proof of this is when the mostly online-organized Million People March pressured the government to abolish the Priority Development Assistance Fund in 2013.
The national elections will be held in this milieu of greater linkage and possibilities. Even now, social media platforms are rife with praise and punishment, with sentiment and savagery. It is easy to build echo chambers, to limit what we see and what will sway us. It is easy to personalize news feeds and timelines to only the opinions we agree with. It is easy to build walls of comfort and concord.
Yet, particularly in this age of greater access to discourse and information, to build echo chambers is to do a disservice to this reality of greater opportunity, of greater choice. The best way forward is to be open to other voices of reason—to be watchful that social media does not become another tool for building limited world views and close-minded perspectives.
Discourses on the elections are inescapably important. The decisions made from them have far-reaching, life-changing consequences. In creating our frames of mind and building our perspectives and opinions for these elections, a plurality of information and opinion—not mere echoes of solidly-held mindsets—is all the more necessary.
