10/08/2019 - 11:33 AM
FIDEL AZAZI
Three years after Trump’s presidency, America is drowned in chaos and corruption that is existentially threatening the union’s institutions. For almost a decade, The Republicans polarized Washington’s politics by controlling the House of Representatives from 2010 until their historic defeat in 2018.
Although the Tea Party played a central role in radicalizing the conservatives and blue-collar Americans who voted for Obama in 2008, such movement would have never succeeded without the emergence of social media platforms. Even during Obama’s two-term presidency, Trump used his own infamous twitter account to spare conspiracy theories about the former. The birther which is the most popular one has been debunked several times by intelligence agencies many of which provided materialistic evidence that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii. The Tea Party Movement has launched its move about Birther conspiracy theory since 2010 and a decade later, the percentage of conservatives who believe that Obama actually was born in Kenya is astonishing.
Another conspiracy theory sparked within the Obama era is that Michelle Obama is basically a man despite giving birth to two daughters Malia and Sasha. President Obama posted his 27-year marriage anniversary on Twitter with a photo that met with wide-spread acclaim. The tweet generated 1.9 million likes. Yet one of the prominent propagandists known as Melissa K. She is still spreading the news that Michelle’s shoulders are wider than Obama’s.
The right-wing movement is spending an astronomical amount of money on false campaigns on Facebook and Twitter. This comes when Mark Zuckerberg stated that it would be troubling if Elizabeth Warren would be the front runner of the Democratic Primaries against Trump. It is important to mention that Trump campaign has spent more than 12 million dollars weekly on Facebook adds that focus on disseminating misinformation from political powers that only serve power control. This by itself raises one major ethical question. “What is the role of Facebook in this intoxicated political culture?”
Here are some key facts about social media:
- Only 11 percent of the U.S. population is active on Twitter, half of those users serve no particular purpose but absorb junk data without any particular value.
- Facebook has witnessed a drop of 30 million active users in less than two years.
- Social media platforms are only seeking to generate profit without assessing the societal harm it is causing.
- Political division and polarization have increased with the powerful platforms social media has provided, especially for wring-wing movements led by Trump and the GOP.
So political leadership must have the moral compass needed to control this intended propagation of using misinformation that increased online radicalization which has become a virtual civil war the United States is currently experiencing.
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