It seems impossible to escape America’s hot-button topic: the 2024 Election. If you haven’t noticed, there is an overhaul of state, local, and presidential election commercials during ad breaks when watching the Nightly News. On a stroll through town you are likely to see Harris-Walz yard signs and Trump-Vance banners showing support for candidates. However, the most powerful platform of marketing, social media, has become a key facet of nominees’ bid for votes. Kamala Harris has employed a major TikTok campaign targeting first-time Gen-Z voters, and Donald Trump has sent out his own propaganda via his resurrected X–formerly Twitter–account. Public figures are using their own platforms not only to endorse their preferred candidate to influence their followers, but also to simply encourage people to head to the polls.
Evidently, it’s no secret social media has become a platform for political fury. Try scrolling through any remotely political video, advocates and opposers type for demise in the comments, a prime example of polarization, or political extremity in 2024.
A phenomenon that has been notably present in American diplomacy throughout the past century is political polarization. A study from a decade ago by the Pew Research Center saw that from 1994-2014 there was a 30% jump in the number of Republicans and Democrats who saw their counterpart in a strongly negative light – that was before President Trump’s first term in office, the rise of TikTok, or the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic. In a subsequent study by the Pew Research Center, statistics show that in the most recent decade, 2014-2022, that same antipathy saw significant rise: from 43% to 62% within the Republican party, and 38% to 54% within the Democratic party. Their heightened disliking for one another suggests a greater level of opposing ideologies within their parties. An already tense setting in the political off-season suggests an even greater level of opposition in the heat of the election, but there is an added layer of perplexing misinformation on candidates within the media and the internet.
Beyond political marketing, there are elements that have only been seen within this recent election. For example, deep fakes, artificially-generated videos and audios of candidates saying far fetched things to sway viewers one way. Kamala Harris’s running mate, Governor Tim Walz from Minnesota, was a former history teacher. A deepfake video surfaced of an alleged former student accusing him of assault. In the state of New Hampshire back in May, voters were receiving robocalls with AI fabricated speech of President Joe Biden telling them to stay home during the primary in an effort to sway the state election. Beyond just AI, it is easy to get caught in rumors that are tweeted or shared. Recently, a rumor regarding Donald Trump’s absence on the Oregon election ballot was gaining popularity from a false Tweet. However, there are various ways you can avoid getting caught in this web of misinformation.
Misinformation is not just this issue though. It’s also the way that scrolling through social media can lead to subjective blindsiding. Ever notice a video that seems to trigger your emotions or opinions? When someone scrolls on Instagram, there is an algorithm observing every aspect of the user’s activity. What posts someone likes, comments on, saves, shares, in addition to what they search, how much time they spend looking at each post, and draws that from other applications a person uses, too. Someone could search something up on Tik Tok, and see something related to that on Instagram. These algorithms extract all this data to push more, and ultimately only, what they are interested in. This means that when a person shows interest in a certain opinion or viewpoint, they will be fed more of that content. This plays into the experience of American constituents in the modern day, especially ones who consume a lot of information via social media. If they show interest in a certain idea a candidate discusses, they may only hear that opinion moving forward. This creates increased bias and intensifies the opinions of voters — so it’s hard to separate increased polarization from the tactics of social media. According to global date firm, Statisa, 48% of a surveyed group of voters in 2019 believed that social media has influenced political standings.
Campaign parties are aware of this, and they know the more content they push, the more time someone will spend watching that candidate’s propaganda, and the more likely they are to be subject to their opinion and ultimately be of their advantage in polls. Social media is influencing voters psychologically, leading them to more extreme opinions that create the division in America we face today.
If voters are interested in unbiased news and information, they should look to non-partisan news networks, and surprisingly not the expected names. Even though channels like NBC, ABC, or FOX are the most popular to turn on in the United States, they do have slight political bias. According to Ad Fontes Media, even at a slight, “balanced” leaning, NBC, ABC, and CBS are seen to have a left-leaning political bias, and Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and New York Post are seen to have right-leaning views. Ad Fontes offered that News Nation, Barron’s, and USA Facts are the least biased reporting sources. Though Ad Fontes put Reuter’s similar to a miniscule left-leaning perspective of NBC or ABC, Reuters is referred to and claims themselves as an unbiased news source.
All this information leads to the main question ahead of the election: with media polarization, where will the swing states move? Time will tell this November what voters, especially in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Nevada decide for our divided country.
