The Influencer Effect

How polarization, misinformation, and censorship is driven on social media.

Dear M & B,

The way in which we access information, learn the news of the day, and gain knowledge has vastly changed over the last few decades. It blows my mind to recall that I was a proud owner of an Encyclopedia Brittanica set when I was your age, which is about as archaic today as a T-Rex. Back in the day, however, I wielded my encyclopedias to learn just about everything I could think of under the sun - people, places, and things - and everything in between. These volumes of facts were my primary tools to complete my homework, especially History and Geography. I also owned a 4 inch thick, heavy Webster’s Dictionary that I used to look up the definition and the spelling of words. When I was in high school and my research needed to be more robust, I bicycled to the library and used the reference books there.

My parents got their information on the happenings in the world from the nightly news and the daily delivered newspaper. 60 Minutes was on the television every night in our living room. I can still hear the voices of hosts Andy Rooney, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Mike Wallace signing off at the end of their respective broadcasts. I also remember my stepfather sitting in “his” chair most evenings reading the national and local news of the day in The Orange County Register newspaper that was delivered early that morning. To learn about movies, we turned to the show, Siskel and Ebert. They were a hoot, especially when they argued with each other about the merit of the movie they were reviewing.

Fast forward a handful of decades and according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2020, our primary source for the news of the day comes from our digital devices (86%) and “about half of U.S. adults (53%) say they get news from social media ‘often’ or ‘sometimes’”. Furthermore, according to this survey linked above, “Americans ages 18 to 29 stand out in that the most common digital way they get news is social media, with 42% saying they get news this way ‘often’”.

Why, my loves, do I care about the means from which we learn about and understand the facts of our world — which is to say the news — and why do I want you to care, too?

Not to sound dramatic, but in some very important respects, the world in which we live depends on it.

---

Over the last four decades our political system has become increasingly biased and polarized - significantly more so than democracies in other countries according to a 2020 Harvard and Stanford study. Hot button, complex topics of extreme polarization include, but are not limited to, police funding, climate change, gender identity, and immigration to freedoms around gun control, free speech, medical autonomy, and the right to choose.

The room for discourse and bridge building on contrasting ideas between the Left and Right has become extremely narrow, if not all but eliminated far too often. Our divide has become so wide that it is significantly hurting our ability as a society to address these critical issues.

The political divide has also seeped into our individual consciousness and culture. It has infiltrated our universities, business organizations and legacy media. Censorship, misinformation, manipulation and fear of inquiry or speaking a dissenting view due to irreparable backlash, some could argue, are becoming the norms of today. This is cause for concern.

---

Where are so much of these dysfunctional dynamics promoted, played-out and instilled in us?

On social media.

It is all but impossible to log on to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, etc, and escape witnessing or possibly embroiled in a battleground of contention over any number of current topics. Instead of differing ideas being shared, considered and common ground being found, studies are finding that polarization is being driven along with misinformation and censorship.

The reason for this stems from what is called the influencer effect. You see, social media platforms are predominantly designed as a centralized network, which means a small number of people at the “center” of the network are connected to lots of other people on the “periphery” of the network.

On this centralized network, the multitudes of people on the periphery, say for example myself, have only a moderate number of connections, while the few at the center of the network, the “influencers”, such as Elon Musk, are connected to nearly everyone.

Literally by the design of many social media networks, the relatively few key influencers have an exorbitant amount of power because they are able to exert an excessive level of “influence” over the group.

“Ideas are filtered through, or sometimes even blocked, by a powerful social influencer,” according to Damon Centola, Ph.D., Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Centola goes on to say…

“[The network influencer effect] is one of the main reasons why misinformation and fake news has become so pervasive. In centralized networks, biased influencers have a disproportionate impact on their community—enabling small rumors and suppositions to become amplified into widespread misconceptions and false beliefs.”

“It’s much better to have people talk to each other and argue for their points of view than to have opinion leaders rule the crowd.”

“It’s as important for science as it is for democracy.”

“Garbage in, garbage out.” If the information we use to process ideas and to understand complex issues is flawed, then the actions we take relative to those issues will most certainly also be flawed.

---

Regardless of our politics, leanings, points of view, and expertise, a forum where we can all truly share our ideas with the intention to discuss, learn, level up our knowledge will only serve all of us as we face the complex challenges of our world.

Over the last several years we have seen renown doctors, scientists, researchers and experts in their field, be deplatformed, discredited and livelihoods threatened and lost because their ideas and expertise were not aligned with the narrative of key influencers.

There are countless examples across a multitude of industries and topics.

For example, Jay Bhattacharya, one of the three authors of the Great Barrington Declaration discussed being attacked by mob culture and fearing for his physical safety on the Stanford University campus of all places.

“I’ve been at Stanford for thirty-six years. It’s my home. It felt like my home was invaded by aliens. When I wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, I expected there to be at least some discussion on campus about it. Instead, there was this campaign of ostracism. I’m never gonna forget this for the rest of my life. There was a poster campaign some group organized on campus, where they put a picture of me up next to [a graphic of] the Delta wave in Florida at the time, essentially accusing me of killing people in Florida. They put it all over campus, including near a coffee spot where I’m pretty well known to get coffee every day. I was actually physically afraid to walk on campus.” ~ Jay Bhattacharya

Our elite educational institutions were founded on the ideology of independent thinking and debate. In fact, Stanford’s accreditation is based upon it as stated in its educational goals for its students.

“All of our graduates should be prepared to think for themselves, question and reform social conventions, and revise their own assumptions when confronted with new evidence. They should recognize that every community, from the smallest club to the largest nation, needs engaged citizens who can distinguish between self-interest and the common good. Accordingly, they need to know how to discover, and how to debate, what is in the common good. Finally, they should have enough experience and knowledge about the world to appreciate that different people live different lives, and that what is good for Palo Alto may not be good for Pittsburgh or Peshawar.” ~ Stanford University

If we can not exchange and rigorously discuss a multitude of different ideas on a university campus in the United States, then where can we?

Another example can be found in The Twitter Files which reveal an alliance between Big Tech and the Administration to promote an official narrative.

Continuing with Jay Bhattacharya as our example, the Wall Street Journal carried a piece titled “The Twitter Blacklisting of Jay Bhattacharya”.

“This week Twitter released a set of internal emails and documents from before Elon Musk’s takeover of the company in October. One of the revelations was that Dr. Bhattacharya, among many others, had been censored and shadow-banned (tweets hidden in various ways) by Twitter.”

“His main message was powerful and contrary to Covid policies enacted across the country. ‘Mass testing is an insidious form of lockdown by stealth,’ he wrote. Many Americans, especially parents of school-age children, would agree. But it’s possible that many on Twitter didn’t see his message.” ~ Wall Street Journal

Actions of key influencers to suppress news, censor content and deplatform people without our knowing is manipulation. Obstructing truth seeking in favor of censorship hurts us all. We make decisions for our family’s health, for our children’s education, for our careers, and for who we are going to vote to office, based on having access to a multitude of information.

---

Having an open mind, leading with curiosity, investigating, and critically thinking are the benchmarks of learning, finding common ground and solving the complex issues of the day that affect us all. Even more so though, it is the only way we as a society will positively evolve.

Reasoning from first principles is the best way to learn how to think for yourself. Additionally, being able to discuss important topics with people who hold different points of view, known as perspective taking, debating with respect and the intention to understand another’s perspective, can make us more effective and more creative at thinking deeper and more critically.

It is impossible for us to personally know everything. Others, including those we don’t agree with, are likely to have information that we do not. Tuning into each other’s perspective will help us to learn something new and all of us to benefit.

Be brave. Ask hard questions. How can we learn if we are too afraid to ask, to inquire, to hypothesize, to test? Put down your phone and talk with the people around you — your peers, your professors, your friends’ parents, the person sitting on the bus next to you, in line at the store. Denounce the misguided culture of bullying and canceling as it is an insidious form of censorship. We need not be sheep but rather shepherds.

Be seekers of truth. Do not believe everything you read or hear. Do your own research using multiple primary sources. Understand the bias of your sources as well as your own bias.

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I often remind you of Eleanor Roosevelt’s wisdom as I believe in it deeply along with the idea that with opportunity also comes great responsibility. We can not become complacent, nor take for granted, that someone or some group of people are going to benevolently solve the collective challenges facing us.

Each of us can make a positive difference simply by the conversations we are brave enough to have and the resulting actions we take. We all have a ripple effect.

I am honored to be a witness of yours.

Your biggest fan, always and forever,

Maman

P.S. I would be so grateful if you would take a moment to share this essay with a few friends and encourage them to subscribe to Dudley The Fox. Forward it. Tweet it. Post it on Facebook. I would be honored.

P.P.S. If you've already subscribed, THANK YOU. That means the world to me. Subscribing to the newsletter is free and incredibly simple. It's also the single most important thing you can do to support my project right now.

P.P.P.S. Thank you to Diggity Marketing for the lead photo.