‘The Curdling of the Internet’: The Open Public Sphere Internet as Threat Amplifier

A weekend retreat to a cabin in the woods provided me with time to finally get around to reading Jia Tolentino’s essay, ‘The I in the Internet.’ In a way, I’ve been thinking about what Tolentino describes as the ‘curdling’ of the internet for the past two years, since our research team started reviewing research on various forms of online hostility. More broadly, I’ve been thinking about the effects of social media on societies for the past decade.

I’m generally opposed to sweeping pronouncements about the negative effects of the internet, smartphones, or social media, mostly because it doesn’t seem to fit the evidence. Social media use, by itself, doesn’t seem to have much of an effect on well-being or depression; that is, if one person spends three hours a day on social media and the other spends one hour, or no hours, the person who uses more social media is no more likely to feel bad about themselves or about life in general. There’s also evidence that the internet exposes users to a wider range of opinions, rather than sorting users into filter bubbles or extreme echo chambers. Bad things may be happening in today’s world, and social media use might have increased at the same time, but that doesn’t mean that one caused the other to occur.

And yet, despite the apparent lack of evidence of a strong, negative effect of social media use on individuals, I can’t help but wonder if we, as researchers, are missing something, and how we might adjust so as to capture those things.

One way Tolentino’s feeling and the lack of individual, direct effects on social media users can both be true is if the internet/smartphones/social media are having a profoundly negative effect on society in general, but it occurs in some kind of indirect way. The most concise way of describing my hunch about this would be the ‘threat amplification’ effect. These technologies amplify certain voices, making certain kinds of people and behavior that were formerly invisible more visible. A sub-set of highly active social media users see the platforms as battlefields on which an ideological war is being fought, and so they post information that furthers their agendas, and/or a subset of especially passionate people simply express how strongly they feel about some issue. These expressions are perceived as threatening by a sub-set of other users, not necessarily because they contain explicit threats of violence, but maybe because they clash with some fundamental belief of theirs, or portend an escalation in the encroachment on their rights (e.g., the right to free speech; the right to exist; the right to defend themselves). These posts stick out to many people, draw attention to themselves in the way that any perceived threat in our environment sticks out to us. If future visibility of posts is determined through the amount of attention paid to them (via algorithms or 'most read' lists, etc.), then we tend to see more and more of these types of posts as time goes on.

Also, well-meaning users (journalists, re-tweeters, etc.) draw further attention to these posts in an effort to make sure that others see the threat because to ignore the threat would be hazardous. They might do so out of a sense of duty and compassion to others (i.e., they see others are in danger from the threat and must warn them) but might also do so out of self-interest, or in-group-interest. By drawing otherwise apathetic individuals’ attention to the threat, they may enlist them to join their fight. In such a way, much of the online discourse comes to resemble either a threat or a response to a threat.  

If we react to this by leaving the internet, by not participating, this may preserve our piece of mind, but it cedes the public forum of the internet to those holding more extreme views. So, perhaps we try to meet the threat with an equal and opposite assertion of our beliefs or values (which may, of course, be viewed by others as extreme and threatening). Or perhaps we just conform to the now-established norm of value-assertion-through-strong-takes in order to be heard (because in order to gain greater visibility in the form of likes, shares, and subscribers, it helps to conform to norms of what is popular), or simply because humans are prone to unconsciously conform to social norms of expression. All of these would lead to an internet that actually is becoming more threatening (again, defining 'threats' not in terms of what was intended, but how they are perceived by someone), and exposure to it would likely lead to increased polarization, depression, abuse, harassment, toxicity, etc. The internet may not have started out that way, but it could be the case that it is becoming that.

And that’s the tricky part. The internet that Robert Kraut analyzed 20 years ago in his landmark study of the effects of internet use had certain kinds of content and certain kinds of experiences and perspectives posted by users, and the internet that the research summed up in Hancock et al. has other content/experiences/perspectives, and today’s/tomorrows internet has/will have other content/experiences/perspectives. And if those three stages of the internet are sufficiently different from one another in terms of their contents, they may have very different effects. Thus, though we haven’t observed strong negative consequences of social media use, it’s impossible to rule out them occurring in the future, or right now, given the publishing lag and, perhaps, that we're looking at the wrong outcome variables.

The negative effects of internet use may not be depression, narcissism, or physical aggression. They may manifest themselves in voting behavior (e.g., voting for increasingly partisan, extreme candidates, so as to counter the perceived threat from the other side), or some other behavior that reflects a distrust in others (e.g., unwillingness to live in certain places or send one’s kids to schools with certain types of people, a kind of self-segregation). Eventually, this kind of mutual distrust may manifest itself in physical violence. Or perhaps we’ll view one another as very, very different and threatening, but ultimately leave one another alone, co-existing peacefully if not without mutual resentment (stranger things have happened).

But here’s an important limitation: everything I’ve called ‘the internet’ up until this point really refers to part of the internet: the open ‘public sphere’ internet: Twitter, Reddit, comments sections on news websites, the part of YouTube in which YouTubers engage in a kind of running commentary about the world; maybe certain users on Facebook and Instagram who use those platforms in this way. Tolentino does note that she's mostly talking about the 'social internet.' This is the part of the internet in which a single individual can post something that reaches many other individuals (one-to-many). But many of Tolentino's observations also seem to apply to news online, which is tightly linked to Twitter (the bubble that journalists live in is the bubble of the open public sphere internet). It’s worth remembering that the internet is a lot more than just this. It is Netflix and other streaming services: ‘top-down’ platforms in which content is created by a small group of professionals and consumed by a large audience. It is small-group communication via messaging apps (one-to-one, or several-to-several). Tolentino’s observations about online hostility probably don’t fit as well to small group communication online (which is 'social' and is online, though maybe it's pedantic to call it part of the 'social internet), and they only apply to Netflix and other mass media insofar as they try to reflect the zeitgeist of the open public sphere internet.   

The Open Public Sphere Internet as Difference Revealer

Now that there are so many people participating in public discourse online, the open public sphere internet has exposed groups to one another that are so unlike one another to begin with, in terms of their values, experiences, and perspectives, that independent of how aggressive or antagonistic they are, this difference is so shocking and threatening that people get freaked out. That is, it isn’t necessary to have people act in a hostile way toward another group, or in a strategic way so as to counter the messaging of others. Merely by expressing themselves, by showing who they are and what they believe, they may set others off.

Human difference was depicted and conceived in a certain way by mass media. It was often visual, concise, and fictional. So yes, traditional/legacy media depicted difference, but in a circumscribed way, made generic through the use of tropes and bracketed as fiction. While we weren’t consuming images of difference via mass media, we spent our time around people who are not terribly different in terms of beliefs, values, and experiences. We spent a lot of time around family, friends, schoolmates, and workmates. If we were out of sync in our beliefs or values, we often avoided those subjects in order to avoid conflict.

The differences that we see online are differences in values being expressed. Those differences always existed (there were always people who believed something that you would have found abhorrent), but we didn’t have to see them every day. We probably were never going to be particularly good at reacting to these differences. Many of us probably always would have perceived them as a threat to our own values. So, it could be argued that the internet is the first technology, the first moment in history, where we really have been confronted with values differences as they have always been. Of course, these online expressions are not pure reflections of any group's beliefs, are manipulated in various ways (though when we’re quickly scanning a feed and clicking on links, we may not recognize this). Nevertheless, despite the fact that they are not representative of the larger group, they are expressions of the beliefs and values of many real people. And maybe we feel this when we go online; we feel how real they are. They are not fictional characters dreamed up by a screenwriter. These are actual people who actually believe the exact opposite of what we believe.

It’s not surprising that people feel threatened by those differences. And so many folks react to the threat with a kind of siege mentality, and then many subsequent cultural expressions and public life become a reflection of that. And the only alternatives seem to be to carve out small clusters within online life via group messaging apps or forsake social media entirely.

What impact does the curdling of the open public sphere internet have on the world?

Why does any of this matter? Is it just a bunch of people bickering in cyberspace or does it have some clear connection to the rest of civic life? If some of us decide ‘to hell with it’ and only use social media for small-group communication and leave Twitter to the trolls, what would it matter?

I do wonder if the relationship between what is said on the open public sphere internet and power (political power, economic power) could change, or is changing. Perhaps when the open public sphere first became widely used in the United States, most people, including journalists and politicians, saw it as a kind of proxy for public opinion, overlooking the fact that only certain types of people expressed themselves. The apparent connection between what went on in the run-up to the 2016 election (expressions of extreme partisanship, particularly an insurgent group of Trump supporters engaging in a kind of online battle on behalf of their chosen candidate) and the outcome of that election (the election of that candidate) supports this view. 

But what if, in the coming months, the same open public sphere internet were to heap praise on Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren while continuing to deride Donald Trump and deriding or ignoring Joe Biden, and Biden or Trump end up winning the election? What if that inconsistency between opinion on the open public sphere internet and a democratic election outcome were to happen a few more times in high-profile elections in different democracies? Many people might come to believe that opinion on, say, Twitter, neither reflects nor causes shifts in larger public opinion. Once this is acknowledged, I do wonder if at least some people, either in the general public or in positions of power (e.g., widely-read journalists), would be less likely to take their cues from opinion expressed on the open public sphere internet.

There’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to it, I think. When people believe that Twitter is a bellweather, they look to Twitter and are subsequently influenced by opinion on Twitter. The evidence on which they initially base their belief that it is a bellweather might be suspect, but that doesn’t matter: once they believe it, they essentially bring it into being by assuming that it is public opinion writ large, are influenced by it as such, and, through their writing, influence others. That is, opinion leaders see a popular trend on Twitter and write about it as though it were popular more broadly. Others take cues from the opinion leaders and act on that information, turning it into a truly popular opinion. However, if opinion leaders stopped believing this (and again, it wouldn’t matter whether the reason they stopped believing it made much sense or was supported by evidence), they might ignore it and thus Twitter and the like would lose its power to influence public opinion writ large.

Maybe people in a certain social stratum are already leaning this way, avoiding social media (or at least the open public sphere internet) themselves, raising their kids to avoid it as well. These people are often quite powerful: upper class, working in tech, politically active. If they start ignoring opinion as expressed on the open public sphere internet, I can imagine all of it becoming like certain comment sections of certain news websites: it exists, it is ugly, but most readers simply ignore it, and it doesn’t really have much of an impact outside of itself.

In any case, it’s important to not simply assume that the open public sphere internet has a stable relationship with public opinion in general. I think it’s also worth thinking about the popularization of the open public sphere internet as the first moment in human history that we saw how different our views of the world really are, how directly they conflict with one another (there is also much agreement, though the current iteration of the open public sphere internet doesn’t seem suited to highlight that). It’s hard to imagine such a moment going smoothly. But perhaps it’s a matter of getting over the initial collective shock of it. Or perhaps we just need a little time to ourselves.

Anger Sells

First, a disclaimer about my disposition: I don’t like anger. I guess there’s nothing wrong with it per se, but I’m of the opinion that, like any strongly felt emotion, it can cloud people’s judgment. Want to get angry at the Slayer concert? Knock yourself out (literally). But if you’re trying to make some sort of judgment about the world around you, I think that being angry can only lead you astray.

And yet, I have to admit, right now, after reading about last night’s mass murder, I feel angry, angry and fatigued, because I know the cycle: violence happens, then people want something to be done about the violence, but that typically involves restricting or monitoring others in some way (restricting gun access, making your mental health history available to authorities, monitoring your web use, censoring (or at least condemning) certain kinds of expression). Then a group of people will become angered by the effort to control or restrict them, citing their right to be free and how it is being infringed. When I think about the seeming inevitability of the cycle, I get tired. I also think, “What can I do about it?”

Maybe my small contribution as a researcher and media educator can be to further understanding of the role of anger in this whole cycle. Being angry at some group of “unfamiliar others” (e.g., not some ex-boss or some ex-girlfriend who pissed you off) seems like a necessary-but-not-sufficient criterion for committing mass murder. The violent acts seem to grow from expressions of anger and hatred, and they seem to inspire anger and hatred.

Maybe there’s something about the way media allows us to stay “immersed” in an angry state that perpetuates this cycle. We all get angry from time to time, sometimes at individuals, but other times at groups of people we don’t know personally (Republicans, Democrats, politicians in general, liberal media, Fox News, Comcast, etc.). How much time do you spend in that angry state, and does exposure to certain media messages keep you in that angry state? My guess is that in order to engage in an act of mass violence, you need to have been in a prolonged state of anger against unfamiliar others, and that media (mainstream media messages and interpersonal content via online communities) likely plays some role in helping to sustain that anger. In this respect, I suspect it is different than violence against people you know, which might be prompted by one incident and happen in the heat of the moment.

But here’s why it’s hard to just say that expressions of anger are uniformly bad. Sometimes, you have anger at an injustice, and the anger seems to be what motivates people to take action. Without the emotional “fire” of anger, people might not take action, and injustice would be allowed to persist. But, of course, that concept of “injustice” is subjective: the people perpetrating the initial act of aggression often see themselves as bringing justice to the world. So, too, do the angry people who respond.

Maybe it’s what you do when you get angry – some people act aggressively while others take political action. While it is obvious that those who respond to mass violence do not (thank god) respond with acts of aggression that are of the same degree, I can see the responses as acts of aggression (albeit on the less harmful end of the continuum). Often, people don’t respond to acts of mass violence by being motivated to vote, which is in many ways a slow, complex process involving numerous compromises and, as such, not exactly anger-sating. They are often verbally aggressive toward others that they feel are somehow part of the “other side”. I see protests as somewhere in the middle: sometimes, they are acts of political and civic action; other times, they are not much different than coordinated verbal aggression directed at an ideological “other”.

Moreover, any attempt to say “don’t be angry” or “don’t expose yourself to anger-inducing media” to anyone will likely meet with the response: “you’re just trying to pacify and distract us from the injustice!” Who am I to say that anyone else shouldn’t be pissed off at the state of the world, or should avoid news that makes them angry and watch more cat videos instead (or this damn dog getting licked by cows, which is pretty cute), or at least maintain some balance between the two?

But still, I do want to talk to people about how anger in media, at least potentially, at least sometimes, only appears to be about rectifying injustice and improving the world, when in actuality, it is just a kind of emotional button-pushing, just working on a vulnerability in our brains, this ancient instinct to be tribal, to find a threat, to identify some Other as the source of evil or injustice. I cannot tell anyone what kinds of messages are button-pushing and what kinds will help motivate people to take action that will make the world a better place. To do so would be imposing my concept of “justice” on them, and I just don’t think people dig that.

But maybe they’d be receptive to this message: If you’re in the business of producing or circulating media content, you’ll never go broke overestimating consumers’ appetite for content that appeals to their sense of righteous anger. Put simply: anger sells. And we all like to think it’s not the media we consume, but that it’s the media the other guy consumes. So, take a step back. Take a good, long, hard look at the media content that you consume that you know makes you angry. Be open to the possibility that the messages you choose might just be, at least in part, button-pushing. Even if it (and you) is/are on the right side of justice, maybe there’s some part of it that just ends up keeping you angry and keeps you pushing the buttons for more. Keep asking, “what can I do to make the world a better place?” And if the answer is “shoot someone”, think a little harder.    

What else would you have done?

In reading a shit-ton of media effects articles for several classes, I've come back to some of the same questions about their worth. I should say that I generally subscribe to the idea that most of these studies really do reveal something about what media cause us to think or how they cause us to behave or feel. Just so we're clear, I'm talking about the articles about the effects of violent video games on aggression, or of advertisements with skinny models on reader/viewer's body image. I accept the findings that say that, even when you control for things like pre-existing trait aggression and low self-esteem and latent racism and various attachment styles and SES, the media can have a negative influence on you, even though you might not be aware of it.

The findings imply that if you don't want to be problematically aggressive, bigoted, self-hating, or anorexic, you should avoid exposing yourself to certain media. OK, fine. But what do you then do to satisfy that craving that you would've satisfied with that media, and are we sure that the media in question wasn't providing you with some positive influence that might outweight the negative influence?

This occurred to me while watching a talk on UMich's Channel 22 about the causes of cancer. There were some things, like wine for instance, that caused women's risk of breast cancer to go up a tiny but measurable amount. However, it caused their risk of cardiovascular disease to go down a bit. And wine tastes good and makes you feel good. So, even if we accept that initial bit of information - that wine makes you slightly more likely to get breast cancer - we still may choose to drink wine for other reasons. Similarly, even if you know the risk of getting lung cancer from smoking, you may choose to smoke. You may also watch violent porn even though you know it will make you more likely to be callous towards rape victims.

I think we need to ask what people would have done if they didn't do something that they know is bad for them. It is possible that if a person chose not to smoke those cigarettes, that they might use booze to fill that void, becoming an alcoholic. It is possible that even if they resist all temptation in the form of substance, they may just become more ornery and hard to be around, driving people away which, in turn, makes them more depressed and hostile towards others. It is also possible that, after a rough patch of having to do without those vices, that the person breaks their bad habit and finds things that make them a happier, healthier person.

In order to make a judgment as to whether or not an individual or a group of people should stop doing x (be it smoking cigs, watching violent porn or slasher films, drinking wine, eating bacon, whatever), you have to consider the choice to engage in that vice in the context of that person or those people's lives. That's damn difficult, and when it comes to addicts, we know that they can't be trusted to make that judgment. But to simply say that just because a vice has an established negative effect and expect people to use that information to stop doing whatever it is that they're doing doesn't make sense to me.

I guess what I'm advocating for is a holistic study of why people engage with media that is known to have harmful, anti-social effects. That doesn't mean that you're advocating its use, necessarily. Too often, conversations I've had on tabloids, Jerry Springer, soap operas or other "trash media" turn into arguments between people who think it really fucks w/ people's heads and other people who think that it helps them cope with the troubles of everyday life and its just being attacked b/c it doesn't appeal to the wealthy, white male heterosexual establishment. We get it. Both of those things could be true. Study of the effects of media, and indeed the worth of media, needs to move beyond that petty argument. We need to ask, with open minds, what are the good things and what are the bad things about each bit of media for each different type of person.