Essay Example on Unlock the Power of the Internet: Its Impact on Politics

The internet is undeniably one of the most significant technological advancements in history. Its impact has been felt across all sectors of human society, including the political sphere. An average citizen now has access to more political information than all the other generations. They use the internet access information on the political developments taking place within the borders of their country and all across the world. Politicians also use the internet as one of their campaign tools, with most politicians maintaining a website or at least a social media page to keep in touch with his or her constituent. The internet is also one of the first platforms that governments use to disseminate information to the public. However, how people process that information is another thing. Accessing information does not necessarily equate to positive results in processing it. Therefore, this essay argues that the internet has harmed the way people process political information and form opinions about politics because of fanaticism, bigotry, misinformation, manipulation, reduced independent thought, and extremism.

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Fanatism is one of the reasons for a negative impact on how people process political information. Political figures can easily mislead the masses using the internet because of political fanatism. However, when it comes to politics, people judge the credibility of information based on the person giving out the information. According to a study conducted by Swire et al. (2017), republican supporters of Trump believed the information more if the information is attributed to Trump, as compared to when it is not. That shows that people do judge the accuracy of political information based on the political figure disbursing the information. Political fanaticism will cause people to process information in a way that aligns with the person giving out the information rather than the actual information for what it truly is. Facts will be twisted to fit a particular narrative, while false information will be processed to work within a specific perspective.

Just like internet fanaticism skews the processing of information, internet bigotry skews the processing of certain political information away from specific political figures. Internet platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have allowed people to voice their own political opinions. It has made it difficult to differentiate a political opinion from facts which form the base of opinions. Individual sections of the population have developed skepticism and are less likely to correctly process information from a particular figure because of how they feel about him/her. Some sections of the population are less likely to be associated with specific information if it comes from certain political figures (Swire et al., 2017). That means internet bigotry could cause people to process certain political information to be against a particular perspective, which they think the political figure represents, rather than process information based on the presented facts.

The growth of the internet creates room for a lot of information and misinformation. The way a person processes information is also dependent on the accuracy of the information. If the accuracy of the information is compromised, there is no proper way to process that information. Sadly, enough, a fair amount of information sourced from the internet lacks credibility and is marred with inaccuracy. For example, consider the claims that former U.S President Barrack Obama was born in Kenya, instead of the United States (Ecker & Ang, 2019). Many people used that information to form unfounded opinions about the former president. They still perceived the former president as illegitimate even after he presented his birth certificate. The Obama example shows how political misinformation through the internet could negatively affect how people process political information and subsequently form unfounded opinions. The trend of political misinformation is likely to increase because the upcoming generation is tech-savvy and more active on the various internet platforms than all the previous generations.

The internet makes for an easy tool for mass manipulation. Arifkhanova (2010) identifies the internet as one of the platforms that can be used for manipulation of people's consciousness. The large amount of people connected to the internet makes society susceptible to mass manipulation. That is especially the case in the current world, where the information on the internet is controlled by a few significant players. The internet today is dominated by Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft (Frick, 2016). These companies wield so much power over the information that people consume over the internet. The five companies are collectively capable of mass manipulation because of the domination they have over information consumption and processing. For example, Google and Facebook can skew people's opinions by making it easier for them to access information related to leftwing ideas, while selectively blocking leftwing related pages or making it harder for people to access them. The result will be that majority of people will be consuming rightwing ideologies, and this may manipulate them into supporting leftwing ideas.

Reduced independent thought and information processing is also another reason why the internet will harm how people process information. The internet has allowed a lot of people to voice their opinions and thoughts on various political issues publicly. That creates social forces as people lose their sense of independent thinking because of the pressure to associate with the majority. A study conducted by O'Connor et al. (2015) found out that people do perceive crowd behavior to be more realistic. That means that people would form their political opinions based on the social forces around them. The internet creates a perfect platform for the social pressures to thrive because the anonymity provided by a computer allows people to express their opinions with less fear of the repercussions. It also leaves less room for independent thought because those who see these public opinions and ideas will feel the urge to agree with them because of the desire to align with the crowd behavior, which to them, appears to be more realistic. For example, a person whose social media friends list consists of rightwing people is likely to be exposed to rightwing ideas and opinions on that particular platform. Based on the research of O'Connor et al. (2015), he or she is less likely to voice a contrary opinion and will eventually change his or her views to align with those of his other friends. Such scenarios create crows behavior that has little room for individual thinking and processing of information.

The internet will also play an increasingly central role in the development and spread of extremist political ideologies. Some political ideologies and concepts seek to undermine the rights of individual sections of the population by their race, color, gender, ethnicity, or religious beliefs. Extremist groups have found a platform to spread their ideas and gained access to people. Traditional media platforms such as radio and television would have been quick to sensor such kind of information. However, the internet provides a big platform with little regulations. Everyone is free to express his or her political ideologies, and that negatively affects how people would process political information because extremist ideologies have tainted their reasoning.

Conclusion

The internet's role in politics will continue to increase, and there is a good possibility that even voting may be done through the internet someday. As a result, it is almost impossible to prevent its influence from spreading to politics. Political fanaticism, political bigotry, misinformation, mass manipulation, reduced independent thought, and extremism are the negative consequences of the internet when it comes to information processing. Some of these negative impacts, such as misinformation, mass manipulation, and extremism, can be reduced by implementing proper legislation that reduces the power that individual companies wield.

References

Arifkhanova, S. (2010). Manipulation of social consciousness through mass media. Social Psychology, 22.

Ecker, U. K., & Ang, L. C. (2019). Political attitudes and the processing of misinformation corrections. Political Psychology, 40(2), 241-260.

Frick, W. (2016, June). Who controls the internet? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2016/06/who-controls-the-internet

O'Connor, S., Liarokapis, F., & Jayne, C. (2015, July). The perceived realism of crowd behavior with social forces. In 2015 19th International Conference on Information Visualisation (pp. 494-499). IEEE.

Swire, B., Berinsky, A. J., Lewandowsky, S., & Ecker, U. K. (2017). Processing political misinformation: comprehending the Trump phenomenon. Royal Society open science, 4(3), 160802.