Written by Seoyoon Chang
The Benefits of Social Media While popular mainstream media companies can present bias based on their ideological slant, social media allows a platform for a range of ideas, opinions, and perceptions. Social media has helped individuals earn a voice in the mass exchange of ideas, democratizing discourse. Social media has helped students engage with education further by allowing communication between experts of various fields. In addition, social media has helped spread news instantaneously and bring awareness to suppressed minorities or those in need. An example of this is the MeToo Movement, which allowed a powerful voice to arise among women using social media, specifically Twitter. Another benefit of social media is the widespread alert of emergencies. Social media allows news of an emergency to spread with speed, support communication between victims, and even encourage organizations to respond to the public’s concerns. The benefits of social media do not end there. Social media takes upon a large role in business, such as Twitter, which opened up a direct communication line between businesses and customers. This, according to Twitter, is called EWOM, which stands for electronic word-of-mouth. This includes consumers sharing attitudes and opinions about a company’s products or services; therefore enforcing credibility and reliability. Facebook’s inbox function allows businesses to view information about customers who interact with their own business and make the interaction between businesses and users easier, creating a more personalized assistance. Misinformation in Social Media Despite social media’s greatest benefit of free communication, this can cause a troublesome conflict to arise within; misinformation and ‘fake news’. Fake news, information which is uncorrelated with the truth and can be used to mislead readers, is a large problem mostly faced in social media. Fake news spreads rapidly between users, usually people like us and fake bots. Fake bots have the ability to share information and perform discourse with others; this can clearly demonstrate how fake bots can widen access to fake news. Fake bots can also create fake news, and this is a problematic issue because all users want to interact in an environment where they can trust the source of information they are receiving. The worst part of misinformation is that artificial intelligence can be correlated as well. AI systems (machine learning algorithms) have gathered efforts to analyzing content in a message and comparing them to real users, while other systems are used to identify accounts which spread fake news. On the other hand, fake bots are powered with AI, meaning they can advance their messages by accurately conforming to real users’ texts. So what happens? Both fake accounts and AI systems advance together, and AI systems cannot overcome fake news. More data, more efforts Fake news seems to be an unstoppable disease, however, AI can still play a key part in detecting fake news and warning systems about them. Through machine learning, detecting fake news and accounts can become more accurate. Preslav Nakov, a senior scientist at the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), explains that accuracy can be improved when more training data is obtained. Another factor which can help improve the accuracy is if the system has more access to variables. According to the MIT Technology Review, researchers from MIT, QCRI, and Sofia University in Bulgaria are looking for variables which include “the structure of the website, whether it has contact information, and its patterns of publishing and deleting content,”. In addition to this, social media can take action themselves. With Twitter deleting more than one million accounts per day (into July) and Facebook preventing fake news publishers from using their advertising tools, more efforts can give better results. An accurate AI algorithm Adverif.ai, founded by Or Levi, established a tool which can detect misleading information and inappropriate content, with an accuracy of 90 percent, uses Deep Learning to analyze text or a story. This is similar to Google’s PageRank, which is an algorithm that calculates the importance of a webpage. With both algorithms being trained with more knowledge, more accuracy is guaranteed to come. Other Problems Fake news is generated every day on various social media platforms. Since social media focuses on giving every individual a voice, other problems can occur, such as hate speech. Hate speech is reported to be growing at an alarming speed on Twitter, while other social media companies such as Facebook and Youtube have been able to reduce such violations. Severe problems which can damage economic, social, cultural, and political trust would lead to a fearful environment. With increased global connectivity and opportunities, we must act against the problems which arise from the benefits of social media. SOURCES:
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