Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1192401
23 OPINION voter turnout will end up be- ing entirely consistent with the poor showing in the 2016 referendum. Britain's young didn't give a shit three years ago; and there was never any indication that they might have changed their minds at any point since. Yet a lot of people seem to have convinced themselves that things would indeed be different this time round. And again, the evidence points mostly towards the social me- dia's 'echo chamber' effect. Why would people expect a higher turnout among younger voters this time round, any- way? Probably because of all the pressure they themselves thought they were exerting, with their own Facebook posts. The more they ranted and raved about the 'historical im- portance of the moment'; the more they appealed to young- sters to be 'responsible', and for old fogeys not to be 'self- ish'… and above all, the more they saw their own outrage duplicated in similar posts by other people… the more they convinced themselves that their own concerns and argu- ments were making inroads among the wider public. What they clearly couldn't see, however, is that this mirror-imaging effect is actually an illusion. For every time their own comments were 'liked' and 'shared' – by likeminded people, please note – there would be millions of British voters who would just never see that post at all. And of the few odd-thousand who did, a sizeable chunk might have disagreed, but not com- mented; while the vast major- ity would simply have ignored it altogether. But to the person doing all the posting, the instant amplification returned almost the clean opposite message. 'My opinions are important', they might have thought. 'Just look at all the effect they are having…' Another way in which Fa- cebook skews perspectives is the automatic intolerance it breeds for any opinion that is in any way different from one's own. Rather than engaging with the 'political other', sites like Facebook – with their algorithms, which limit our scope of vision to only what we already 'like' anyway – encourage people to only ever discuss things with people who already agree with them on everything. And if, by chance, we still encounter diverse opinions despite all the algorithmically- imposed obstructions… well, there is a growing tendency among social media users to just 'block' them out of sight and out of mind. (Note: I have been guilty of this myself, so I know what I'm talking about here). So instead of attempting to convince those with different views, they will end up having the clean opposite effect: i.e., that of cocooning their own precious opinions somewhere where the people who matter the most will never, ever see them… still less be persuaded by them, which was supposed to be the intention all along. The overall effect is to slam the door shut to almost any discussion of any kind whatso- ever. And yet, perversely, those who slam the most doors always seem to expect their own opinions to ultimately be victorious; to automatically win every argument… even when no actual 'argument' ever takes place at all. Speaking of arguments: Facebook's 'meme culture' doesn't exactly help, either. Photoshopping Boris John- sons' head onto Porky Pig's body might raise a few laughs here and there… but it's not exactly going to impart any useful contribution to a debate about the UK"s political and economic future, is it? For that you need solid, proper arguments; and ironi- cally, sites like Facebook also provide the ideal infrastruc- ture for good political argu- ments to be made and dis- seminated. It is only fair to point that social media does have its beneficial side, too. People have never been more inter- connected that they are today; and this aspect can (and does) get put to good uses from time to time. Ask any event manager or co-ordinator (or even protest organiser, for that matter) whether Facebook has helped or hindered their ability to gather large number of people at certain places, at certain times, for certain purposes. Likewise, anyone trying to raise awareness for a cause, or to collect money for charity, will be aware of the tremen- dous potential the social media have to offer. But to close with an entirely arbitrary analogy from the 1953 Western, 'Shane': social media is like a gun; and a gun "is a tool… no better or no worse than any other tool: an axe, a shovel or anything. A gun is as good or as bad as the man using it…" Remember that, next time you automatically expect your own Facebook post to actu- ally make any form of differ- ence, to anyone in the world, anywhere… maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 DECEMBER 2019 What interests me more right now are the precise mechanics of how a minority seems to have somehow convinced itself that it had turned the tables on the majority… even in the face of hard-boiled evidence to the contrary How, then, did so many people expect (or at least, realistically hope for) a different result? I am tempted to answer that with a single word – 'Facebook' – but that would probably be an exaggeration