Social media as a way to spread information hardly favours political nuance and complexity, and the rise of the “story” feature on Instagram is no different. Similar to the tweet and the hashtag which came before it, the “Instagram infographic”…
On Friday 19th February, Australians awoke to find that something was a little off about their Facebook feeds. Not only were they unable to share news from local or international outlets on their pages, but they also couldn’t even see…
Regularly, we read, hear, and see discussions about misinformation – ‘fake news’ – an increasingly normalised part of everyday language and debate. However, online misinformation is often seen as a generational problem, which influences older, less tech-savvy and unsuspecting individuals.…
In 2020, 45 million people or 66% of the total UK population had an active social media presence. That pales in comparison to usage in countries in Asia and North America where between 70-90% of the population have social media…
Former President Barack Obama this week referred to social media-fuelled misinformation as “the single biggest threat to our democracy”. This, alongside countless other examples of the breakneck speed with which falsities travel around our world, begs the question: how did we get…
A few weeks ago, Facebook announced that it would ban “any content that denies or distorts the Holocaust”. This decision has come after years of increasing pressure placed on the social media site to do more to counter hateful content…
Today in 2020, social media usage is widespread. 88% of 18 to 29 year olds have at least one active social media account, and public figures such as the president of the United States use Twitter to publicly project their…
Darnella Frazier captured the footage of George Floyd’s tragic death and shared it on Facebook in May this year. Since then, it’s gone ‘viral’ – receiving over one billion views across different platforms and sparking social reform. Facebook’s ability to…