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In the economy, relocating from a market concentrated with a small part of the dominant players in a very competitive market of small players is usually considered a good thing. But when products these players are aiming in different groups of consumers are alternative versions of reality as we know it, it is not so clear that society benefits.
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For all the attention given to the disinformation, a narrow concentration in objective lies removes us from a much more fundamental shift. The developing democratic danger is not as much as people believe fake things – they always have. That is, they no longer believe the same things as one -other, fake or otherwise.
If that sounds redundant, try a last example. In January, after Elon Musk drew new attention to the Grooming gang scandal of Britain through his social media platform X, almost half of the UK reform voters said they had heard of the story in recent days, compared to only one in 10 work voters or Lib Dem.
This is not so much a question whether a particular part of the information is true or false, whether different people encounter the same information at all.
In the past, created media organizations mainly followed the same news agenda within national borders. But in an increasingly unexplained and sprinkled information environment, older and older norms are increasingly overlooked.
This has led to the constant bifurcation of online publishing platforms, including social media, in right and left -wing spaces, where different agendas are numerous. As a double citizen of X and Bluesky, there are clear differences in the topics I see on both platforms.
Here is another weakness of discourse of misinformation: that this is a problem uniquely on a “side”. Research finds that while America’s conservatives are on average more likely to believe false statements about climate change, liberals are more likely to believe false statements about nuclear energy. Other studies for the US find that those who went to college are not better judges of news truthfulness than those with high school education.
I do not emphasize this to criticize any particular group. Quite the opposite. I do this to emphasize that most people – left, right, increasingly educated – simply do not question any claims they encounter.
People are maximizing efficiency, looking for shortcuts in every opportunity. The truth is that the vast majority of us will never invest in control of time or evaluate all the information we consume. If it seems reliable and comes from a source, we have no confidence actively, this is quite good.
Combine this heuristic with the explosion of upstart information providers, who tend to operate in pockets of an unprecedented chopped media landscape, and you will get interesting results.
While evidence in echo rooms and filter bubbles have been mixed so far, most research predicts the latest change to adjust real -time recommendation algorithms.
Analyzing the data from the British election study, I discovered that the people who received their news from TIKK were more likely to become supporters of the United Kingdom Reform between 2021 and 2024 than those who did not, even after controlling age, sex and level of education.
In particular, the model is much stronger among men than women, in accordance with the idea that different groups now reside in very distinct information and political environments online – even within the same platforms.
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Similarly, in Germany, the strong presence of the AFD and Die Link ticket is trusted by some who have increased their support between young men and women, contributing to a strict gender gap among young German voting models in last month’s elections.
The link between this fragmentation and democratic dysfunction appears everywhere you see. America’s polarized media ecosystem coincides with wider political divisions than in nations with more media landscapes. Longitudinal studies find a polarized policy of separate media.
And looking at the age verse, young people whose sources of information differ less frequently from the previous generations and from one another (in terms of young men and young women), now exhibit the wider ideological division into many measures.
The disinformation discourse will undoubtedly be withdrawn, but as the teenager climbs to the screen, it lacks the broader context.
John.burn-murdoch@ft.com, @jburnmurdoch
Resources and Data Methodology
The analysis of the association between the use of Tiki and the support of the UK reform in the UK general elections was carried out using waves 21 and 28 of the British election study, which follows the same British adults over several years, measuring how their political views and other attitudes move over time.
A logistical regression model was used to anticipate the possibility of someone voting for the UK reform in the 2024 elections, conditioned in their preliminary support for the left-wing political staircase (both measured three years ago), their use of various social media platforms and sex. The interaction conditions were involved in the interaction between the social media platform and sex, with the assumption that different people can see different content on each platform.
You can find the code r to reproduce the analysis here.
