Since the advent of the 21^st Century, there has been an unprecedented increase in the usage of the internet. It is the consumer data, captured through every search, every video viewing, and every shopping order, that underlines this usage and has become increasingly valuable to those who control it. The interconnectivity of the global system has meant personal data has become so central to our existence, that the control and rights a consumer has is now as fundamental as any other human right. I will attempt to explore how these two core features of our lives interact with each other and their impact on us.
 
Perhaps one of the core tenets of our perception of the internet is the supposed freedom that we are granted to search, view, and engage with anything that we wish. However, this is in dramatic contrast to the systems and algorithms implemented by companies such as Facebook. These algorithms seek to “curate” a personalised experience on their platforms to better match a consumer’s taste by extracting and selling any data you produce on their platform to companies who in turn know that their product would be more likely to sell to you.
 
In particular, the viewing of news articles is an important part of this data extraction, with statistics from Ofcom showing that approximately half of the British population receive news from social media regularly. Yet the same report claims that only 37% of users find social media news to be impartial contrasting to the 62% who believe TV to be impartial. Yet the viewership of TV has declined in recent years, from 79% in 2018 to 68% in 2020. This raises an obvious question: why are consumers trending towards reading articles they find to be lower quality and less partial? The simple reason is that humans like to agree with their surroundings as any disagreement raises conflict with already held beliefs. Therefore, consumers appear to be sacrificing the greater impartiality of TV for social media to engage with more content that they agree with. Social media can match this demand because of their data extraction, allowing tech giants like Facebook to fill a user’s feed with more of the same content. This curation fundamentally benefits these corporations as this fosters a desire for a user to return to the website, share their posts with other users, and continue to read news articles and such on their platform, which means more profit for the company.
 
But if it benefits a company to present you with false or politically motivated news to keep you hooked, what implications does this have on your political outlook? It must be clarified that this doesn’t impact most people, particularly older generations, and those in higher income brackets. This can be attributed to the lesser understanding of modern technology and the likelihood that wealthier individuals can focus on familiarising themselves with the news as they have less financial burden and fluency with current affairs - a sign of greater cultural awareness.
 
Yet, the poorer and younger parts of the population tend to favour social media. In the USA, of the people who primarily receive news from social media, 48% are between the ages of 18-29, an overrepresentation of the general population. When divided by income bracket, the percentage from Americans making less than $30k a year is 35%. Not only has it been shown that social media is poorer quality as a news source, but those who use it are also shown to be more likely to fall prey to fake news. This is particularly significant as these two subsets of the population are the most susceptible to the impacts of crises and thus most likely to tend towards political extremism and scapegoating.
 
Social media can supplement these desires. This can be shown with the statistic that 81% of social media users have seen COVID conspiracy theories online, 26% saying they see it a lot, a contrast to the 11% who hear it a lot on radio or 12% on printed newspapers. This increased prominence ultimately means an increased chances of users believing these lies but also serves as solutions to problems that might be faced. The economic problems caused by the pandemic has helped turn people towards these solutions.
 
The extreme nature of these conspiracy theories means that those who believe them are more likely to support them doggedly and thus its harder to reintegrate them back into mainstream thought. Also, the nature of content curation will mean those already viewing conspiracy theories will be more likely to be recommended others. The impact on democracy is two-fold: some conspiracy theories call for the destruction of democracy, particularly those led by extreme nationalists, and the disenfranchisement of increasing numbers of voters with traditional political parties causes the rise of newer, more radical political forces, or increased support for those that already exist.
 
The effects of latter can be most clearly seen in the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, where up to 87 million Facebook profiles, primarily in the USA, had their data collected without their consent. This data was then sold to the marketing teams of the Donald Trump presidential election campaign. And whatever your opinions might be on Trump, his conspiracy theories, covering everything from voter fraud to claiming vaccines cause autism, have the potential to be harmful.
 
The result on American society is profound, with 84% of his voters now believing at least one conspiracy theory, equal to over 55 million voters. With trust in academics and politicians at all-time lows, it will take considerable time and effort for these beliefs to be dislodged from the mainstream, ultimately meaning the popularity of Trump like figures will continue.
 
Though the extraction of data has not caused this paradigm shift in public consciousness directly, the contributions of content refinement for consumers certainly brought the popularity of conspiracies into the mainstream enough such that politicians could promote the ideas. As far as things stand, there is increasing pushback from the public and government to regulate tech giants further, to prevent data extraction without consent. However, the benefits to politicians of customised advertising for any election campaign might mean much noise but not so many solutions to the infringement of data protection rights caused by these corporations. And thus, the unregulated control of data will continue to impede the democratic process.