How do social networks influence public opinion and social movements?

By Ro Gálvez.

 Currently, social movements are generated by the illusion of public opinion and / or actors that generally have a social network that constitutes legitimacy and credibility on the part of the community. The conflicts and discussions that are generated today are varied. Not only do they include the classic debates in the social, political and economic spheres, but other problems are generated that involve cultural and symbolic spheres exemplified by the new sexual orientations, ethnic mobilizations, feminists, body positive, conscious eating. Etc.

Social networks have undoubtedly changed the forms of dialogues and protests. There is talk of a sofa activism instead of a revolutionary instrument as some subjects see it. Zigmunt Bauman, one of the great references of Sociology in the 20th century, sees this technological revolution with great skepticism. In an interview with the newspaper EL PAIS (2016) he analyzes that in social networks subjects create their own communities. “The difference between the community and the social network is that you belong to the community, but the network belongs to you. You can add friends and you can delete them, you control the people you interact with. People feel a little better because loneliness is the great threat in these times of individualization ”.

Platforms generally suggest content based on the most important interactions. In the social networks Facebook and Twitter, its nature is to show users the contents of those people with whom they interact the most and the news that they click the most. The social network Instagram, the network of influencers adds popularity to the equation, the content shown is based on a mixture of massiveness, relevance and friendship with the accounts that it follows. YouTube suggests videos not only by the number of visits, but also takes into account the time that the videos are viewed. Pinterest resembles YouTube in that suggestions are based on user taste and previous searches. Finally, LinkedIn is a social network dedicated to the professional world and takes into account the interaction of users and topics that are relevant to the world of work, without leaving out the number of followers that the accounts have.

So the question is: do we use social networks to broaden our horizons? To be able to have differentiated opinions? Or simply to lock ourselves in our comfort zone, where the only analysis and content generated are an echo of our thoughts. In addition to this, we cannot leave out the invisible hand of algorithms, each platform uses a different one, based on what companies estimate that users want to see. These are not fixed, and the controversy is in the media every time they change.

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