The Battle for Public Opinion

I would say in the last 15-20 years, the online landscape has dramatically changed the dynamics of public opinion formation and communication strategies. Online communication makes publishing of information 100% accessible to literally everyone for essentially the cost of nothing. When print media was at the forefront of communication you had to adhere to, at the bare minimum, professional and then ethical standards for any publishing company to back you. Of course you could print your own pamphlets or newsletters or what have you, at your own cost, but you could only share those with so many people and maybe they would share it with someone else. Print media was slow, costly, and selective.

The implications of the rapid dissemination of information from anyone online can be quite damaging. Someone doesn't even need to disclose their identity, meaning they don't need to stand behind their name and face, in order to share information or misinformation online. I think removing your name and your face from your opinions or your actions online allows for lawlessness and disregard into the ethics of publishing and the mutual respect you have for other human beings. One can essentially unleash their deepest intrapersonal thoughts in a dimly lit interpresonal space and take zero responsibility for how it is received or what happens to it after it's been released into the online space.

This is a gruesome comparison but I often think of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast about the transformation of warfare during WWI. You know, prior to modern warfare, it was likely that people were ending another's life in hand to hand combat with a sword or knife and how challenging that is because you are physically inflicting that onto another person with your own hands, while looking into their eyes. With modern warfare, automatic weapons and bombs dropped from airplanes, make it so that you can compete without ever having to physically interact with the opposition. It removes the human experience from the interaction and it makes a very hard thing much easier to do. I call out this comparison because words can be damaging, and I've seen a lot of vitriol and hate speech spread online, in an anonymous fashion because that is certainly much easier than saying it to someone's face. It's unfortunate that, given the opportunity, one's deepest intrapersonal thoughts and motivations are to convey and spread hate.

Some of the successful campaigns that have come from the online communication landscape include social movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo. They effectively rally a global support utilizing hashtags to drive engagement, personal storytelling to elicit emotional responses, and create space for people to connect with others who have shared similar experiences. Brexit was another successful online campaign that used targeted language with the phrases 'leave' and 'remain' for either side of the campaign and then used very targeted ad campaigns that used strong language and worked for that emotional response from online users. They also employed messaging that elicited fear and urgency to take action quickly. Sometimes online campaigns walk a very fine line between damaging sensationalism and respectful engagement.

Some things to watch out for with online campaigns is checking your sources and using critical thinking skills to evaluate the information you're consuming. I think ethical and respectful engagement should be essential standards for online campaigns.

Including a link here for more information that goes deeper into the formation of public opinion via the mass media: https://www.britannica.com/topic/public-opinion/Mass-media-and-social-media