The initial fears surrounding Facebook were mostly about its effect on users’ social lives. Will it make us all retreat to our desktops and phones, disrupting the face-to-face social order as we know it? In the mid-2000s, the role of social media was clear: it was a way to connect with people that you know. Social media would gradually evolve to become a liaison between customers and business, a means to promote a social movement, and a main hub to receive news. With increasing roles in the daily lives of many, there is ever more reliance on the functionality of the tools that social media companies offer to people.
It is as important to keep track of new forms of media as it is to pay attention to how we talk about it. Nancy Baym is one theorist involved in the analysis of how people and technology interact. She argues that society and technology shape each other at the same time. Social constructivism highlights “new technologies and their uses as consequences of social factors,” which asserts that technology is shaped by people (Baym 44). On the other hand, technological determinism is the philosophy that society is shaped by technology. Baym maintains that "the truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between." Her thesis makes sense when applied to a recent discussion of how the Trending Topics section of Facebook is constructed with both algorithms and the best judgement of its employees. People are analyzing the ways that social media can be problematic as a source of information, because the structure of Facebook enables inevitable biases from its employees and unpredictable algorithms that curate the Trending Topics.
The May 2016 story by Michael Nunez that started the controversy mentions former Facebook curators were “instructed to artificially “inject” selected stories into the trending news module, even if they weren’t popular enough to warrant inclusion—or in some cases weren’t trending at all.” The disappearance of the Malaysaia airline, BLM, and news about Syria are cited as some of the artificially trending content. “I’d come on shift and I’d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn’t be trending because either the curator didn’t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz,” recalls a curator (Gizmodo). Facebook maintains that these allegations do not represent the policies of the company and has not found evidence for the claims. The ex-employees point out the human intervention in what the user base sees in Trending Topics of the Facebook platform, suggests that the technology is shaped by the people who manage it. Ex-curators claim that they were told Facebook is essentially represented as a liberal propaganda machine that filters out conservative news from the masses. The Gizmodo article by Nunez discusses Trending Topics as a technology created as a consequence of people wanting to push a political agenda, taking a social constructivist approach to its representation of Facebook.
Not everyone agrees on what is at fault for potential bias in the platform. According to Zeynep Tufekci of the New York Times, the "real bias" is not a result of its employees but a result of the unpredictable algorithms that surface the topics to begin with. Trending Topics curators ultimately select stories generated from complex programs. “Algorithms are often presented as an extension of natural sciences like physics or biology. While these algorithms also use data, math and computation, they are a fountain of bias and slants — of a new kind (Tufecki).” She points out that the software often uncovers gibberish and duplicate stories as a result of the inaccurate pathway to choose the truly most popular stories. Machines are programmed to learn independently, making it difficult to assess what they have learned and how it affects the rising topics that are generated. These programs working within mysterious constraints are also built into the newsfeed, mentions Tufecki: "Facebook’s own research shows that the choices its algorithm makes can influence people’s mood and even affect elections by shaping turnout." Nunez mostly takes a social constructivist approach in his representation of Facebook as a technology created by social factors. On the contrary, Tufecki locates cause with the technology in shaping the public, presenting a case for technological determinism. She emphasizes how Facebook employees rely on built-in, fallible algorithms to curate the Trending Topics. Facebook is represented as a system of programs that affect what its employees see and what its users feel.
Works Cited:
Baym, Nancy K. "Making New Media Make Sense." Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2010. 22-49. Print.
Nunez, Michael. "Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News." Gizmodo. N.p., 9 May 2016. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
Trending Algorithm Goes Insane. 2016. Looppng. Web. <http://www.looppng.com/content/facebook-trending-topics-algorithm-goes-insane-after-humans-got-fired>.
Tufekci, Zeynep. "The Real Bias Built In at Facebook." New York Times. N.p., 19 May 2016. Web. 6 Feb. 2017.
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