We often hear about how social media isn’t a reliable source of news. It’s an echo chamber. There’s no standard for fact-checking. Headline surfing is misleading. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and deepfakes are prevalent. Sources are hard to find. The algorithm censors viewpoints. A lot of these are legitimate, and even in this opinion, I won’t argue that social media will be your only source of news (for many of these same reasons). That said, I think we need to have a real conversation about this. There are reasons to have concerns, but social media is nonetheless a useful source of news and reporting.
First of all, I don’t think many of the arguments against social media are that good from the jump, as they are issues in both forms of media, but typically only raised as disqualifying for social media. For instance, according to 2023 data from the Pew Research Center’s “Cable News Fact Sheet”, roughly half of people who get their news from cable news get it from FOX News. That’s effectively an echo chamber – a large number of people getting their news from a single source without an outside perspective. We don’t call it one typically, but they really aren’t that different. Additionally, while there are better options for fact- and bias-checking in traditional media (with places like GroundNews, Snopes, and PolitiFact being easily available) than there are for social media, that does not mean that the information is accurate. We all remember the voting machine defamation lawsuits in the wake of the 2020 election. Next, I’d argue that headline surfing is actually an issue with traditional media more than social media, as it’s a result of sensationalized traditional headlines being read without context on platforms like Facebook or Twitter/X. If traditional media were better incentivized to provide accurate headlines, then headline surfing wouldn’t be as much of an issue. Finally, the algorithm does censor certain viewpoints, but it’s not like traditional media presents them all either. A clear example of this was Luigi Mangione’s arrest, where social media was disproportionately sympathetic to Mangione, while traditional media was disproportionately opposed to him. You can agree or disagree with what Mangione did, but it does show that there is a split in what viewpoints are allowed to be presented.
The one argument from those that I think is good is the concern about AI and deepfakes. Traditional media is not as immune to these as people would like to pretend; for instance, according to AI researcher Hany Farid (interviewed in the Coffeezilla video on AI deepfakes) AI videos of Venezuelans Nicolas Maduro’s arrest were shown widely on traditional media, and one of the most popular images of Alex Pretti was later shown to be enhanced using AI (the original image was fairly blurry, but the one on the news was clear). That said, it is more common on social media; when conducting a survey about AI image identification, Farid found most people can only identify AI images at slightly better than chance, and that’s under lab conditions when they are being told to look for them. He said he thinks it would be worse in practice, where people are just glancing past.
As for the sourcing, this is where I think it’s worth starting to talk about the upsides of social media news. It is increasingly common (particularly due to the ease of editing backgrounds and foregrounds on TikTok, and the landmark Hbomberguy video on social media plagiarism) to put sources on screen. Sometimes this is as a simple text overlay (such as a citation), but other times it can take the form of screenshots of entire studies, papers, and news reports, with the relevant text highlighted. Far from being citationless, it is increasingly common to show your sources and the relevant quotes, which goes further than most traditional media (where they often quote it without context). At one point, I agree this was an issue, but that’s no longer true, at least at a notable scale.
Next, I would argue that it’s actually useful to see the bias in what you’re consuming. It is not possible to truly make something unbiased. From word choice and phrasing to what is included or not included, everything has bias. If I know what the biases are and where this person is coming from, I can take that into account when I’m reading it or watching it. If the source pretends to be unbiased, it can be much harder to determine how it’s trying to influence you. Social media tends to be much more obvious with what its biases are, and that makes it easier to account for in your consumption.
Relatedly, social media has massive benefits from the fact that many platforms encourage or require images or videos to be attached. This encourages people to share photos and videos of whatever event they are talking about. We’ve all seen this in practice; it’s the same reason that people like Renee Good, Alex Pretti, and George Floyd are household names. This reliance on visuals also makes them more reliable as sources, because it forces you to show what you’re talking about.
Social media also often does much better at relying on subject-matter experts for their sources. Channels like Legal Eagle or Legal Bytes are run by and feature lawyers talking about court cases, laws, and other legal news. Doctor Mike, Mama Doctor Jones, and Psychology with Dr. Ana do the same for their medical expertise. Alyssa Grenfell and Genetically Modified Skeptic talk about religious extremism from the perspective of those raised under it. Savvy Writes Books is an author and small business owner who talks about books and publishing scams. These are people who know more about their area of expertise than most journalists do. They can provide better insights and explanations. (I’ll note that including a channel here is not an endorsement of them; they’re just useful as examples.)
Another strength also has to be the variety of perspectives. Yes, it is definitely possible to get siloed off into some viewpoints, or to have the algorithm sensor others as not monetizable. But if I want to find a different angle on something, it’s just a quick search away on any of these sites. And I can find extremely strong viewpoints representing any political opinion under the sun. It’s much easier to find these extreme viewpoints on social media than on traditional media, and I would argue that’s a good thing.
Looking to specific formats for a moment, I do want to also address a couple specific strengths in shortform content, streaming, and podcasts. TikTok popularized formats such as stitches and duets, and they now can be see across shortform media. These make it much easier to respond to points made by those with differing political perspectives. Grab their video, cut yourself in between claims or points they make, explain why you don’t agree with sources on screen. It’s extremely conducive to debunking or challenging claims and statements. Alternatively, you can do the same for those you agree with, if you think you have more information that would be useful for the audience to know (such as a specific study that talks about this topic). Streaming also gives us as the audience a chance to interact if we don’t understand what’s being talked about. If a streamer makes a statement and people don’t understand what was meant, they have the chat. They can ask for clarification. This lowers potential ambiguity of news and reporting being misinterpreted due to vagueness, whether or not it was intentional. And in podcasting, it is normal, if not expected, to have guests on. The podcaster serves as essentially the traditional media journalist, asking questions and probing into claims, while the guests are subject matter experts. However, unlike traditional media interviews, these tend to not be cut down as much, meaning you get a fuller discussion and perspective. It has the same benefits, with fewer drawbacks.
And finally, I just think it’s time that we accepted that, for the foreseeable future, social media will be part of our information landscape. Every time a new form of communication comes out, people push back on its reliability. That’s not an inherently bad thing; each form of communication has at least some unique strengths and weaknesses, and not all will always stick around. But at this point, it’s pretty clear that social media is here to stay. On a fundamental level, I think it’s inappropriate to discount the information found on it just because it’s from social media.
Like I said at the start, I’m not arguing that your entire news sources should be from social media. I think a blend of sources is more responsible. But I still think that social media can, and should, be defended as a legitimate source of information. There are real strengths it has that can be legitimately beneficial to being a part of anyone’s news and information.