Oldal 51 [51]
50 | Digital Media and Storytelling in Higher Education
content, it can be said that micronarratives as a stand-alone visual entity or
as part of a series can themselves evoke stories from their recipients.
Social media posts with political content have agenda-setting value
aimed at voters with a similar viewpoint to the politician. Web 2.0 political
posts can shape the views of followers through the symbolic ritual power of
micronarratives, the reinforcing effect of serialism and redundancy, and the
enforcement of visual and verbal stereotypes. At the same time, social media
posts allow citizens to engage in public discourse. The value preferences and
identity constructions of individuals are also well represented in comments
sections and shared content. Moreover, the media literacy of the user may
also be revealed through his or her critical or uncritical selection of content.
While social media seem to have democratized the public sphere, the
question arises whether it is a medium for multi-viewpoint information. While
the freedom to share and comment is open to all users, social media is far
from providing a broad spectrum of multi-viewpoint information. Content
selection already manifests itself in the way users choose social media friends,
user communities, brands to follow and sources of information according
to their preferences in terms of contacts, interests, and worldviews. On the
other hand, content selection is also reflected in the fact that social media
news feeds offer users personalized content. Content prioritization algorithms
take into account users’ personal interactions, shares, likes, comments,
and even geographical location, leading to the creation of opinion bubbles
- an environment of information reflecting the users interests and beliefs
(Veszelszki, 2021). The content selection also occurs outside the world of
social media, where the search for online content is controlled by algorithms
developed by large companies (e.g., Google and Netflix) which thematize
the search results and the order in which they appear (Szüts, 2021). At the
same time, bots that operate on algorithmic principles may write comments
under a post. This calls into question the authenticity of full user access and
the democratization of Web 2.0 content services.
The credibility of online information has been a matter of debate since the
advent of the Internet. In the early 2000s, the central issue was the question
of the legitimacy of news portals and professional blogs, and wikis (Téfalvy,
2017), but nowadays, regardless of the platform, the most serious challenge in
the online public sphere is to distinguish between inauthentic and authentic
information.
Mass social media use also affects the way people keep up to date with
the latest news. In the social media newsfeed, the user finds news shared by
friends and the micro-content from the news providers they follow. However,
in addition to editorial communication, individual self-reporting and news
reflections, fake news imitating the formal and narrative characteristics of
news communication is also flourishing on social media, which provides an
exceptionally favorable platform for its rapid spread.