Final thoughts
December 4th, 2016
This past week, we discussed the internet in light of the recent political election as well as internet in developing countries. I found the first topic to be incredibly interesting and hope to focus on the role of automated accounts in this entry. After reading the articles, I found one statistic particularly surprising: “more than a third of pro-Trump tweets and nearly a fifth of pro-Clinton tweets between the first and second debates came from automated accounts, which produced more than 1 million tweets in total.”
These automated accounts, usually able to respond immediately after a tweet is published, play a huge role in shaping the direction of the following discussions. As users usually see the tweet itself as well as the first few responses, what those responses say would heavily influence the conversation. An interesting question would be if these automated twitter accounts were created by Trump or Clinton campaign teams or if the accounts were created by their avid supporters. In both cases, how would we be able to regulate these automated responses, if they should be regulated at all? In my opinion, the role of a regulator should be attributed to the Federal Elections Commission as opposed to Twitter or social media platforms themselves. In light of the increased role social media plays in elections, the FEC should consider the role of this new platform and the rules that should be in place to prevent misuse of these platforms. Since the power of social media has only become the focus of public attention in the past two elections, it would be interesting to see when FEC will focus on this issue and how they will regulate the many ways that social media could be used.
To conclude this blog entry, I would like to thank Porf. Waldo and Dean Smith for a wonderful, wonderful seminar. After discussions in class, I have been more sensitive to news about the internet and misconceptions that I have held about how the internet works. I could not have wished for better professors for one of my first classes at Harvard. 🙂