Blog Post #2

gabriellev

For my free inquiry project, I chose a topic that I feel is extremely relevant especially for people my age: “How do algorithmic recommendation systems on social media platforms influence public discourse, and are they more likely to amplify misinformation than substantive or accurate content?”

Most people have been a victim of misinformation on social media platforms. Personally I think Tiktok is one of the biggest culprits of this. I have noticed how my feeds shift based on how I interact with content so I wanted to look into the why and how this can lead to spread of information, whether accurate or inaccurate.

For this week my goal is simply to look into the basics of TikTok. It is clear that they track likes, shares, etc. to personalize the content that you see. From my research I found that this is to optimize attention because algorithms goals are to get you to keep scrolling and therefor keep participating in public discourse. 

I created my Trello board to outline weekly tasks: understanding algorithms, exploring misinformation patterns, diving into case studies, and finally connecting everything back to public discourse.

So far, I’m realizing this topic is less about “bad users spreading lies” and more about platform design choices that reward certain types of content. Next week, I’ll look deeper into how algorithms work and why they might unintentionally promote misinformation over accurate information.

This week’s sources of interest

Here is my free inquiry blog post plan