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The starting point for my assignment focuses on the set text from Ian Riley’s “F for Fake: Propaganda! Hoaxing! Hacking! Partisanship! and Activism! in the Fake News Ecology”.

Reilly argues that spread and influence fake news in the 21st century has been impacted and shaped by technological developments and has become more than merely a form of propaganda led by a state or government or a political party or news organisation. In fact, in analysing the dissemination of fake news, Reilly argues that information acquires authenticity when it is produced and shared by everyday users or accounts that appear to be. To add to this, the very act of sharing content which is popular or highly engaging on a social media platform is further bolstered and amplified by the site’s algorithms, thus making these social media sites prone to what Boyd refers to as ‘attention hacking’ while also reveals platforms tendencies to create disproportionate spheres of influence and filter users into echo chambers.

Using this understanding of the sources and influence of fake news within social media to contextualise my discussion, my research question is whether “Whether social media and online social justice campaigns are helping or hindering resistance movements in the age of fake news?”. In order to analyse this question I will be undertaking both source analysis of posts, shared videos and tweets as well as literature review to dig deeper into the underlying influence that social media has on real world social justice movements. Focusing on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook this project will investigate the struggle between social justice movements and countering attempts by fake news sources (including bots, doctored content), and using the work of Harvard professor Erica Chenoweth as a starting point, who has been tracking the effectiveness of non-violent protest movements over the last two decades. Professor Chenoweth has found that over the last decade there has been a decline in the success of non-violent campaigns from being 50 percent likely to succeed between 1900 to 2010 but dropping to a success rate of about 33 percent in the last decade from 2010 to 2019. Despite social media being a fertile ground for sharing content and amassing online support, Chenoweth’s research has drawn a link between the failure of concrete results to the undermining of these movements through divisive spread of misinformation online, such as making movements look more radical than they really are, accounts or tweets discouraging turnout in real life and even the use of deepfakes or manipulated photos or videos – these types of fake news all collectively undermine widespread support and turnout which in turn is essential for success in a non-violent social justice movement.

In my research I want to delve into different case studies; at this point I’m definitely going to examine the BLM movement and the conflicting narratives between largely non-violent protest movements and online portrayals of violence, and also locally looking at the Australian Bushfires and the #ARSONEMERGENCY hashtag in relation to the climate justice movement. I’m considering the addition of perhaps another case study pending further research.

In terms of the ethics of my chosen topic area, my aims are to conduct a balanced analysis which does not favour or judge a particular campaign or viewpoint, but rather to analyse the positive and negative effects of social media on the outcome of the social justice campaigns.

I am still determining the best format to communicate my final findings, but as I’m a Media arts and production major, I am leaning towards an audio-visual presentation or podcast. I’ve been inspired by social media exposes in the vein of Gimlet media’s Reply All podcast, as well as The Times’ Down the Rabbit Hole podcast, exposing the influence of Facebook algorithms and QANON, and in this vein I feel a podcast could be a powerful way to deliver my findings. I’m excited to further delve into research for a3.

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