Immunocytochemistry

● Themes: Balance, power, confirmation, identity, understanding media

181 | P a g e Engaging with a wide range of other media in one place is one of the main reasons people give for using social media. Social platforms are not just media in themselves but an increasingly important conduit for other outlets, with which they have a reflexive and mutually serving relationship.

Consumers of each are a key part of this complex system of supply and demand. Participants were asked this question set to give a broad understanding of their online media experience as part of their political engagement, their relative media literacy, breadth of consumption, propensity to expose themselves to challenging beliefs, and any correlations there might be between media choices and self-identity. Also, their propensity to think critically about sources and check facts was interrogated. These factors were considered key to answering the first research question.

Levels of social media literacy and familiarity with the affordances of these media were also inferred from questioning throughout the interview. Sometimes participants did not always refer to social media explicitly, but their behaviours or use of terminology were clearly suggestive of social media use. The fact that participants did not always attribute sources specifically is in itself interesting and hints at the taken-for-granted-ness ubiquity of the media.

Propensity to read widely across the political spectrum, rather than actual title choice was considered suggestive of critical thinking. Social media allows access to an unprecedented and curatable range of titles at little or no cost, which is a draw factor. Media consumption by participants was overall quite broadly spread, with ample direct or indirect evidence that outlets were often accessed on line, not always, but sometimes explicitly acknowledged, through a variety of managed feeds including RSS and very often, Facebook ‘liked’ outlets.

‘Facebook has been the gateway to a lot of those apps. Facebook has tended to throw up things that I've then followed. That has introduced me to other outlets or whatever. I regularly look on my phone at BBC News, CNN, The Guardian, and it tends to vary a bit as to what other things I have access to.’ Meg*

182 | P a g e Participants also reported being exposed to different material and outlets via friends’ postings. The fact that these sources, traditional or otherwise are largely viewed in a social media context does make a considerable difference, to how easily they are shared, compared and challenged, for instance. Ordinary consumers can potentially have the experience of being in a press office or newsroom where all titles are on offer to peruse, although in practice, choices will often be

mediated by the subjective choices of the people and organisations with whom one interacts – there is no institutional directive towards balance. A post emanating from the BBC from one person might be addended by a list of contrary views from The Guardian and The Canary, for instance, making an instant difference to the way it is framed and received, perhaps generating polarised discussion, creating what has been characterised as co-production, or multi-layered diegesis (Lilleker 2014).

As anticipated, there was a division between those who like to read material which broadly followed their own opinions and those willing to be exposed to contrary and challenging opinions. While one might speculate that this could be linked to social and educational status, the evidence for this was mixed. It was also anticipated that there might be some identity signalling through declared media choices. A professed dislike of midmarket tabloid newspapers such as the Daily Mail was quite widely expressed alongside disillusionment with, or defence of the BBC. Both featured so highly they are deserving of comment as a divisive topic in their own right, so are explored further on.

Filter bubbles and echo-chambers

There was a growing awareness of these phenomena throughout the course of fieldwork and to a degree, participants did self-examine.

‘Actually, I think you do live within a bubble […] some family members don't think the way I think but majority of my friends have a similar outlook to myself. I started going along with this plugging the remain thing (to) everybody as all my friends were doing it to me so it felt safe and secure.’ Christine*

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‘I'm really aware of that and I try not to, but it is quite difficult. I want to be well-informed, I don't want to just have my own views mirrored back to me. Part of the reason for that is, because although my immediate family, and by and large, my friendship group have the same sort of views that I have, my family don't. My birth family, my brother, in particular. So, I feel it is quite important to make sure that I'm properly educated about things and not just receiving the same

regurgitated information the whole time. In order to do that, I have to make a specific effort. Meg*

‘I knew enough to know that the mainstream media were biased, but I didn’t know enough to know, should I…why should I be ‘Yes’ or why should I be ‘No’, and a couple of people at work were active in the SNP and one guy in particular, who’s now an SNP councillor in Falkirk, he pointed me in the direction of a couple of sites that he felt were quite balanced […] and the more and more I kept researching, the more I started sharing and the more I started posting things about, this sounds right to me, this sounds like the right way to go to me, and the more and more people were commenting on it and things like that, and that helped me make up my mind what way I wanted to go…’ Woman 2, Alloa

‘Obviously there's something about social media that means that you receive things that are sympathetic to you and I understand that it's more comforting to read things that are sympathetic to your own views. I try to read more widely but I think there is a tendency to be reading the things that reinforce your own views, I think it's inevitable.’ Denise*

It is understood that one effective persuasion technique is to meet your adversary part way and acknowledge areas where they might be right (Halperin 2014). Given the evidence that participants are often motivated to persuade others this apparent lack of insight and an occasional inclination to bombard challengers with third-party evidence which support one’s own case is suggestive of difficulty in reading a situation, and perhaps (for some hard-wired reasons) unconsciously prioritising the need to be right above making progress, and not purely poor listening habits.

National institutions?

‘I think, how about looking at The Daily Mail [..]I know that would back up my view (of) Daily Mail readers. (I was) immediately told off by my wife for having done so. At one point, I worked on immigration policy. It was my job to keep an eye on what the Daily Mail was saying […] That was the only other time I looked at it [..] other than my own twisted desire to get angry.’ William*