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Ethan Dailey

Professor Gonzalez

ENC 1102

30 April 2024

I Want You: How Fake Social Media Propaganda Has Taken Over Politics

Introduction:

Politics, one of the most talked about things across the entire world, that no matter what,

will always spark debates and cause problems. Everyone in the world has a different view, which

will always cause politics to be a touchy subject to some people, but at times, can even cause

people to spread misinformation and fake news. With the social media and technology uprising

across the world, we have seen a change in the shape of politics, a new landscape for political

warfare, where everyone and anyone can say whatever, post whatever, and share whatever they

want about anything.

This new uprising in social media has swiftly taken over the landscape of politics, which

has allowed for a mass spread of propaganda and misinformation across these social media sites

to millions of different people and users. This mass spread of misinformation is causing a

whirlwind of problems across the entirety of politics, affecting voters, households, politicians,

and even the roots of politics themselves. The platform that social media gives people to open up

and say whatever they want, is not always a bad thing, but in the sense when it comes to politics,

the spread of propaganda and misinformation is not good, and is influencing politics in a

negative way that is hindering the movement of politics in a positive direction.

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It is no surprise that social media has taken an abstract place in the handle of political

discussion, however, it is being used in a negative way and majority of the sources that I have

selected go to prove this philosophy. “Fake news” and political propaganda have been able to

sort of take the front stage on social media because of its large quantity of users and the easy

influence it can have on the general population. One of the largest pieces of information I was

able to draw from all of my sources is that social media is a growing place for the spread of

misinformation of politics because of how easy it can be used to persuade voters and households

into believing a fake truth that can set the standards as to how people feel about a certain

candidate or policy.

The different sources that I used to gather information did research in all different types

of way, but in almost all of them they provided a relatively similar conclusion towards their

opinions on the use of social media in politics, and that is the belief that social media needs to be

eliminated or at the very least limited from politics as a whole because of the effect fake

propaganda can have on the easy to influence users of these social media sites. However I did

have one source, “How Digital Media Reshapes Political Activism: Mass Protests, Social

Mobilization, And Civic Engagement,” state how the use of social media in politics is important,

and something that should not be stripped away because it allows for voters and users to speak

up and speak their own opinions on social media. While this may not necessarily be a bad thing,

all of my other sources seem to differ with that opinion and have done much research to sort of

prove the opposite of that matter. While that specific source believes social media is used in a

good way to allow people to spread their opinions, it allows for those opinions to be received by

other users, and in a lot of cases these opinions can be based off fictions, which can lead to
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people to also support these fictions which would in the end, just be hurting politics because of

the spread of misinformation.

Most of the research applied by my sources take in depth study at social media

propaganda and the effect it has on voters, but to me once specific source stands out the most,

which is, “Social Media and Fake News in the Post-Truth Era: The Manipulation of Politics in

the Election Process.” This source took a look at social media propaganda and fake news in the

likes of many different countries such as the United States, France, Germany, UK, Turkey, and

even in the political battle of Brexit. The research provided by the author is keen to my own

research because it allows me to gain an in-depth sense of the true effects of social media on a

large scale political battle, but for many different instances and cases, which can deep into

providing the backbone of my research and how I believe social media has an influence on

politics. Another one of my sources,”The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the

Public Sphere, and Political Change,” takes an in depth look at social media politics on the

policy itself, which is a different approach compared to that of the rest of the sources, which take

a more involved look into the effect of political social media on voters and regular people. This

source will allow me to show the different scale effects of social media in politics, and how it

impacts results on a larger scale.

The rest of my sources,”The Global Organization of Social Media Disinformation

Campaigns,” “Commanding the Trend: Social Media as Information Warfare,” “The Politics of

Social Media Manipulation,” all tend to take a relatively same view when it comes to social

media in politics, especially when it comes to propaganda. All of these sources all use different

information and research to come to the same conclusion that social media in politics is a
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negative tool that needs to be limited or structured to allow for social media to be more efficient

and useful.

Methods:

To conduct my research, I will be analyzing the responses and comments to political

social media propaganda across different platforms that have a heavy influence on people as a

whole. For my first batch of research, I looked at TikTok, where I searched up “Democratic

Propaganda”, and “Republican Propaganda,” and searched for comments that I believed would

be good data to use in my study. After that I then proceeded to X (Formerly known as Twitter), to

conduct my next little bit of research, where I once again searched up the same two things and

took comments from each post that I felt would fit into this study. For my last little bit of

research I decided to use Reddit, and once again searched the same two topics and dug out

comments and responses that I feel like showed the most effect of these propaganda posts on

people who saw these posts.

The goal of my research in this way is to help showcase the negative effects that these

political propaganda posts can have on people, and how it can affect their mentality when it

comes to politics as a whole. I believe that using three different platforms I am able to gather a

more controlled data collection of users, responses, and different pieces of political propaganda

to further showcase the effects that it can bring across all different types of users. I wanted to

split up the research as well by splitting it between democratic and republican searches as well,

that way I can gather more information on each party separately, to once again allow for more

intake from different types of users and posts.

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Results:

Within my research I went through several different social media sites with two different

parties, and each time I was able to find key examples as to why social media is a hindrance in

today’s ideal of politics, and that it needs to be limited. When looking up republican propaganda

on TikTok, I was able to find a TikTok of some propaganda revolving around Donald Trump

being a hardcore racist, and decided to use this as my first source to search through the

comments. I found a lot of hateful comments from people claiming that the republican party is

corrupted, and that republicans suck. There were also a few comments on this post of users who

were surprised to see this. I was able to find similar responses and results across all the other

platforms when it came to republican propaganda on social media. A lot of the propaganda

revolved around a lot of the same themes and comments, and as result brought in a lot of the

same types of comments and stances towards this republican propaganda.

Throughout the research I searched for political propaganda through the lens of the

democratic party as well to reduce as much bias as possible, and was able to find key pieces of

information. One of the pieces of political propaganda that stood at the most was a reddit post in

regard to Joe Biden possibly being some sort of child predator in a sense. The post made

comments about how Joe Biden was caught being weird and strange around children, especially

when it comes to touching them and smelling them. There were a lot of hateful comments on this

post and it seemed to be a lot of targeting democrats being pedophiles, weirdo's, and overall bad

people. I once again found that throughout my other sources a lot of these comments and hate

stayed the same despite what the news was. I was also able to find information that there were
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people who were completely shocked by this news of Joe Biden and clearly it affected their

stances on him

Discussion:

Throughout my research I was able to find a lot of valuable evidence that helps to prove

that social media can have a negative influence on politics. These propaganda posts of untrue and

false acquisitions against politicians and politics as a whole can cause for people to feel different

towards certain things that they typically would not feel, for instance, on the fake propaganda

made towards Trump and Biden, there were plenty of comments insisting that people’s view on

these candidates and prospective party have been changed in a negative way.

According to the article,“The Politics of Social Media Manipulation,” there is new term,

computational propaganda, which is used to describe the use of bots in political propaganda, and

how they are supposed to spread disinformation to manipulate users into believing something

untrue about something specific (Rogers/Niederer 24). During my primary research when

searching through comments, I was able to see a lot of bot-like comments that were just

attacking the candidates and political parties, likely in an attempt to help boost these fake

propaganda posts and likely to entice users to believe that these posts are real. Seeing the first

hand example of this computational propaganda has only furthered my belief that the use of

social media in politics serves no help towards the future development of politics and can only

hold us back on a political level.

The article, “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and

Political Change,” claims that the United States attempts to limit political propaganda and the

use of bot removal methods is designed to hurt politics, and can only cause harm and cannot
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have any beneficial factors (Shirky 32). Simply based on the fact that in my own research I

conducted where I was able to spot and detect these bots that were spreading nothing beneficial

and only spreading lies, that belief by author Clay Shirky is just laughable. In any attempt to get

rid of these posts that can contain lies, disinformation, and misinformation, it is in no way

harmful to politics and freedom of speech because the information being used is attacking

specific parties and candidates in a way that is unfair and unjust. What the United States is doing

to help confront and combat the problem of fake news and disinformation is really good, and can

only benefit politics in a helpful way.

The article “The Global Organization of Social Media Disinformation Campaigns,” does

bring into play that governments and political officials/representatives are starting to invest in the

new social media technology and tools to help with their cases in spreading misinformation

(Bradshaw/Howard 29). For example, Donald Trump, one of the premier political candidates

who has a heavy usage of social media, has an entire social media team and will purposefully

spread misinformation regarding candidates he is opposing. Donald Trump, on instagram, made

a post regarding Joe Biden saying that he wanted to “Take him out back and fight him behind the

gym,” however, in the real context of that clip it is not as deep as Donald Trump is pushing out to

people through social media. There are many other countless examples that you can find from

politicians all over, such as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Marco Rubio (just as

some examples, not all) who are constantly on social media trying to influence voters and

households by spreading as much information as possible, weather it be fake or sometimes even

real, which is causing harm to politics.

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There are some instances where it has been proven that the use of social media in politics

can be beneficial, and the goal of my argument is not to prove that social media should not be

able to have a place in politics at all, but that it needs to be limited. According to the source,

“Social Media and Fake News in the Post-Truth Era: The Manipulation of Politics in the Election

Process,” the usage of social media has actually positively benefited politics in countries such as

Iran, Jordan, and Qatar, by allowing people to express their real opinions and emotions on

politics in these countries where political freedom is limited (Yerlikaya/Aslan 183). On the

contrary, the article also states that in countries like the United States, Turkey, and France that

the use of politics in social media is negatively affecting politics because it allows for the spread

of disinformation and fake political propaganda, which in my research was made very known

(Yerlikaya/Aslan 184).

One of the most important things that I was able to pick up during my own personal

research is the amount of interactions that I was able to find throughout looking at all these

different political propaganda posts. According to, “Commanding the Trend: Social Media as

Information Warfare,” roughly seventy-two percent of American people gather their day to day

information from news sources and social media sites online, and have begun to disregard a lot

of information through the typical newspapers and sources like that (Prier 59). This would likely

explain why there was so much interaction when it comes to these political propaganda posts

online and why they have so much influence on the population here. The likelihood that most of

the people who see these fake news posts and consider that as their daily intake of what is going

on in the world and what is going on in politics is likely really high, which is probably why
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people are so easily convinced on the fact that these fake news posts maybe legit, and could

explain why the daily population believes them and takes them to be the truth.

There is a large portion of people who find it hard to believe that this fake news and

political propaganda can actually have an effect on people, and before doing research on it, I too

was one of those people who found it so confusing how people can be so easily influenced by

these fake news sources. According to, “How Digital Media Reshapes Political Activism: Mass

Protests, Social Mobilization, and Civic Engagement,” these fake news sources and political

propaganda pieces are specifically designed to engage and encounter those who would be easily

targeted into believing the sources to try and influence them as much as possible (Brennan 80).

These posts are creatively designed to persuade the greatest and weakest population available to

influence, such as people who rarely pay attention to politics, and those who are non-biased in a

lot of cases (Brennan 80). This supports my idea that their fake news and political propaganda

posts are effective enough to have a hold on the population,a dn can negatively affect a large

portion of the population when it comes to elections and politics as a whole.

Conclusion:

Overall, using my own research and my secondary sources, I have been able to

confidently come to the conclusion that the use of social media in politics is negatively

influencing politics with all the fake news, misinformation, disinformation, political propaganda,

and computational propaganda that is being constantly released on these platforms. Due to the

excessive amount of users on a day to day basis who interact with these negative posts, it is

creating a dysfunction in politics where a vast majority of people have become easily influenced
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to believing the wrong things and a negative persona among specific politicians, politics, and

political parties. The best action that can be taken to help prevent this detrimental use of politics

in social media would be by finding a good way to limit the amounts of bad things that are

posted when it comes to representing politics on social media.

As a whole it is important that we collectively work together as a whole to try and limit

the amount of fake news and propaganda there is on these social media platforms. While it is a

protected right and important that we have free speech, it is not okay to be slandering and lying

to a vast majority of the public about politics, something that decides and runs the country it is

we live in.
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Works Cited: