Social media and lockdown – problem or opportunity? Comment

How has social media been used during lockdown – and has its use been problematic or helpful?

The professor sees social media as a double-edged sword. Picture: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP via Getty Images.

On the negative side, concerns over fake news about Covid-19 circulating via social media have been highlighted by academics and governments across the globe – and an Ofcom study suggested that 46 per cent of internet-using adults saw false or misleading information about the virus in the first-ever week of lockdown. What’s more, scientists have spoken out about the pressures they have felt from online attacks.

While social media can allow wide dissemination of news, government policy and opinion, it also amplifies misinformation and gives it equal status with truth. There are also well-founded concerns that high levels of information are producing an “infodemic” that makes it difficult for people to identify the most reliable information.

But there has been a more positive side to social media in lockdown. Local Facebook groups have ensured that those vulnerable and shielding have been able to reach out for help with, say, shopping, or to communicate with others.

Social media and communication tools such as Zoom have been able to present themselves as essential for helping people keep in touch. Businesses have also had to adapt to lockdown, and have used social media to add a personal and local touch.

This kind of media has also allowed humour to creep into the nation’s conversation. Sometimes this has helped governments’ messages, such as Janey Godley’s voice-overs of Nicola Sturgeon’s briefings. At other times, however, memes and other satirical takes on the news have undermined government policy, such as those referencing Barnard Castle and eye tests after Dominic Cummings travelled north during lockdown.

What is particularly interesting about lockdown for a media scholar is the impact it has had on our use of and trust in mainstream media. Research in the US, and some of the research we are undertaking at Robert Gordon University (RGU), suggests that lockdown has led to a return to reliance on legacy media such as radio and television news and newspapers.

Radio listening boomed during early lockdown as listeners tuned in for news, but also for companionship and entertainment, while the use of music-streaming apps such as Spotify dipped. Television news likewise saw audience numbers rise.

However, the story is not as simple as the public realising the worth of mainstream media, forsaking social media, and returning to their old habits. Instead we now have a much more complex picture of hybrid media use.

We might see the news and opinion we are accessing via social media as a kind of palimpsest – a piece of writing that has been over-written and altered by the writings of others over time. And we tend to access news articles that support our own opinion.

As ever, the answer is to do your own research, to make sure that you take your news and opinion from a variety of quality sites, not to share on social media information that you do not know is correct or personal information you wish to keep private, and to challenge information and advice that seems to be dangerous or abusive in some way.

Sarah Pedersen, professor of communication and media at RGU.

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