Social Media's Red Flags

The last week in geopolitical news has sent people racing to social media, both for news and catharsis. Information searches on the conflict in Ukraine are up 83%—and that’s just on Google. A quick scroll on any major social platform, be it Twitter, TikTok or Meta, will indicate a flurry of panicked insights, infographics, livestreams from the front and pleading cautions about the veracity of content. These contradictory and often confusing messages are shown with only as much context as the original creator places into the post or caption, leaving engaged audiences to parse through dense insights without a good gauge as to what accurate reporting looks like.

This is one of the stark realities of social media. At its best, it allows the often-unheard voices to punctuate our curated media cycle and speak to the issues authentically. At its worst, however, it creates a content ecosystem without credibility or accountability, that can easily turn misinformation into propaganda at warp speed through the streamlined effects of the algorithm.

On TikTok in particular, users have noted hundreds of videos that seemingly depict the Russian invasion into Ukraine—only to be debunked as scenes from Libya, video games and an unrelated Russian military exercise in 2016. The latter video racked up 22 million views on TikTok as some users tried to correctly attribute the clip to its source material while others continued to share without any suspicion about the video’s origins.

We recently discussed what it means to implement propaganda tactics in advertising design, but we’re seeing similar language and visual cues—namely sensationalism and fear—dominating our social feeds with the recent onslaught of news.

In the interest of our community, we wanted to extend some tried and true lessons in social media discernment to help guide you during the upcoming weeks and months.

1.     Don’t make assumptions.
Captions, video content and comments do not a full picture make. Be aware that you’re seeing a small portion of a larger portrait, which may or may not be accurate. Look into the credibility of the profile (view more of their content, see what content they engage with and assess their follower base) and ask critical questions like, “What message is this content creating? How does it make me feel? Does it create judgements that I have enough information to support?”

2.     Verify off social media—more than once.
Do your due diligence and look to corroborate your social media findings with actual news accounts. Now, this is tricky in that most news accounts do rely on social media for real-time information about ongoing world events, but news organizations are also held to a higher standard of ethics and credibility than the average social media user and will update their information if it is proven inaccurate.

3.     Look for credible citation.
Comprehensive research draws on expertise across data, science and news sources—while opinion relies on none of the above. Accurate news reporting will have unbiased and verified citation sources while opinion-based content will often lack sources entirely or point to extremely polarizing citation sources that do not have the backing of a credible outlet. If you can’t find sources or the provided sources lack balanced insights, consider it a red flag.

4.     Get offline for better decision making.
The rapid intensity of social media often makes for clouded judgment, as our ability to critically think requires devoted attention, a hard-to-come-by commodity when hundreds of pieces of information can be consumed within a few minutes and most social media users are multitasking between devices or platforms. When you feel yourself becoming overwhelmed or unable to discern the truth behind the media you’re consuming, log off. Your brain will thank you for the manual reset.

While social media offers a net good in being able to engage and help out during real-time events and we are not discouraging the brave individuals around the globe who give us a chance to witness injustice firsthand, we also do want to encourage all users to be discerning social users—to not only better their media literacy but to show support in accurate and authentic ways, without contributing to the spread of misinformation.