Social media has changed the way we communicate. From deepfakes to cancel culture, Assistant Professor of Digital Communication Jerrica Rowlett, Ph.D., breaks down how we’re interfacing in the digital age:
Connection, memefied: “Memes are being used as a form of communication in two big ways. The first is where the only form of communication people have with each other is sending memes; this happens a lot with long-distance friends and is used for relationship maintenance. The second is where people share memes to communicate what they can’t put into their own words, or they don’t want to put into their own words. You see this a lot with what people choose to share on Facebook. Sometimes it’ll be something that resonates with their personal life and experience or the feelings and emotions they have.”
In deepfakes we trust: “We’re seeing a lot more deepfakes (AI-generated images, videos, and audio) emerge, and I’m concerned that people aren’t thinking enough about the possibilities they present. I see deepfakes shared all the time by people wanting to believe them — which is where confirmation bias comes into play. If people see something that confirms their own bias and what they want to believe, they often trust those things and are less likely to fact-check.”
You're blocked: “We live in a pretty black and white culture where you either line up with what I do, or you don’t. Cancel culture comes about when somebody with a large identity — whether that's a celebrity or influencer — does something that makes a large population of people upset, and they decide to 'cancel' them — which often comes in the form of unfollowing and telling other people to do that too. Blocking is a recent and more extreme version of canceling because their content isn’t going to show up on your page and it’s not going to show up to other people. The people who cancel want to cause harm to those who don’t have the same ideological beliefs that they do. For instance, if I’m not giving you views, I’m hurting you financially.”
