Final Blog Post For MCO 427
Have you ever opened TikTok or Instagram and noticed the same topic appearing every few scrolls? Whether it is a controversy, a new trend, a “fact you didn’t know,” or a claim about something happening in the world, you watch one video and now it is just all over your feed. You may begin thinking this topic must be viral, but how do you know that?
Your friend, coworkers, or the person sitting right next to you may be scrolling at the same time you are, but may be seeing completely different topics on their feeds. Due to everything constantly happening within the media, it can be hard to differentiate viral content from what your personalized feed wants you to see.
This is because social media algorithms are connected to the bandwagon effect. The bandwagon effect is the tendency to accept an idea or join a behavior because we believe many other people already believe and support it. However, when your social media feed is personalized for you it can make it difficult to tell if something is genuinely popular or if it is just something that is simply being recommended to you repeatedly.
Your Feed Is Not Everyone’s Feed
Social media platforms use recommendation systems to decide what content to put in front of you. On TikTok, the For You Page is especially important because it is curated by the platform’s recommendation algorithm rather than simply showing you posts from accounts you already follow. Research from Penn State found that TikTok’s recommendation system plays a particularly central role in determining which videos receive large amounts of attention. They analyzed nearly 2 million political TikTok videos and found that the algorithm can make it possible for videos to receive thousands or even millions of views regardless of how many followers the creator has. This is an issue in the system, as it likely lacks verifying who is saying making the claim.
If your feed shows you three videos about a controversial topic and you like even just one, yet watch the others all the way through or interact in the comments, your feed is likely going to show you more content about it. It would be pretty easy to assume that this topic is going viral, but that compared to just popular to your feed are very different.
The Illusion of Consensus
The illusion of consensus is the feeling that our own experience or opinion is shared by a much larger group of people than it actually is.
Social media can make this concept even more confusing because we are constantly shown visible signs of what other people supposedly think. A view, like, or even a comment isn’t evidence for what anyone else thinks or believes. Bots, trollers, and even creators buying these interactions make it nearly impossible to believe these types of statistics from a video at first sight.
This is why it is important to remember to do research before deciding what to believe because the media may make it seem like everyone else does, yet it is just your feeding repetitively giving you the same information.
The Bandwagon Effect
Without thorough research or choosing to think for yourself about something, it is easy to just hop on a bandwagon about a topic.
We as people often look to other’s behavior or opinions for clues about what is correct, desirable, or acceptable. This is closely related to social proof, which is the tendency to use other people’s behavior as a shortcut for deciding what to do or believe. The Decision Lab explains that social media has amplified these signals through likes, shares, comments, and views. It also notes that recommendation algorithms can create reinforcing loops in which popular content receives more visibility, generating even more visible social proof.
Think about what happens when you see a claim repeated over and over. Even if you question it the first time, yet repeatedly keep hearing it and maybe your favorite celebrity or influencer also believes it along with their other followers. If you then choose to believe it without doing any further research for evidence, you are then a part of the bandwagon effect.
Viral Does Not Mean True
This matters because misinformation does not have to be convincing on its own if it seems popular enough. A misleading claim with millions of views can seem more credible than a well supported claim with a few hundred views. A statement repeated across dozens of videos can feel more legitimate simply because we recognize it especially if there seems to be a lot of agreement in the comment section. However it is still important to know that views or likes do not mean agreement, and the sources posting the claim may have no evidence for the claim and just going along with everyone else.
While social media can help spread misinformation faster than before, it doesn’t mean that everyone on there is immediately not true. It is just helpful to realize that topics that repeatedly come across your feed were personalized for you and may not even be widely known or true.
Steps to Break the Algorithmic Bandwagon
If you find yourself believing everything you see on the media just because your feed keeps showing you the same information, or you notice everyone else seems to believe the claim, here are steps to take for yourself.
- Am I seeing this everywhere, or just on my feed?
- Would someone with completely different interests see the same thing?
- Am I confusing views and likes with actual agreement?
- Are credible sources reporting the same information?
- Do I believe this because there is evidence, or just because I’ve seen it repeatedly?
You don’t need to immediately not trust anything on your feed, yet instead know how to recognize that repetition and popularity are not the same thing as truth. Take the time and pay attention to what you’re reading on social media to take control of your beliefs and feed.
Intended Audience
My intended audience for this post is college students ages 18–24 who regularly use TikTok, Instagram, and other social media platforms to discover news, trends, and information. I chose this audience because personalized feeds are a regular part of their media intake, but seeing the same content repeatedly can make it difficult to distinguish popularity from algorithmic recommendations.
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