Sharing (mis) information on social networking sites. An exploration of the norms for distributing content authored by others

Abstract

This article explores the norms that govern regular users’ acts of sharing content on social networking sites. Many debates on how to counteract misinformation on Social Networking Sites focus on the epistemic norms of testimony, implicitly assuming that the users’ acts of sharing should fall under the same norms as those for posting original content. I challenge this assumption by proposing a non-epistemic interpretation of (mis) information sharing on social networking sites which I construe as infrastructures for forms of life found online. Misinformation sharing belongs more in the realm of rumour spreading and gossiping rather than in the information-giving language games. However, the norms for sharing cannot be fixed in advance, as these emerge at the interaction between the platforms’ explicit rules, local norms established by user practices, and a meta-norm of sociality. This unpredictability does not leave us with a normative void as an important user responsibility still remains, namely that of making the context of the sharing gesture explicit. If users will clarify how their gestures of sharing are meant to be interpreted by others, they will implicitly assume responsibility for possible misunderstandings based on omissions, and the harms of shared misinformation can be diminished.

Socializing the political: rethinking filter bubbles and social media with Hannah Arendt

“…I argue that the gamification of social identity results in the socialization of political judgment, which accelerates the mechanisms of belief polarization even in the presence of diverse perspectives. This section also contextualizes my Arendtian approach with recent work on belief polarization by Talisse (2019;, as well as with other critiques of social media (Heersmink, 2018;Marin, 2021;Nguyen, 2021). By arguing that social media radicalization emerges at the nexus of social identity and gamification, the Arendtian approach provides a novel critique of social media that has been overlooked.…”

“…In other contexts, however, such as when the social identities in question are two dominant political perspectives (e.g., conservative and liberal), then the pursuit of social status will likely result in radicalization and polarization. Similar to Lavinia Marin's diagnosis of the sharing of misinformation on social media (Marin, 2021), the problem of social media radicalization lies not in users who are prone to epistemic vice, but in a social media landscape that blurs the normative boundary between fundamentally different social practices: pluralistic political debate and social identity cultivation.…”

“…Not only do social media give users specific tools of social identity presentation, they also gamify it by framing the success of social identity presentation according to metrics such as follower counts, retweets (or shares), and likes (Nguyen, important element of healthy human psychology. In order to frame the problem differently, I conclude by drawing on a recent critique of the sharing of misinformation on social media, which locates its source in the tendency for social media platforms to blur the normative boundaries between distinct social practices (Marin, 2021).…”

Enactive Principles for the Ethics of User Interactions on Social Media: How to Overcome Systematic Misunderstandings Through Shared Meaning-Making

“…An unpredictable mix of both forms of communication occurs daily in user interactions on social media. I have shown elsewhere how the usage of social media mimics gossiping in the way it establishes networks of trust (Marin 2021). In addition to this, social media platforms are used to spread gossip, with commentators working as relays effectively.…”

The double-edged sword of Twitter during crisis situations. A value-sensitive design approach to decreasing the impact of online misinformation

“…Misinformation sharing is akin to engaging in rumour or gossiping (Marin, 2021). During everyday activities, gossip and rumour do not hurt that much; but when the stakes are high -and this is the case with crises -then suddenly this gossip online receives unwarranted attention.…”