Social media and bias 2.0

Abstract

This chapter discusses algorithmic bias on social media. It argues that while new technologies utilising advanced algorithms – often referred to as artificial intelligence – have inspired hopes of a world beyond bias, the reality is gloomier. On today’s social media, interaction, access, and visibility are largely orchestrated by algorithms that are not free from bias but, instead, have learnt to efficiently automate it. The chapter suggests that while designed with hopes of cherishing diversity and equality, social media have become a space of technologically administered homophily, where social injustice, exclusion, and discrimination remain and are reinforced. Social media reinforces “bias 2.0”: human bias translated into and reshaped by algorithms that replicate and reinforce it in the vastness of global social media spaces. Bias 2.0 works against achieving gender equality (United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, SDG 5) and reducing inequalities (SDG 10). Social media literacy and learning emerge as crucial questions (SDG 4).