Douglas S. Bursch - Posting Peace: Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do about It

Posting
Peace

InterVarsity Press
P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515-1426
ivpress.com

2021 by Douglas S. Bursch

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Cover design and image composite: David Fassett
Image: emojis: twemoji.twitter.com

ISBN 978-0-8308-4781-5 (digital)

ISBN 978-0-8308-4780-8 (print)

This digital document has been produced by Nord Compo.

For my Jennifer.

Bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh. Together we are one.
You are the embodiment of Gods love and grace.
I am forever yours.

I anxiously pause and read, then pause and read again, carefully trying to parse the verbiage, analyze the tone, determine the intent, decipher the meaning, and find a way forward through this ever-expanding social media battlefield. I grow tired of this recurring, sinking, alienating feeling, my thumbs hovering over the phone, my eyes scanning and rescanning the inflamed words on the screen. Although Im not looking for a fight, I face the familiar prospect that my next post, tweet, response, or lack of response will make someone angry.

Why are we so angry online? Why are we so divided? I can imagine the apostle Paul tweeting, If you bite and devour each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other (Gal 5:15). I can also imagine his words being disregarded or angerly refuted by most everyone. Why are we behaving in such a ridiculous manner with even the most mundane observations devolving into toxic absurdities? I can tweet the banal observation I ate too many tacos, and five responses later someone angrily accuses me of being a baby killer. If you dont see a connection between baby killing and taco consumption, youre correct. Unless youre interacting with these words and ideas on the internet. On the internet, everythings connected. This is the strange reality of our age; every idea becomes entangled through the emotionally chaotic, incessantly divisive world of social media. Our online existence is turning us into angry, dehumanizing, polarizing people.

Our response to a worldwide pandemic poignantly exemplified and exaggerated the most troubling aspects of our social media communication. While the world engaged in social distancing and at-home sheltering to stop the deadly spread of the coronavirus, the most divisive aspects of social media communication went viral. Angry partisan divisiveness and wild unfounded conspiracy theories spread rapidly through social media platforms. The World Health Organization (WHO) referred to this worldwide, massive spread of misinformation as an Infodemic where an overabundance of misinformation made trustworthy sources and reliable guidance hard to find when people most needed accurate information. Although their statement dealt with misinformation, they could not address the general attitudes of anger and fear that infused into so many social media discussions.

One social media analytics tracking company found that disgust and fear were the most prominent emotions expressed by social media users during the early days of the coronavirus outbreak. This disgust and fear exaggerated already volatile online environments as physically isolated people facing a collective traumatic experience increased their social media engagement on platforms that trended toward conflict in even the most peaceful of times. For many of us the dilemma was devastating. On one hand, we needed and craved community as the virus cut us off from many everyday human interactions. On the other hand, the online world we used to supplement our loss of in-person community became increasingly toxic, dehumanizing, and harmful to our emotional health.