Did social media influence the U.S. election?

Facebook is one of the strongest tools to any politician or big business, for many reasons. The social networking giant has turned into the place where billions of users get their news at. And as a result, there are serious issues at hand. First off, Facebook is plagued with fake news stories by sleazy digital marketers who want to make a quick buck or troll the internet. The majority of shares in these false stories are generated utilizing purchased social media signals from black hat stores. Consequently, Facebook users will look at the massive popularity and share it with friends, thinking it's going viral. But Facebook is only part of the problem. These hoaxing culprits have managed to infiltrate other social networking sites such as Twitter, Instagram, and even YouTube. According to Mental Daily, Twitter bots, created as part of a botnet, are being blamed for manipulating the US election with both Democrats and Republicans involved. Essentially, approximately one-fifth of the entire election conversation on Twitter was generated by a bot, said Emilio Ferrara, a computer scientist, and researcher. Ferrera, along with his team of researchers, analyzed over 20 million Twitter tweets as part of a mission to figure out how many were generated by bots. The tweets, created between September and October 2016, originated from both political parties. Researchers found that bots generated as much as 3.8 million tweets — that's about 19 percent of the entire social media conversation, based on research data reported by the Daily Dot. Now, shifting back to Facebook, the Washington Post has received shade from the mainstream media after calling out fake news. Aside from Wash Post, other news outlets such as Rolling Stone, TIME, and USA Today have reported on fake news stories, influenced by hoaxers and social media. However, according to a USA Today report, fake election news outperformed real news, which reportedly attacked Hillary Clinton during the heat of the email scandal. Bottom line: There is still much to learn about these fake news stories, however, what we do you know is that social media played an essential role in the development of these fake stories. And maybe, perhaps, helped Donald Trump secure his place in the white house.