It is 6:30PM on a Tuesday night in 1968. You and twenty-seven million other Americans tune in to watch Walter Cronkite anchor CBS Evening News. For those who are not fans of ‘the most trusted man in America,’ there are only two other options for television news – ABC and NBC. Big news stories immediately become mass cultural events, and most people operate on the same playing field, with the same facts. Needless to say, times have changed. 

Today, 50% of Americans receive at least some of their news from social media platforms [1]. Sandwiched between ads and cat videos, news stories land on users’ screens for a fleeting moment before getting lost in the abyss of the continuous scroll. As engagement-driven algorithms direct users towards sensationalized content, the entire news industry must adapt to compete for clicks and views. As exemplified by the disconnect between the performance of the Biden economy and the polling on the subject, the evolving media environment directly affects public opinion as it becomes more difficult for traditional hard news stories to break through to the masses. 

The reality we are living in today did not come to be overnight. Even before social media’s meteoric rise, American voters began to turn their backs on traditional news outlets. Trust in the Big Three news stations – ABC, NBC, and CBS – began to decline after the Watergate Scandal in the 1970s, and the channels began to lose viewership to 24-hour news networks like CNN and Fox News in the eighties [2]. Over the past few election cycles, social media has caused a similar shake-up in the news industry. More oversaturated than ever, the modern information market enables voters to exclusively consume news that affirms their existing political biases. 

The suggestive algorithms that govern the content a user sees on social media exacerbate the problem. Facebook, X, and Instagram all utilize programs that promote content it predicts a given user will engage with, in order to maximize minutes spent on the platform [3]. In other words, we only see what the algorithm thinks we want to see. In most areas, this system works in the user’s best interest. For example, a video-game enthusiast from Ohio will not have their feed flooded with posts listing the best hiking spots in Oregon. When it comes to political content, however, the algorithms trap users in ideological echo chambers that reflect and strengthen their existing beliefs. Whereas skewed broadcast news requires viewers to self-select into partisan bubbles, social media covertly sorts users into political boxes that are almost undetectable from within. 

While funneling voters into segregated content lanes, social media platforms also promote eye-catching headlines over traditional hard news reporting. By design, popular sites exclude longer forms of media that lend themselves to well-rounded analyses by limiting content length. At the same time, platforms do not distinguish news content from the rest; forcing headlines to compete with every other post on the site. In order to capture the attention of the user, the reporting must be flashy enough to outperform influencers, challenge videos, and memes, all at the same time. 

Beyond user-generated content, traditional news outlets also have to compete with independent journalism and digital media on the internet. The primary advantage of social media is that anyone can contribute to the discourse. TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook alike have created a platform for diverse voices to share their perspectives. Social media has allowed individuals from backgrounds that have been historically underrepresented in the news industry to share their reporting with a considerable audience. 

However, not every person sharing news on social media is a reporter, or even well-intentioned. As larger digital news outlets such as Buzzfeed News and Gawker were shutting down, the independent content creator, or news ‘influencer,’ was on the rise [4]. As revenue flows away from traditional reporting and towards content creators, professional journalism goes underfunded. At the same time, internet personalities can build a following by sharing news without the same credibility standards as the traditional media. Even though public trust in the media establishment remains low, major networks and newspapers are still beholden to a standard of conduct and journalistic ethics. The same cannot be said for TikTok contributors. Without the reputational consequences of false reporting, pseudo-news content creators are free to pursue likes and shares in any way they please, at the expense of the truth. 

The problem does not end when we put down our phones. Social media’s effect on the news industry has bled off the internet and into the network and print news spaces. With social media platforms entering the political arena as major news distributors, traditional media must adapt to survive in the new environment. First, hard news publications rely on social media to drive traffic to their sites. When outlets pursue reporting that will succeed online, the choice affects their traditional viewers as well. The headlines that are plastered on social media are the same ones on the front page of the paper. 

For traditional broadcast news, the stories covered must be salacious enough to keep viewers and listeners engaged in order to prevent further loss of consumers. Since 2020, CNN and MSNBC have both lost around 50% of their primetime viewership, while FOX News has lost approximately 30% over the same period [5]. Cable channels must fight to keep their increasingly niche audiences by covering horse-race politics and political drama over hard-hitting news stories. Thus, the sensationalization of reporting by social media affects internet news consumers and traditional media loyalists alike. 

Perhaps the most prominent example of this mess is the current coverage, or lack thereof, of President Biden’s economic policies. In what NPR described as a ‘surprisingly productive two years,’ the Biden administration passed the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS Act [6]. Politics aside, the numbers do not lie. Biden’s economic policies have been effective by all standards except public opinion.  

Inflation, often used as a benchmark for economic success, has been on a steady decline since its peak in June of 2022, and inflation-adjusted wages in the US have actually increased by 1.4%. At the same time, the economy overall is growing faster than was originally projected and unemployment is near a five-decade low at 3.6% [7]. In simple terms, American workers have more purchasing power and better job opportunities than before the passage of Biden’s major economic legislation. 

With conventional wisdom dictating that the economy is the most important political factor for voters, President Biden should be doing great in the polls, right? Wrong. Biden’s approval rating on the economy sits at a dismal 36%, with his overall approval rating stuck at 42%. Perhaps even more troubling for the Biden Administration, approval of the President’s handling of the economy among Democrats is just 65% [8]. Needless to say, ‘Bidenomics’ has a branding problem. 

Oversaturation in the media is a major problem for Biden. Gone are the days when a President could access millions of American voters by interrupting a nightly broadcast or dominating the FM airwaves. With over 150 million Americans getting news from individualized social media feeds, it is nearly impossible to craft a policy message that will succeed at reaching the masses. This has proven true for Biden, as 71% of Americans reported knowing little or nothing about the Inflation Reduction in August 2023 despite countless speeches by the President [9]. Even when presidential messages make it onto broadcast news, the cable ratings crisis renders television an ineffective way to reach the masses. Longer-form policy messaging from political figures does not perform well on social media either, with even the best sound bites probably failing to reach the algorithm’s entertainment value standards. 

Instead of focusing on Biden’s economic agenda, social media and mainstream news outlets alike have been hyper-fixated on something else; his age. While the topic has been a point of interest in the political world since the 2020 election, the salience of the issue continues to increase as the election approaches. Social media has become flooded with compilation videos of Biden’s gaffes and stumbles. As these types of videos proliferate on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, the mainstream print and broadcast media are incentivized to cover Biden’s age with much greater frequency. As a result, the discourse has become sharper, shifting the focus away from Biden’s policies and onto his perceived senility. 

The effect of this messaging on public opinion is palpable. A staggering 77% of Americans believe that Biden is too old to run in 2024 [10]. To make matters worse for the President, 51% of Americans believe that the economy is poor and getting worse, despite the irrefutable fact that it is improving. Another 19% believe that the economy is poor but stable, according to a summer 2023 CNN poll [11]. 

In an ideal world, every voter would be able to read beyond the headlines and cut through the partisan noise. The reality that we live in, however, is one where the average reader spends just fifteen seconds viewing an online article before clicking away [12]. Herein lies the problem. It takes one short clip for voters to understand the message that Biden is senile, but the same cannot be said about the state of the economy, the war in Ukraine, or the rising US tension with China. 

It might be time to update the old electoral adage; ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’ Since Clinton advisor James Carville made this statement in 1992, the media environment has become virtually unrecognizable. Perhaps a more apt phrase for our factually fractured information market is ‘It’s what people think about the economy, stupid.’ Today, stories about former Speaker Pelosi's husband receiving a DUI charge or Congresswoman Boerbert’s indiscretions in a playhouse dominate the news cycles, and traditional hard reporting fades into the background. 

As far as the 2024 election is concerned, the candidates must adapt to maximize success in the increasingly competitive attention market. Social media is here to stay, and old ways of reaching voters have become obsolete. Former President Trump is infamously skilled at using social media to his advantage, playing into the algorithms by nicknaming his opponents, such as referring to Ron DeSantis as ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’ and ‘Meatball Ron.’ While some might argue that name-calling is beneath the office of the Presidency, there is no doubt that it has proven an effective strategy for Trump on social media. 

As for the Biden campaign, a recent online win was the now infamous Marjorie Taylor Greene ad, which used the Republican congresswoman's description of the Biden Economic Plan against her. In the video which has now received over 40 million views on X, Greene states “Joe Biden had the largest investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs” and continues to explain that the President’s economic policies are seeking to address a wide array of concerns including healthcare, rural poverty, and labor unions [13]. Through this ad, the Biden team was able to capitalize on social media algorithms in a way that combined entertainment value with a strong political message that was able to reach the masses. Opportunities like this are rare, however, and every candidate in the 2024 field must be ready to take advantage of them when they present themselves. 

While it may be possible for candidates to benefit from the emerging news atmosphere, that does not mean that the root of the problem has been solved. As more Americans receive their political news from social media, the less reliable and more ideologically extreme the news becomes. Social media algorithms reward inflammatory or trivial political content over thorough analysis, leading to a less informed electorate. Regardless of individual political beliefs, it is fair to say that the devolution of the news on social media is not benefiting anyone except the content creators who monetize it.