{"id":120,"date":"2025-08-18T16:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/?p=120"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:53:04","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:53:04","slug":"ethics-case-study-overview-political-disinformation-and-facebook-a-focus-on-the-2016-u-s-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/ethics-case-study-overview-political-disinformation-and-facebook-a-focus-on-the-2016-u-s-presidential-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Ethics Case Study Overview: Political Disinformation and Facebook (A focus on the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election)."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-122\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN-850x478.jpg 850w, https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CNN.jpg 1600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Photo by CNN<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2016 U.S. presidential election was one for the books. Let&#8217;s quickly talk about it. A celebrity announced that they were running for President of the United States. If that doesn&#8217;t sound like a publicity stunt, I don&#8217;t know what does. The issue here isn&#8217;t so much that, it&#8217;s what came following the announcement and leading up to the election. The spread of disinformation on platforms like Facebook, which allowed foreign and domestic accounts (or actors) to manipulate public opinion through targeted messaging, was at the center of this controversy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Fake news&#8221; has been (and continues to be) a hot topic in news and social media during the 2016 election. However, the term has existed in academic networks (Sylvia IV &amp; Moody, 2019) well before President Trump accused a reporter of it. Throughout this, evidence has been gathered that shows the impact of social media during this election. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>62% of adults in the U.S. get news on social media (Gottfried and Shearer 2016, as cited in Allcott, H., &amp; Gentzkow, M. 2017). <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Facebook was the platform that widely shared the most popular &#8220;fake news&#8221; stories over mainstream news (Silverman, 2016, as cited in Allcott, H., &amp; Gentzkow, M., 2017). <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them (Silverman and Singer-Vine 2016, as cited in Allcott, H., &amp; Gentzkow, M., 2017)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton (Silverman 2016, as cited in Allcott, H., &amp; Gentzkow, M., 2017).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The PBS documentary &#8220;The Facebook Dilemma&#8221; dove into the political, social, and ethical consequences of Facebook. Facebook&#8217;s platform, policies, and its readiness to respond to misinformation were heavily looked into. The documentary highlighted many issues that came out of the 2016 election. The primary concern was the rapid spread of disinformation and &#8220;fake news&#8221; on the platform. Facebook&#8217;s platform amplifies content that is heavily engaged with. A Russian-based organization known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) was involved in creating posts based on emotions or polarizing topics, which generated engagement, amplifying its reach (PBS Frontline, 2018). Sylvia IV and Moody identified through their analysis (False Information Narratives, 2019) that the most successful ads that were created as part of the Russian IRA campaign interfered in U.S. politics (not in changing the minds of the voters but generating social engagement). Facebook eventually took action, but was it too late? The documentary explores that former Facebook employees indicated that while some staff recognized the ethical obligation to curb misinformation, the ones in charge had their priorities on other things (user activity and metrics). This tension raises questions about whether Facebook\u2019s corporate culture aligns with ethical principles such as truthfulness, accountability, and public interest. Does Facebook care about ethical principles? Vosoughi, Roy, &amp; Aral (2018) highlight in &#8220;The spread of true and false news online&#8221; that false information (in this case, fake news) spreads much quicker and broadly than the truth on social networks. That itself poses a big problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Discussion Questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Freedom of speech and expression are essential. What responsibilities do social media companies have in preventing the spread of fake news online? <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>We have seen Facebook&#8217;s business model (which focuses on engagement) be the driving force during this election (according to past employees). How can Facebook balance its business model and its ethical responsibilities to its users?<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In what ways can transparency in algorithmic content curation improve accountability, and what are the potential drawbacks of it? <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>How should governments, policymakers, and social media platforms collaborate to prevent foreign interference in future elections without overstepping legal or ethical boundaries? <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\">Citations<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/aiattribution.github.io\/statements\/AIA-Ph-Se-Hin-R-?model=Grammarly-v1.0\">AIA Ph Se Hin R Grammarly v1.0<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Allcott, Hunt, and Matthew Gentzkow. 2017. &#8220;Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 Election.&#8221; Journal of Economic Perspectives 31 (2): 211\u201336. DOI: 10.1257\/jep.31.2.211 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jacoby, James, director. &#8220;The Facebook Dilemma.&#8221; <em>Frontline<\/em>, PBS, 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sylvia IV, J., &amp; Moody, K. (2019). <em>False Information Narratives: The IRA\u2019s 2016 Presidential Election Facebook Campaign<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Photo by CNN The 2016 U.S. presidential election was one for the books. Let&#8217;s quickly talk about it. A celebrity announced that they were running for President of the United States. If that doesn&#8217;t sound like a publicity stunt, I don&#8217;t know what does. The issue here isn&#8217;t so much that, it&#8217;s what came following&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34,37,39,40,32,33,38,4,5,12],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-disinformation","tag-election-2","tag-facebook","tag-facebookdilemma","tag-fakenews","tag-misinformation","tag-politics","tag-case-study","tag-ethics","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":126,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jjsylvia.com\/commethics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}