‘Things are pretty grim out there’: Media censorship under the Trump administration

After a polarizing 2024 presidential election, social media feeds have been flooded with updates on the new Trump administration and executive orders. Given the constant onslaught of political updates and news, some social media users may be feeling media burnout.

According to Paul Johnson, an associate professor of political communications, this overwhelming news cycle is far from over. The Trump administration is known for its heavy reliance on social media platforms, especially X, formerly known as Twitter — which has a history of being dominated by conservative voices, Johnson said. 

“Over time, Twitter proved to be a very, very powerful platform for conservatives,” Johnson said, “Even before Elon Musk bought it and sort of gamed the algorithms and its content, and kind of cultivated a more right-leaning ecosystem.”

Johnson suggested the U.S. is moving towards an authoritarian government. Institutionally, he argues that there are already ways that the government is “undemocratic,” through gerrymandering, selective elections and political appointments.

“The Supreme Court is not elected, the Senate is not a popularly elected body,” Johnson said. “And then Trump is technically term limited, although we’ll see … there’s not really a check on him [and his power, either].”

Johnson also anticipates that Americans will see a rise in censorship across media spaces. Because of newfound political power among the world’s largest billionaires, Johnson speculates that the most wealthy figures will buy up media platforms where people may be talking about politically controversial topics, like DEI, or try to find a government loophole to shut them down. 

“Yeah, either some gazillionaire oligarch comes in and says ‘I want to buy your platform for too much money,’ or the government sort of decides that while there’s a little too much DEI happening in these spaces, and, using whatever kind of Jerry rigged rationale, shuts them down,” Johnson said.

Since the Trump administration already threatened to decrease certain national program budgets, like NIH indirect funds, Johnson predicts universities that receive federal funding will see similar pressure against criticizing Trump’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He expects the government to censor news outlets, from mainstream media to university student newspapers that don’t align with its political agenda. 

“You might just see the outlets where you might otherwise get urgent updates on how bad things are shuttered, because that is something that happens under conditions of authoritarianism,” Johnson said. 

This type of censorship aligns with research done by Samuel Woolley, associate professor in communications and the William S. Dietrich II Endowed Chair in Disinformation Studies. His work shows how free speech on social media is becoming an illusion thanks to algorithmic manipulation.

“People that know how to … manipulate algorithms can get their content to be prioritized by social media and shown to us in trends, on the ‘for you page’ … it’s an unequal playing field,” Woolley said.

Algorithms are perceived as objective formulas designed to boost popular content and share what the majority of people are enjoying. But algorithms have two inherent problems, according to Woolley — their internal biases and their ability to be manipulated.

“The people that build these algorithms are like, ‘Okay, we want to prioritize this kind of media or journalism. We want to prioritize these kinds of stories. We don’t want this kind of information to be in the feed’ … They’re built with the biases of their creator inside of them,” Woolley said.

Alongside their biases, algorithms are “game-afiable,” according to Woolley. Large companies can hire thousands of fake accounts to push a certain message for a product, pay influencers to advertise them or use “bots” to push their messaging. 

“There’s all these other mechanisms you can use, including hiring influencers to post about something, including buying 10,000 fake accounts to post something, that allows you to push your content to the top of the algorithm,” Woolley said.

Despite the “hostile” nature of current social media platforms, technology and social platforms are a necessary part of people’s daily lives — and, simultaneously, their news consumption. Gianna Reed, a first-year studio arts major, gets news alerts from social media and acknowledges the importance of checking information and finding reputable sources to learn more. 

“I don’t necessarily get my actual facts from social media,” Reed said. “I’ll hear, like, XYZ could happen. And if I’m interested, I’ll go into AP news or CBS or something and read about it, just because I feel like [social media posts are] not always factual and it’s always very one-sided.”

Getting information from social media is on the rise, with 54% of American adults saying they “at least sometimes” get their news off of social media. Johnson spoke on ways to still learn from social media without algorithm biases and misinformation, such as joining platforms like Blue Sky that don’t use a forced algorithm. There, users can create their own feeds made up of only accounts they follow, allowing people to choose precisely what content they see, according to Johnson.

“That’s the kind of place where you can go curate a feed and actually have some say in what it looks like,” Johnson said. “It’s a kind of choice that X doesn’t give you these days or Facebook doesn’t give you these days …Things are pretty grim out there.”

Johnson also recommended finding a few reputable news sources to get information from but acknowledged the difficulty of finding unbiased sources in today’s media climate. To avoid the burnout of constantly reading news, Johnson suggests limiting news consumption to certain scheduled hours of the day and performing civic action.

“Instead of getting burned out by reading too much news, channel it into something positive,” Johnson said. “You can call your house rep, you can call your senator, you can call your local representative. You can have conversations with people in your life who don’t know what’s happening.”