Robinson and Farage's civil war' narrative is warping voters' minds. How is any government supposed to counter it? | John Harris

"We see wild parties, holidays, weddings, family outings and close-knit friendship groups, wrote one Guardian journalist in 2015. She went on: Apart from commemorating a deceased person's life, you'll be hard pushed to find a really bad moment in your feed. Here, it seemed, was a modern iteration of the opium always purveyed by free-market capitalism, resulting in a constant stream of personal happiness and precious little recognition of life's more difficult aspects: social strife, inequality, disagreement."

"A lot of explanations for this centre on what has become the internet's most rampant kind of content: the short-form video popularised by TikTok, and then spread further by such imitations as Instagram's Reels and YouTube Shorts. Those innovations have triggered a complete upending of the online world: rather than posts about personal contentment and bliss, as our fingers scroll and swipe, we are now fed a diet of violence, prejudice, damage and social unrest."

"It is warping our understanding of the world, and rapidly reshaping our politics. Be in no doubt: this is how the political future is being decided, as the past week has vividly demonstrated. Before his murder, the rightwing US activist Charlie Kirk had amassed more than seven million TikTok followers and as one US writer put it, the essential story of his assassination was about an influencer shot to death at a school in front of a crowd of smartphones."

A decade ago social media predominantly showcased idealised, upbeat depictions of people's lives, obscuring hardship and social conflict. Short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts now dominate content distribution. Those formats prioritize rapid, attention-grabbing clips, shifting feeds toward violence, prejudice, damage and social unrest. The new content landscape warps collective perception of reality and accelerates political polarization. Recent incidents illustrate the change: a prominent rightwing activist with millions of TikTok followers was shot to death in front of smartphones, highlighting how influencer culture and short-form video intersect with real-world violence.

Read at www.theguardian.com