How can Christians discern truth on social media?

There is a slew of information coming at us at any moment. We can access the news at any moment of the day via our mobile devices or on 24-hour news stations. Social media offers individuals the opportunity to post perspectives or throw out statistics (true or false).

Most reports are necessarily narrow. In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley notes,

“Abbreviation is a necessary evil and the abbreviator’s business is to make the best of a job which, though intrinsically bad, is still better than nothing. He must learn to simplify, but not to the point of falsification. He must learn to concentrate upon the essentials of a situation, but without ignoring too many of reality’s qualifying side issues.”

In his article titled “The Idiot Culture,” Carl Bernstein comments on the media, “Reporting is not stenography. It is the best obtainable version of the truth. The really significant trends in journalism have not been toward a commitment to the best and the most complex obtainable version of the truth, not toward building a new journalism based on serious, thoughtful reporting.”

Both Huxley and Bernstein highlight the challenges we face as we interact with those who seek to share information with us. Perhaps, as social media has become more prominent, we face an even more challenging environment because anyone can post information without any substantial editorial oversight.

As we interact on social media, we might consider the following techniques that often accompany terribly simple accounts:

• Dividing in-groups and out-groups - This technique appeals less to a logical argument or source of authority to prove a case. Instead, it leverages group belonging to create an “us versus them” bias that discounts the positions of an out-group and legitimizes the positions of an in-group.
• Appealing to ignorance - This technique suggests that a conclusion is true because there is a lack of evidence against it.
• Employing abstract terminology - This sort of terminology is vague and, often, exaggerated. Labels like “best,” “worst,” “entire,” or “completely” might be considered abstract terminology. This language is often emotive rather than concrete.
• Using straw man arguments - These arguments misrepresent or falsify an opponent’s position. Often such arguments drain an opponent’s position of complexity.

As Christians read, watch, and listen to news or social media reports, we mustn’t lose sight of our biblical and theological orientation. Rather than being tempted to think about pro-life advocates as the in-group and pro-choice advocates as the out-group, we need to remember that the Christian “in-group” is in Christ. Those who do not belong to Christ are lost, and our job is not to keep them away from Jesus but to draw them closer to him.

We live in a world that does not know God, so we need to be wary of allowing the world’s stories to frame our thinking even when such stories align with a position we happen to hold.