Dan Lane, assistant professor of Communication at UC Santa Barbara, is almost impossibly neat. A cubic pair of black frames sharpen his line of sight. He speaks with few filler words. And his methodical office effuses hygiene. 

 

It may come as a surprise, then, that Lane, who directs UCSB’s Digital Political Inequality Lab, researches political engagement on social media –– perhaps one of the messier subject areas in contemporary social science. 

 

“Students at UCSB are entering politics in one of the most contentious, scary political environments that we’ve had in a very long time,” Lane said in a recent interview. “They know it’s consequential but also are not quite sure what to do about it.” 

 

Social media has a unique capacity to amplify identity politics and mobilize paradigm-shifting political movements. Politically expressing oneself on digital channels can be daunting, but for Lane, it is also particularly impactful to communities seeking to affect tangible change. 

 

Yet social media’s current volatility –– rife with finger-pointing and falsifications –– casts doubt on its viability, Lane says, as platforms appear to be increasingly polarized. 

 

His lab, composed of four undergraduate and graduate researchers, investigates how social media facilitates political expression, and how marginalization operates on those platforms. Above the noise of algorithms and arguments, a central truth is clear: not all social media outlets are made –– or used –– equally.

 

 

“Generally, people who are more educated and interested [in politics] use technologies for them. But we want to see how true that is for social media, because the perception is that it’s for everybody,” Lane said. “Is it really this equalizing force, or is it just kind of reproducing [existing inequalities]?” 

 

The lab’s multidisciplinary approach cuts across communication, sociology, political science, and psychology, to uncover intersections of inequality. Marginalization starts in a well-studied ‘digital divide,’ namely the global gaps in technological access and skills. Lane finds that socio-demographic identities, group statuses, and perceptions of political engagement also fragment social media users into their respective silos of personal expression.

 

“We try to understand the ways that technologies are either offering pathways for people who have been traditionally marginalized from politics —racial and ethnic groups or young people –– to further engage. Or how these tools could be fueling those inequalities,” he said. 

 

Though many “worn out, tuned out” users, who are already uninterested in using digital spaces for politics, express fatigue with political stalemate, others “without considerable political voice in other areas” find social media an invaluable access point for public dialogue, Lane says. 

 

Lane’s self-described optimism underpins his inquiry. As he traveled the globe creating content for international NGOs and small-scale nonprofits prior to entering academia, he found a guiding force in the ability of storytelling to enact social change. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Communication and Media Studies at the University of Michigan.

 

While studying, Lane watched the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter movements pervade digital and physical spaces in the early 2010s –– and he monitored social media’s role in catapulting these grassroots causes into regime-toppling forces of nature.  

 

“I’ve had moments in my life where I went from not caring about something to caring about that something deeply … something or someone opened a doorway to develop a commitment to a cause, purpose, or way of living,” Lane said. 

 

“I’ve always been fascinated by how we can create more opportunities for people to get captured in that way. People can be motivated to do bad things. But the more optimistic view is: that’s what we need for a robust democracy.”  

 

Though campus-based, Lane has national and global aspirations for his research. “America is a very unusual edge case in terms of social media politics,” he said. “Hopefully in the long run, we’ll do more cross-national data collection … and will have things to say about how social media are designed, better or worse, for these types of productive political encounters.” 

 

For now, Lane has his optimism to keep him afloat at a time when social media is often accused of degrading political discourse.

 

“We can’t be everywhere; our world is too complex for us to really understand without the media. At the same time, social media environments are not healthy places to learn about politics, or to engage in politics necessarily,” Lane said. 

 

“So we can either throw up our hands and say these are dumpster fires, or we can say these are really important spaces that we shouldn’t give over to complete corporate control. That we shouldn’t let political extremists on both sides take up all the space,” he continued. “We should want better and we deserve better. That sounds kind of naive on one level, but I personally don’t see any other alternative.”