One week before the midterm election, the early-morning scroll through social media feels less like catching up on the world and more like stepping into a crowded room where everyone is shouting. In Tucson, Arizona, voters describe the online atmosphere as loud, mean, and hard to learn from. William Laney, a 61-year-old voter, put it plainly: “There’s not a lot of what I’m going to do for you, it’s a lot of you are evil, this other guy is evil.” That sense of exhaustion is shared by many who just want to make an informed decision before walking into the voting booth. Christina Smith, a 30-year-old voter, says she is conscious of not adding to the hostility. “I think it’s really important that we don’t feed into the polarizing, combative energy,” she said. But avoiding that energy is easier said than done. The feed is filled with memes, outrage, screenshots, and shared comments from candidates, campaigns, relatives, and former coworkers. Instead of clarity, people find fatigue. Instead of learning, they find arguments. The feeling is not that everything is fake; it is that nothing feels complete. That incompleteness is exactly what makes the election season so hard to navigate. People are not just choosing between candidates anymore. They are trying to sort through a daily flood of claims, half-truths, and emotionally charged images, all while staying calm enough to make a thoughtful choice. The stakes feel high, and the noise feels constant. Yet beneath the surface of the chaos, there is a quieter story about how voters process information, why they believe what they believe, and what can still be done to strengthen the civic conversation before Election Day.
Yotam Shmargad, an associate professor in the University of Arizona School of Government and Public Policy, studies social media and campaigns, and he has a nuanced view of what is happening right now. In his research, election misinformation is not one massive wave sweeping through the entire country. It tends to live in specific clusters, mostly among hyper-partisan people who spend time in alternative media environments. “What you’re consuming is not necessarily untrue, but it’s an incomplete picture,” Shmargad said. That is a crucial distinction. A post can be factually accurate in isolation but still leave out important context, ignore trade-offs, or selectively omit parts of a candidate’s record. The problem is not only the information itself, but the way people react to it. Shmargad explains that voters are often hypercritical of information they disagree with, even when it is reliable, while letting posts that fit their worldview slide by without any scrutiny. That selective attention makes the incomplete picture even more powerful. Over time, people end up in a bubble where every shared post reinforces what they already believe, and every outside perspective feels like an attack. Shmargad also distinguishes between misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation, noting that intent matters just as much as content. The upside of social media in an election cycle, he says, is that it has moved us away from a small, uniform set of gatekeepers and allowed more representative voices to be heard. The downside is that echo chambers keep people inside their own worldviews, and the platforms themselves reward sensationalism because it spreads faster. His advice is practical: try “prebunking” before sharing anything. Look at the source first. Ask whether the outlet follows ethical practices. Add a variety of traditional news sources into your information diet. And, most importantly, spend time with people who are different from you. “Spend a lot of time around people that are different from you, that might be coming from different backgrounds, that see the world a little bit differently,” Shmargad said. He is not asking voters to become media scholars overnight, only to slow down enough to notice where information comes from before clicking share.
Rita Tang, an assistant professor of communication at the University of Arizona, studies contested information and AI literacy, and she describes artificial intelligence as a double-edged sword in the election environment. On the helpful side, some social media platforms have begun using tools like Community Notes and AI-assisted moderation to respond to inaccurate information. Voters themselves are also turning to AI to cope with information overload. Christina Smith, the same voter who does not want to add to the combative energy, said she has seen people use artificial intelligence to summarize policy proposals because the official voter education guides are so long. “I’ve seen people try to use artificial intelligence to summarize policies, because let’s be real here, those voter education guides they give us are really long,” Smith said. That is a creative, practical use of new technology, a way to simplify complex information without losing the desire to understand it. But Tang warns that the same tools can be turned against voters. Campaigns may use AI in political ads with the deliberate intention of painting opponents in a bad light, and malicious actors use bots to troll, flood comment sections, and interrupt genuine conversation. “That may really interrupt the genuine conversation or interaction between humans,” Tang said. Her research shows that people are increasingly aware of AI, but as the technology advances, it becomes harder to detect. She argues that susceptibility is not really about age or technical skill; it is shaped by worldview. People who are deeply committed to a particular narrative may be more vulnerable to content that confirms that narrative, even if it is misleading or manipulated. Tang also warns that skepticism can become cynicism. A person who doubts everything may eventually trust nothing, which can be just as dangerous as believing everything. What is needed, she says, is a healthy skepticism, the kind that asks careful questions without closing the door to good information. She recommends checking the source, watching for grammatical errors and other cues, using fact-checkers, and staying cautious about content that makes you feel angry or afraid, especially during the final days of a campaign.
Both Shmargad and Tang agree that navigating election season online becomes even harder when the false or hostile posts come from people we know. It is one thing to scroll past a stranger’s angry meme, but another thing entirely when your uncle, your neighbor, or your high school friend shares something misleading. Family and friends can push the same partisan talking points, and suddenly the distance of the screen collapses into a tense conversation at dinner or a difficult text thread. The researchers recommend leading those conversations with empathy rather than panic. Instead of telling someone they are wrong, ask where they found the information and why it resonated with them. Present counterarguments with evidence, but do it in a way that leaves room for dignity. The point is not to win an argument; it is to break a cycle. People rarely change their minds when they feel attacked. But they might pause if they feel respected. That pause can open the door to more honest exchange. Expanding worldviews is also part of the work. If the only perspectives in your feed agree with yours, the problem is not the algorithm alone; it is the absence of variety. Reading, listening, and engaging with people from different backgrounds can make the information ecosystem healthier. These small choices do not solve everything, but they matter. In a season of deep division, they can be more meaningful than a single fact-check or a partisan rebuttal. The goal is not to make everyone agree, but to make sure that people are seeing a fuller picture, not just the fragments that reinforce what they already think.
In practical terms, there are still simple tools available to voters who want to cut through the noise. Verified information about this year’s election is available on the Arizona Secretary of State website, which includes official details about polling places, deadlines, and ballot measures. Candidate and proposition guides are also available through Arizona Decides, a resource designed to help voters understand what they are actually voting on. These sources are not flashy, and they do not appear in the feed with the same urgency as an alarming claim, but they offer something that social media often does not: context. The best response to an incomplete picture is more of the complete picture. That means looking up primary sources, reading the actual language of a proposition, and checking the record of a candidate beyond the clips shared online. It also means being honest about what we do not know. No voter is expected to understand every issue perfectly. The civic responsibility is not omniscience, but intentionality. Taking ten extra minutes to read a nonpartisan guide, to look up a suspicious claim, or to pause before sharing something designed to provoke outrage is a quiet act of resistance against the cheap tricks of the digital campaign trail. The platforms are built for speed, but democracy was never supposed to be fast.
As Arizonans head to the polls, the noise is unlikely to disappear. The technology will keep changing, the attacks will keep coming, and the algorithm will keep learning what makes people click. But the voters themselves still have power. They can choose not to feed into the polarizing, combative energy. They can refuse to share content simply because it confirms what they already believe. They can open their minds to sources that feel unfamiliar and conversations that feel uncomfortable. In the end, the election is not just a decision about who wins or loses. It is also a test of whether people can still talk to each other across difference, whether they can hold their skepticism without slipping into cynicism, and whether they can recognize that on the other side of every post is a human being trying to make sense of a complicated world. William Laney noticed a lot of anger online, but he still plans to vote. Christina Smith worries about the hostility, but she is still paying attention. The frustration is real, and so is the hope. A week before the election, the morning scroll may still be loud and mean, but it does not have to be the last word. The most important information, the kind that helps people live together, still comes when someone pauses, listens, and decides to be the person who brings a little more clarity into a world that already has too much noise.