The technological divide at the heart of our polarization
The medium is the message.
There is a kind of digital divide surging through the Western world that is leaving us helpless in its wake. I call it a digital divide, but it has less to do with our access to information technologies and more to do with the contrasting mediums through which we get our news.
People are going to radically different sources to get their news: some still rely on mainstream media institutions such as CNN, NBC, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, while others rely on alternative media companies like Breitbart News and The Daily Wire, message boards like Reddit and 4chan, and social media personalities on Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube. More often than not — and President Donald Trump deserves some blame or credit for this, depending on how you look at it — we hold one of these mediums in higher regard than the other, which has created a wholly new kind of polarization based on where we get our news.
Growing up, my family gatherings were often dramatic affairs. To put it simply, half of my Jewish, Israeli family were Zionists, and the other half were not. But even then, we still talked about politics. Don’t get me wrong, things would often get heated, forcing us to change the conversation until next time. But at least politics were viewed through the same lens, and at least you could still be friendly with the people on the other side of the political spectrum.
What has happened recently, in part due to the nascent technology some of these alternative platforms rely on, is that politics are viewed from entirely different lenses: Some people view them from the lens of mainstream media, while others view them from the lens of alternative media. And these two mediums could not be more different in terms of how they report the news and what they deem as newsworthy or even true. This has led to a deep polarization, as we now struggle to even talk about politics if we are on different sides of that divide. That’s why we can’t even agree on if the United States’ presidential election was done fairly.
While it’s hard to cleanly place every person or media company on one side of the divide — as some people and companies (such as FOX News) share characteristics with both — there are certain features that the media on each side generally exhibits.
Say what you will about mainstream media — and I’m the first one to admit that these companies are far from perfect — but there are certain checks and balances enacted in law that these publications have to follow. For starters, the media do not have a right under the principle of protected free press or speech to commit slander (to speak false information with an intent to harm a person) or libel (the printing of false information with intent to harm a person or entity).
Alternative media, which relies much more heavily on social platforms to disseminate its messages, doesn’t have to go through the same checks and balances because social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have their own (much more limited) rules when it comes to regulating content.
The other key difference between mainstream media and alternative media is the contrasting incentive structures. Although both want people to consume content for as long as possible, driving up advertising dollars with more views, the way they go about keeping a subjects’ attention is different: Mainstream media uses sensationalism to keep you coming back for more, but rather than using AI-based algorithms to personalize what you’re seeing, they have no choice but to explore the same story from various different angles, often to the point of ridiculousness. Look no further than CNN’s John King shifting through the counties in Pennsylvania and Georgia for days on end until the election was finally called.
Social media platforms also want you to stay on their platform for as long as possible, but with algorithms tailored to you, these platforms serve up recommendations of things they know people will want to watch/read. And, as VICE reported David Gilbert told me, “that’s done by serving up more and more extreme content. Along with being an echo chamber that keeps you in there, it helps bring people who may be right-wing or conservative into the more extreme far-right. Because that stuff tends to be more clicky and more sensationalist.” Sometimes it also includes a fair bit of misinformation.
President Donald Trump has attacked mainstream media from the get-go, labelling it as “fake news” and destroying a lot of peoples’ trust in these institutions. Millions of his followers and people all over the world have taken to alternative media instead.
By dismissing the people who get their news from a different source than you as ignorant, though, we are mistaking symptom for cause. As author Charles Eisenstein writes, “Their loss of trust [in the mainstream media] is a clear symptom of a loss of trustworthiness. Our institutions of knowledge production have betrayed public trust repeatedly, as have our political institutions. Now, many people won’t believe them even when they tell the truth.”
Furthermore, as knowledge of misinformation starts to grow, something called the liar’s dividend starts to enhance. As tech and AI specialist Nina Schick explains, “As people become aware that we are entering an epoch where seeing is no longer believing, then you start to deny the veracity of all authentic media as well and that, of course, is something that's great for bad actors. In a world where anything can be faked, everything can also be denied.”
Trump and his allies used social media — specifically Facebook — to get elected in 2016, and they have exploited these platforms ever since in order to propagate their following.
As Brian Feldman writes in a VICE article titled “Facebook Has Always Been Right-Wing Media”:
“The fact of the matter is that, even today, despite claims to the contrary, hardcore right-wing content does extremely well on Facebook. Conservative pages regularly compose most of if not all of the list of top performing posts each day. Right-wing pages that have clearly violated Facebook’s policies get special treatment and regularly avoid punishment.”
If it’s confusing that Trump and the GOP are attacking big tech for labelling his Tweets while at the same time depending on social platforms to diseminate their messages, that’s the point: Trump has created a miasma — a confusing environment — in order to make it seem like misinformation is a technological problem rather than a partisan one. The reality is that there is a much bigger audience for radical content and misinformation on the right side of the political spectrum than the left. The modern GOP is built on misinformation, and they know it. But they don’t want the public knowing it too.
Don't get me wrong: there is misinformation on both sides of the political spectrum. How could there not be, given that almost everyone has access to social media and can therefore post content for the world to see, with little regulation from the platforms. But there tend to be more people on the right side of the political spectrum who denounce mainstream media and get their news from alternative sources, leading to a digital divide based on the mediums through which we get our news.
Next week, I will explore how these different news mediums perpetuate different worldviews within their followings, examining how alternative media — particularly social media — is the perfect breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
Notes
https://www.tvo.org/video/the-age-of-fake-realities-is-upon-us
https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7vvwq/facebook-has-always-been-right-wing-media
Question (please respond in the comments)
What does the mainstream media need to do in order to regain public trust?
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