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Social Media Is Killing Discourse Because It's Too Much Like TV (technologyreview.com)
Reader Joe_NoOne writes: Like TV, social media now increasingly entertains us, and even more so than television it amplifies our existing beliefs and habits. It makes us feel more than think, and it comforts more than challenges. The result is a deeply fragmented society, driven by emotions, and radicalized by lack of contact and challenge from outside. This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated "post-truth" as the word of 2016: an adjective "relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals." Traditional television still entails some degree of surprise. What you see on television news is still picked by human curators, and even though it must be entertaining to qualify as worthy of expensive production, it is still likely to challenge some of our opinions (emotions, that is). Social media, in contrast, uses algorithms to encourage comfort and complaisance, since its entire business model is built upon maximizing the time users spend inside of it. Who would like to hang around in a place where everyone seems to be negative, mean, and disapproving? The outcome is a proliferation of emotions, a radicalization of those emotions, and a fragmented society. This is way more dangerous for the idea of democracy founded on the notion of informed participation. Now what can be done? Certainly the explanation for Trump's rise cannot be reduced to a technology- or media-centered argument. The phenomenon is rooted in more than that; media or technology cannot create; they can merely twist, divert, or disrupt. Without the growing inequality, shrinking middle class, jobs threatened by globalization, etc. there would be no Trump or Berlusconi or Brexit. But we need to stop thinking that any evolution of technology is natural and inevitable and therefore good. For one thing, we need more text than videos in order to remain rational animals. Typography, as Postman describes, is in essence much more capable of communicating complex messages that provoke thinking. This means we should write and read more, link more often, and watch less television and fewer videos -- and spend less time on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
So... a human society
If some dumbell starts talking racist bullshit on the street I walk away, if some dumbell posts about it in their Twitter feed I unsubscribe from them
If anything I talk MORE now than ever about social issues with a wider variety of people than my own small group of friends / coworkers
This is excellent word for summing up the social justice warrior movement.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
People are increasingly just getting their news from overtly politicized outlets.
Fox News, Huffington Post, Breitbart, Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh radio network, Buzzfeed, Jezebel... (and more)
These are all sites with a political agenda and deliberately biased. If you're getting your news from them, you're getting filtered news that has been written to support one of two polar political stances. People need to diversify their sources (and/or) not get news solely from sources that are deliberately biased. It used to be political bias in a news article was frowned upon, nowadays it's a requirement for many news outlets.
I still trust the BBC world service the most, although lately I've noticed some "editorial" content sneaking into their news headlines.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
In 2008 the media praised Obama for his campaigns social media genius.
In 2016 the media declares social media is the devil.
"His name was James Damore."
The entire establishment, which includes the media as its key henchmen, are furious with the outcome of this election. The number one goal at this point is to do what they have always been doing: shape public opinion and thought processes. The specific thing they are trying to do is make "official TV new media" the only place people view as reliable sources of information. They can't do that by getting up and stating it - they have to discredit their competitors.
Every news/discussion source that is not CNN, FOX, NBC, etc is being labeled "fake news" or "emotion driven" or some other bad word. Never mind that their news is equally if not more biased and the perceived biases liberals are claiming are just the other side of the truth being told.
The establishment doesn't know how to handle the fact that they can't lie by omission anymore. They used to just only show the news they wanted.There was never a second camera angle. There was no alternate outlet to display damning e-mails or other anti-establishment content. As we know from Hillary's e-mails, there was constant filtering and manipulation of what is shown on the major news networks by the political establishment.
But now they realize the problem is huge. People actually have access to the raw content on a massive scale for the first time ever. People are being allowed to directly interpret e-mails, videos, and other content without it being edited and filtered first. They then compare the actual information to the CNN view and realize CNN is full of shit. Listen to a full Trump speech vs. what CNN replays the next day and the interpretation of it. It is basically lying or the same "fake news" they accuse everyone else of.
They are using their power to call everyone else "fake news" while relying on the implied authority of a video camera and high production value to mean they are not liars. If they can get everyone to distrust all news sources except TV then they have their power back. But, like I said, they can't do this directly. They have to win by making everyone else lose.
I have had an unfortunate run in with a con-man. The thing he did the best was making his victim distrust everyone around them so that the con-man was the only one left to turn to. This obviously becomes a self-reinforcing phenomenon because once the distrust is established, the active brainwashing by the con-man (media) can happen without conflicting information/opinions.
One problem is the internet itself. Newspapers used to be a complete product that was consumed entirely. Now we can click single articles. This produces two problems. One is that we click our own filterbubble and the other is the promotion of entertaining and easy reading articles. When I last used the BBC Android app in 2014, there were many article about political issues. When I tried it in 2016, it was all blood, crime, cute animals and other entertaining, but irrelevant stuff. The stuff people click on. So it gets promoted. And the people that write them get promoted. This seems to have a profound effect, even on the BBC.
The Fox News propaganda machine and garbage papers like The Sun in the UK misinformed readers with their intentional bias long before the internet.
Added explanation: There is news that is entertaining but irrelevant to us, because it doesn't effect us. Like crimes or celebrity news or other 'interesting facts'. Then there are political issues that effect us, like laws and deliberation of laws. Those are also news. A newspaper has a mix of both. The internet seems to promote the former in all media.