Technology and its Influence on Political Polarization
The informational revolution, which we are currently living in, has dramatically affected the political climate of the United States. The introduction of the radio in the 1920s, the television in the 1940s, and the internet in the 1980s influenced how Americans consume media.
The last decade specifically has seen a drastic paradigm shift in political discourse. Unarguably, political tensions between political figures, the media, and the general public have never been more significant, presenting the question of how the mindsets of Americans have changed so much. First, we need to dive into a brief history of the technological revolution, starting with the radio and television.
Rise of Radio and Television
An article written by two students at Harvard Kennedy School, published in the Journal of Public Economics, shows surprising radio, television, and political polarization statistics. The paper presents evidence that radio and television not only did not contribute to an increase in political polarization but to a decrease.
The paper analyzed the political climates in areas of the United States where residents gained early access to television and regions where they adopted television later. Television in the 1950s and ’60s had only three dominant networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. At the time, the networks only displayed national news coverage, coverage that was relatively moderate in nature.
Television presenting news catering to moderates could be related to the decreased consumption of local newspapers and other local media that covered hyper-local politics. Not consuming local media content could explain the reduced voter turnout after the introduction of television.
The findings on how the radio influenced behavioral politics were not as straightforward as with television. When the radio was still a new technology, local news coverage dominated air time. Once the technology evolved, national news started to take precedent over the local news. Surprisingly, the findings presented little change in political polarization in this transition. A lack of data for radio consumption could be to blame for the unclearness of the results.
Radio and television’s effects on political polarization surprised me, but the effects that social media has had did not.
Rapid Emergence of Social Media
Now, let’s take a big leap from television to the emergence of social media in the early 2000s. Myspace and Facebook made their appearances in 2003 and 2004, respectively, and quickly became two of the most popular social media platforms of that era. Social media use during this period was insignificant compared to today. It was mainly used to communicate with friends and family and meet new people — not a place for political discussion with strangers.
To clarify, communicating with friends and family is still a dominant use case today, but political discourse and arguments online have increased substantially over the past ten years. This phenomenon started around 2010 when smartphones were beginning to be widely used and quickly escalated when the 2016 election came upon us.
Anonymity Online
Shortly after platforms like Facebook and Myspace emerged into the lives of millions of people, online, anonymous gathering places started to develop. One of the most notable platforms is Reddit, where the only identifying feature of a user is their username (which can be whatever they want).
Since two people can not have the same username, and since there are hundreds of millions of accounts, people must be very creative in choosing a username if they do not want to use numbers and symbols.
Since users cannot be identified on Reddit, they tend to throw away their morals and values when communicating with other users. The toxicity of anonymous social media websites can be sickening but is also entirely expected.
The most that can happen for hateful speech or content on the platform is a complete ban from the site. However, since nobody knows what this spewer of hate speech is, this person may only feel mild remorse. Additionally, they can just create a new account under a new username and email, so there may be little effectiveness in such bans.
Additionally, Reddit (and other sites like it) has turned into two large echo chambers. The website has devolved into an echo chamber primarily for radical left-wing ideologies, but there is also a smaller echo chamber for radical right-wing ones.
The platform is so divided that the subreddit r/Conservatives bans anyone who disagrees with ideas presented in the space. In contrast, anybody who expresses conservative viewpoints in many other spaces of the platform tends to get maliciously attacked. Considering that young teenagers and those above eighteen years old make up a good portion of the platform, people not debating issues in a respectable manner is not surprising.
Small Vocal Minorites
This will be an extension of the idea of anonymity and lack of social etiquette but applied to social media websites like Twitter and Facebook. A lack of anonymity on a platform does not deter many people from practicing poor and rude discourse.
The problem is the small but vocal minority of extremely radical political ideologues who dominate these platforms. Most Americans typically hold a more moderate viewpoint and tend not to drift too far to either side. The problem is that these people usually do not participate in political discussions online and tend to be less involved in politics in general, like an average person.
However, the few people who become too invested in one side of the political spectrum tend to be less willing to listen to and more toxic toward the other side. This is a rather dangerous concept since they get the majority of attention in political “discussions” online and tend to be catered toward the most.
Conclusion
The technological revolution has drastically impacted how people engage with politics. The invention of the smartphone that came with the surge in social media use played the most crucial role in increasing political polarization and divide in America. Radical ideologies have increasingly dominated social media with no sign of the situation improving any time soon.
