The Rural-Urban Information Divide — and why it’s Facebook’s fault.
In David Mamet’s introduction to the play 12-angry men, he wrote that there are two Americas. The America of “Them”, obsessed with the political foolishness of those with different beliefs, and an America of “Us”, a non-abstract America — one with diversity, where people meet and talk because of the position they’re in society — forced by default to interact in PTA meetings, rotary clubs, office discussions, sports bars, and so on. This second America, allowed us to be comfortable with difference and to ameliorate our “irreconcilable claims of passion” with the interactions of everyday life.
As rural-urban polarization grows so does the irreconcilability of their differences. Although little has been spoken on it, algorithms have widened an information gap between the two. Here’s a rundown of how this came to be.
Facebook’s algorithm maps all of your online interactions to segment your profile — by political orientation, shopping history, hobbies, and so on. With this, you are targeted with news, products, advertisements that reflect your categories*.
The outlying factor of the algorithm is ‘novelty’ or ‘noteworthiness’, in other words, how likely it is for a headline to catch one’s attention. When I open social media, the ad I get the most is ‘You Won’t Believe What Customers Saw in This Walmart’, with a misleading image of black mannequins hung to the ceiling. Although there was little newsworthiness in the article — the ad was placed to evoke my reaction.
As human beings, our actions are bounded by our understanding of reality — so we either rely on our experiences; our 5 senses or information that is given to us. According to the Pew Research center, 54% of Facebook and 59% of Twitter (US) users use the platform as their primary providers of the news, politics, and current affairs.
Facebook, however, rather than evenly distributing information, targets news selectively to segments of the population. This is particularly troubling for modern electoral systems — Americans are living separate realities — one concerned with wild conspiracies, and the other obsessed with a petty ideological cancel culture.
Moreover, emotionally charged topics are the most likely to elicit a response, particularly those that surround the question of identity politics (rather than pensions or public transport, which are un-sexier, less-clickable headlines). By segmenting profiles into groups, information reinforces stronger, less agreeable beliefs. The rhetoric surrounding identity politics is an example of this.
Identity politics is not a part of the reality of many Americans — particularly in rural regions. The region was more engaged with a material-rhetoric of politics, like job security and taxes. After the 2008 crisis and the growth of urban-rural inequality, all the fear and disillusionment of a globalizing world increased populist clout, allowing Trump to seem like an anti-establishment hero. The growth of identity politics excluded rural America from the rhetoric that mattered most to them.
To add insult to injury, algorithms deliver similar messages to some segments, without exposing them to others. For instance, by exclusively sending conservative and opinionated news to rural America, this will repetitively solidify their opinion on identity-politics without receiving information on alternative perspectives. The same applies to the urban-population, who were bombarded with anti-Trump news, left without information that clarified the roots of rural American disillusionment.
Rural America was sidelined as traditional rhetoric has changed. The left-right issue-cleavages which once reigned allowed voters to place their interests in reference to the left-right positioning of a policy. But traditional left-right discussions, such as on pensions, farmer subsidies, social security, are not novel enough for algorithms.
And so algorithms are only widening an information divide between rural and urban America — the rural right with dangerous conspiracies, and the urban left with a counter-productive cancel culture. Unsurprisingly, we now face cleavages in reality itself! The growth of movements like Q-Anon, Flat-Earthers, Vaccine-Deniers, relied on the Facebook groups and algorithms to thrive — to make sure that their content is seen by like-minded segments of the population.
By depriving a population of the right to equal and truthful information, we are depriving Americans of a healthy democratic experience. Facebook has used the geographic and economic inequality of the US as a business model — to segment people politically, and target them with ads that shape their political understanding of the world.
Because of this divide, we’ve seen an increase in rhetoric based on irrelevant conspiracies on one side and foolish cancel-rants on the other. Interestingly, both are disconnected from real politics that impact everyday Americans. To make matters worse, the clout-driven reward to social media has removed the incentive to listen, talk and understand.
If algorithms are used to help you have a more pleasant shopping experience — I’m all for it. But it’s dangerous to allow ad-sponsors to target polarizing and misleading information to disillusioned populations. We have seen what Cambridge Analytica (CA) did with psychological targeting using Facebook when exploiting personality metrics. In order to manipulate elections in 68 countries, Facebook allowed them, for instance, to tailor fearful ads for the ‘neurotic’, or messages of stability to the ‘agreeable’ population. Algorithms allowed them to use tailored ads to appeal to persuadable traits of a given population.
The pandemic has limited the day-to-day interactions that reconcile our differences — and Facebook’s divisive algorithms have only strengthened the America of “Them” — harming the crucial democratic value of deliberation. However, diversity and strength-through-difference are a strong-suit of America. If we continue to allow algorithms to define the political experience of American voters, we are damaging and polarizing our democratic system.
*Also, be sure to check “Facebook Settings > Ads > Your Information > Your Categories” to see how Facebook categorizes you.
