The unnessecary political polarization on social media (and how to solve it)
Politics is a typical subject people prefer to avoid during conversations. But these are nessecary conversations if you are part of a society. Everyone wants the country to be organised as optimal as possible. Personally I have regularly good constructive conversations about politics and how we should organize society. Most of those people I know personally, these people can be my friends, family, classmates, teammates, etc. But on social media I find that quite challenging.
On social media, in particular YouTube, conversations can become, putting it mildly, quite vigilant. I mean, why would you want to part of a civil conversation if you can relief yourself of all the stress you have been collecting all week. In particular nowadays that seems to be the trend. If Trump does something, he is an idiot, in particular europeans who have no idea how the United States functions seem to hold this opinion. Someone from turkish origin has an opinion about politics, well maybe that person should just “go back to Erdogan.” These are two perfect examples of how a large group of people ruins the debate about one of the most important topics our society should talk about.
But, as I mentioned, these conversations seem to be more civillized when talking face-to-face, with a person you know is similar to you and has a human face. If you compare a face-to-face conversation with the YouTube comment section we can see some sharp contrasts. On YouTube it is very common for people to use a name other than their own. The profile pictures people choose are very diverse, but barely are a portrait of them. This of course causes emotional distance, your talking to a number, not to another human being. On Facebook we see similar results in a lesser degree. On Facebook we, at least, are able to see one another’s profile picture and the name written on their identity card.
Business models in the age of the internet
Where journalists and marketeers used to work seperately at news companies, the internet has brought some changes. Nowadays the possibillities and costs to publish your content are easier and lower than ever before. The competition among news companies is higher than ever. This has caused a scary convergence between the editorial departments and marketing departments within these companies. Where during the last century editors had a good amount of control over their content, nowadays they have to obey to the marketing departments. The reason: To maintain revenues.
But how do these marketing departments influence content? We can see their work clearly being done by looking at the New York Times coverage on Facebook of the Parkland shooting, which happened Februari 14 2018. The New York Times needs revenue in order to maintain the status quo of their business, therefore they need traffic to their website, people reading their articles. If they find a topic that creates a firestorm, they keep publishing it.
As most will recall, the Parkland Shooting was on the front pages for roughly six or seven weeks. It was huge. The response of the New York Times was: Publishing similar articles everyday without providing any new information. Later it evolved into calling for stricter guncontrol in their opinion section, the problem with this is that they left out facts in previous articles. The fact that their was a police officer outside who didn’t act, that the shooter passed a psychological test, to buy a gun, he should not have passed and that the FBI had the shooter on the radar for over a year wasn’t mentioned.
The high number of shootings in the US might be caused by the high rate of gunownership, but the number of factors contributing to this outcome is a lot higher. However, the New York Times didn’t care because they generate traffic to their website and eventually revenue. The big problem is the unnuanced discussion it caused. With this marketing tactic the New York Times focusses on a broad audience who are in favor of guncontrol, which is a slight majority of Americans. It wasn’t surprising to see a comment section full of unnuanced remarks, some even calling people against guncontrol “child murderers”. Considering the fact that the New York Times left out facts and therefore communicated a false narrative, means that they caused unnessecary polarization in the country.
A businessmodel that makes us smarter
Considering the fact that one of the biggest media outlets in the world lowers the journalistic standard in order to gain more revenue, than they would have gotten with a higher standard, is scary. It seems difficult to trust news outlets nowadays, in particular if you consider that some are much worse. Please don’t get me started about publishers like Huffingtonpost or Breitbart, they are the absolute worst. The question is what we should do from now on. Fortunately, there is hope.
There are news outlets who still try to figure out a business model that keeps the journalistic standard high while maintaining a sustainable revenue. In my opinion the WSJ, the economist and “De Correspondent”(The Netherlands). Are doing a great job. Although The Wall Street Journal and The Economist are still targeting large audiences, they still manage to maintain a high journalistic standard by publishing about a broad range of topics and not focussing on specific ideological groups. Of course every news outlet has at least a slight bias, but a good piece of journalism should attract every political colour, despite a little bias.
“De Correspondent” on the other hand is a great example of a news outlet who uses modern day technologies to engage with an audience and instead of polarizing, push for a more toughtful debate. Just like The Wall Street Journal and The Economist they focus on broad range of topics, but what they do different is, instead of focussing on breaking news, talk about topics that could be relevant and promote people to discuss it with them.
Perhaps the most wellknown journalist of “De Correspondent” is Rutger Bregman. Rutger Bregman wrote “Utopia for Realists”, published in march 2017, which talks about the possibility of a basic income. In this book he talks about the possibities for a basic income. A lot of times you here economic liberals saying that a basic income is basically a “leftist hobby”. This is a topic that could easily be used by news outlets as yet another topic to exploit by creating a polarizing narrative. What Rutger Bregman did is not create a narrative at all, just a possible narrative. He explains the history of this idea, the research done on the topic and his reasons to implement it. He also explains the different versions of a basic income and the fact that the idea has been promoted by people with a left-wing economic view, but also by libertarians like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
He uses various channels to communicate his message: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, TV, Radio, live speeches, his website, “De Correspondent”, etc. He tries to promote this idea by talking about it on TV, via his book and in “De Correspondent”. On Twitter, Facebook and during Q&A’s. He tries to maintain a calm tone and explain where he comes from. At the end we all have different experiences leading to our view on life. Rutger Bregman recognizes this and thus wants to engage with his audience and people he disagrees with. Rutger Bregman and “De Correspondent” recognize that social media also creates possibilities. Where did it get him? National TV in the US, Germany, Great Brittain, and many other countries. The conversations in the comment sections on social media are also much more nuanced, I’d say they are mostly constructive. “De Correspondent” and Rutger Bregman managed to turn a niche market interested in a nuanced debate into a mass market.
The internet was an invention that turned the world upside down, journalism suffered quite a lot as a result. Big news publications lowered their journalistic standard in order to stay on top and maintain similar rates of revenue. Social Media is one of the biggest world changing parts of the internet. It has caused a lot of harm when it comes to public debate, but it doesn’t mean that we are looking towards a bleak future. Their are newcomers who found ways to use social media in such a way that it brings people together and pushes for civil dialogue instead of more polarization.
What the future will be is hard to predict considering the wild west that is social media and the internet, but it doesn’t need to be bleak, it can be great. Let’s just hope that the business models of media outlets pushing for civil dialogue will, in twenty years, come out of the bus as the clear winner.
