Social Media, Politics and Us

Social media have changed the equation in American politics.   From fake Facebook stories planted by Russian trolls to influence the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump, to Roseanne Barr’s deeply racist Twitter message this past week–to say nothing of the President’s constant barrage of self-serving, denigrating and false tweets–social media have made our national political dynamics more divisive, ill-informed and counterproductive.  The premium these media place on bite-sized bursts of no-need-to-explain-or-defend assertions has only exacerbated this process.

An additional victim is language.  ‘Political correctness,’ originally meant to inhibit language that marginalizes or denigrates dispossessed minorities, has been hijacked by white nationalist forces to defend just such language.  Free speech–the 1st Amendment–has been similarly abused.  To many freedom of expression now means the liberty to publicly demean, hate, exclude–and lie.

These realities have countered much of the promise of social media to be a liberating technology, to enhance democracies by giving voice to the hitherto voiceless and providing platforms for people to organize around their mutual interests and to advocate for positive change.  Instead, they have at least as effectively nourished tribal identities and animosities and diminished productive dialogue across groups.

A wry cynic might note that all of this is a consequence of social media’s original sin.  After all, Facebook was born in a university dormitory to allow Harvard males to rate the College’s females.  Or perhaps it is a function of the addictiveness of the technology.  It has seduced so many of us so completely that we are psychologically locked into modes of stunted communication that preempt both our participation in more thoughtful exchanges and our consumption of depth sources of information.

Of course our rabid political communications on social media are not an outgrowth of the technology.  Instead they are rooted in social changes that began to polarize politics and to sort Americans into tribal silos long before social media blitzed the nation.  These are the economic transformations that have hollowed out our old industrial cities and towns while also radically increasing inequalities in wealth and income between social classes.   Those left behind by these changes–the working classes whose manufacturing jobs have fled to low wage countries and whose wages in remaining jobs have remained essentially flat for more than four decades–have increasingly felt abandoned by institutions they had been trained to trust.

The loss of trust in the federal government has been especially striking.  While majorities of Americans expressed trust in government through the early 1970s, with some exceptions there has since been a long-term decline in that faith.  By the end of 2017 only 18 percent expressed trust that Washington would do what is right.  Meanwhile racial tensions, never far from the surface, were ignited by the combination of the Obama election, the immigration of racial minorities from the south and religious minorities from the Middle East and Africa, and the growing economic insecurities of the white working classes.  Over the course of human history minorities have commonly been scapegoated for the losses and fears of majorities.

But while our increasing polarization has its roots in economic dislocation and political alienation, the anger it generates has been amplified by social media.  Like no other media before it, the technology encourages us to consort only with fellow travelers who ‘like’ our posts, and enables us to quickly launch attacks across remote cyberspace at those ‘others’ whose views offend us.  These ‘others’ are stereotyped as being as far from us politically as they commonly are geographically, and our expression of ire at them is only an impulsive keystroke away.  The dopamine rush we get rewards the impulse.  Little wonder that the anger and fears of the dispossessed white working classes have become mirrored in the postings of those of us who reside more comfortably in our economic system.

If the country is to rebound from our polarization and intramural hostilities, we need to do better than this.  It will not be easy, particularly in the face of a president who routinely floats his own mendacity, narcissism and racism through our culture with his tweets and other public statements.  But we must begin somewhere, and that’s with us.

Some guidelines I’ve come to via my own experience in communicating through social media:

1.  Don’t take the bait.  No matter how offensive or erroneous you find someone’s post or tweet to be, do not give in to the understandable urge to fire back in kind.  Count to ten, slap some cold water on your face, breathe deeply, or do whatever else helps you to avoid participating in a debased exchange.  Remember, too, that many Americans speak from real anxieties and a sense of having been left behind by the march of history, however factually wrong we may find some statements or how offensive the tone.  A measure of compassion can go a long way.
2. Instead, if the post makes fact errors or offers nonsense or false reasoning, consider replying politely only to try to correct the mistakes.   You may even find that the original author is not entirely resistant to such feedback.  Maybe.  I’ve tried this on-line, and it does not always work.  Some ‘opponents’ double down on the snark, others take seriously what I have written.  Either way, communicating the truth is its own reward.  Don’t debit either the truth or yourself by engaging in snark or–worst of all–name calling.  See #1 above.
3. Remember:  Like the truth, democracy comes dearly.   To survive, both require committed vigilance and engagement.  Among other things, this means that we cannot remain passive in the face of falsehoods or uninvolved in democratic processes.  I see a lot of passion in my Facebook and Twitter feeds, and I worry that too many people of goodwill may be substituting high-minded posts and exhibitions of anger at the ‘stupidity’ of the other side for productive engagement with the messy requirements of democratic participation.

The truth dies in silence and democracy dies in disengagement.  We have work to do, and it begins with us.