Social Media has an effect on not only driving opinion, but creating it. But so does the main stream media when there always seems to be personal beliefs & opinions peppered with facts.
Few question the credibility or reliability of friends, family, or whatever. They are smart and know more than me, so why question them?
When someone blames the other party for everything without looking at or questioning their own, they are helping make problems worse. The people in your own party should be held to just as high of a standard as the ones you are against.
Democrats have proven to be just as corrupt as Republicans. Downplaying, willingly ignoring and outright lying for them makes you no better than the ones you speak out against. Be it in the media or personally.
It's become political football. If you aren't on my team everything you say is a lie and you're the enemy and I'm gonna work to make my team the only one because it's fictionally more moral and intelligent of a party.
Social Media is bad, sure.
But when the main stream media (newspaper, tv, etc) put personal belief & opinion mixed with fact while downplaying and ignoring things to protect a particular party, it's lost its journalistic integrity. It's become nothing more than a political pawn and is much less reliable for facts and truth.
So the people turn to social media and their friends in hopes they know something more.
The truth is fluid now. The truth is no longer about facts, but beliefs.
16
Fair enough. Social media radicalization forces are strong, and the more you engage with them, less time you have to experience the real world. Your sense of reality is distorted. This can go every way as long as it reinforces our own biases, substituting critical thinking for group thinking. This is a dangeorous phenomenon affecting the society as a whole, not just liberals or conservatives.
5
I presume that Douthat represents a certain conservative school of thinking and is trying out yet another trial balloon. In this iteration he floats extraneous what-about-isms and reaches for new extremes of false equivalence. Are these conservatives simply pretending that the current conspiracy theories floated by Republicans at Trump's behest during the impeachment investigation aren't happening?
12
The respectable liberal complaint about social media, and about the internet generally, is that there are no more intermediaries who can control what is and is not worthy of publication and therefore does does or does not reach the mass audience. Seventy or so years ago, New Yorker writer A.J. Liebling correctly observed that freedom of the press is freedom for the man who owns a press, and implicitly only for him. Twenty years or so ago, Matt Drudge was the first to realize that this was no longer true because the internet was the cheapest and most accessible form of publishing ever known. Now everybody owns a press. The demand that Zuckerberg et al control what is published on their monopoly platforms is a demand for the return of the respectable intermediary. I suspect it would be a good deal more subdued if, say, Charles Koch controlled Facebook.
4
Social media provides a tempting smorgasbord of right-wing conspiracy theories for Fox to glom on to and legitimize as “news” for their followers. This gives Fox a semblance of plausible deniability that they are a news source rather than the subversive propaganda machine for profit that they actually are.
9
“I've always thought that the most powerful weapon in the world was the bomb and that's why I gave it to my people, but I've come to the conclusion that the most powerful weapon in the world is not the bomb but it's the truth.”
— Andrei Sakharov
The truth.....if it can hack its way through the jungle of lies, disinformation, and spin. That, and a populace that is doing its civic duty to be serious about trying to determine what is true, just, and right for our nation.
5
First of all, conservatism has always been warped. Get used to it.
Social media, contrary to all early hopes, has become a metastisizer of false facts and racist narratives. It has enabled the accelerated reproduction of poisonous ideas that were formerly isolated in small local populations, and is thus responsible for a kind of cancer on human consciousness. The fact that Facebook deliberately does this to pump up traffic and ad revenue is nothing less than evil.
8
Take away Twitter from Trump and watch what happens -- it won't be pretty.
5
Social media seems to me like self-marketing tools. If social media wont police itself and no one is accountable for the lies that are disseminated there, what environmemt are we creating for our children?
4
Well, Ross, I might be willing to agree with you and those you cite who argue that social media are not at the core of this rightwing nutbaggery. But if not social media, the road leads to a sort of mass telepathic stupidity infecting and affecting sixty million people as the only rational alternative explanation. I guess you can choose.
4
Here's Douthat, a regular writer on religion and Catholicism, is now writing about "a theory with limited empirical support."
Believers in immaculate conception, angels, and all of the other claptrap that's in Main Street, Heavenlyland probably shouldn't opine on his party's belief in trumpneyesque conspiracy claptrap. Though it is funny.
8
"Social media is bad."
Douthat knows this because of his "Twitter feed."
7
Stupid people get all of their news from Facebook and Twitter.
10
I read my NYT online. So what does that make me - a populist, nationalist, liberalist ? Or what I hate - the uber snooty elitist?
6
Trump supporters will not be at my dinner table on Thanksgiving.
I no longer have anyone who is a Trump supporter in my circle of friends.
If you support a person such as Trump then you must be a supporter of his character and world views.
Trump is a racists, a misogynist, bully of a person. So as a supporter you must also support and have the same character of this person.
11
Let's cut through the nonsense here about what really is going on with our information. Our wake up is all about a resurrection of our communication abilities being created through the passage of time itself. To put it plain and simple it's not dark out there anymore. Misinformation, half the story, propaganda under the guise of news has no chance in a light which has turned the corner on the cover of darkness. A light which will only increase in the decades up ahead, a time when all will be forced to operate under a degree of light far beyond even our imagination. That is the world we live in, where once it was dark now there is only light, and it is becoming embarrassingly bright.
5
Ross, you seem to be ignoring the fact that more traditional news outlets (including Fox News) dedicate a great deal of time/space reporting on social media posts (especially Trump tweets and the threads they generate). You don't have to actually be on line for them to have an effect.
9
More signficant, likely, is Fox News... but that still indicates a siloed population.
8
It seems these days conservative pundits and journalists can't cope with the monster that they helped create in trump, the Republican party and in their base. So what better strategy than to keep attacking liberalism, progressives and pointing out what they feel are their weaknesses or errors in judgement and what liberals must do about it. Clean up your own house Mr. Douthat and when you are finished go lend Bret Stephens a hand. We liberals admittedly have our problems, but these days "conservatism" and "republican" are four letter words.
11
I spent a large part of the last two summers on meandering bicycle tours in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota, with a side trip into Chicago. I wasn't focused on politics but couldn't avoid some observations about "purple" America.
First, the most glaring divide is urban-rural, and "rural" values also spill over into smaller cities like Grand Rapids, Lacrosse, St. Cloud, and Fargo. However, Midwest conservatism is not generally the rabid kind you see at Trump rallies or in the deep South; it is more an abiding distrust of distant forces and a nostalgia for a not-too-distant past.
Second, I agree with Ross's penultimate paragraph, that most people are getting most of their information from "old media"--radio, television, and yes, print newspapers. You can tell a lot by whether the TV is tuned to Fox News, MSNBC, or sports. (Even among sports, baseball and basketball fans are a lot different from those watching MMA or Nascar.)
Third, the most important source of information is not media at all but rather the personal contacts: family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, church congregations, book clubs, soccer parents, PTAs, community associations, etc. Some of those interactions now occur on social media, but they're among people you "know" and whose opinions you value. Those milieus are where snippets of fact or fiction become viral "truths."
7
We all most certainly live in bubbles but some bubbles are mostly filled with good intentions, honestly and truth - and others, not so much. Social media bubbles are not all bad, but some are down right evil. Your point is pointless without addressing what is consumed in the bubbles. Might be good, might be bad? It's not a matter of how much time one spends in "bubbles" but rather the veracity and validity of the bubble air.
4
The problem of the ‘propaganda machine’ is not the machine (social media), it is the propaganda.
That, and the various factors that prompt folks to believe the lies.
3
Can we agree, that we need a law to get political advertising off our Facebook feed?
- where it is universally unwanted, if not loathed.
Conspiracy theories and disinformation. Hate-speech. And the opinions of oligarchies being expressed as mainstream.
- Deception abounds.
When television became a thing we were able to keep the new medium cleaned up.
To protect our kids.
Now we are grown up, with kids of our own and the future of democracy to think about, (actually in doubt?)
We the people are, without question, under attack.
Principles and ideals that make our country great are being buried by the will of one Vladimir Putin, one geopolitical wizard, as he dumps fiction and falsehood on the consumers of media in the West. On Facebook. (Remember Cambridge Analytica, and what can happen by letting criminals publish freely.) And one guy who picked up his playbook, with self-interest at heart, got himself elected, by god, as our president. It wasn't luck. It was our neglect. It continues to be our neglect that threatens the 2020 election. At least Google and Twitter say they're looking into it. Zuckerberg? All I hear him saying is that he's not a publisher; and then he goes on, giving disinformation the equivalence of free speech.
7
I don't understand why Ross Douthat follows theories with limited empirical support. To wit - that Donald Trump is a Constitution-abiding, upright and honest President and the Republicans in Congress are standing up for what is right by insisting that Trump should be allowed unlimited power because the empirical evidence of his wrongdoing is dependent on who the whistle blower is.
I wish Ross would explain his own embrace of facts with - frankly - no empiracle support.
It is always shocking to read Ross Douthat embracing Jim Jordan -- the man who looked the other way when student-wrestlers told him of being abused and when honorable men and women testified under oath about Trump's abuse of power.
But I do wish Ross Douthat could explain why he disregards facts to embrace fallacies?
Remember, Ross Douthat is embracing the view that he cannot know whether Fiona Hill is a lying perjurer until he hears from the whistle blower. But Ross does not care to hear from the White House men who would know because Trump tells him he can't.
If it wasn't social media that turned Ross into someone who denies any reality except Trump's, then what is it?
Even Bret Stephens knows how false Ross Douthat's beliefs are.
11
What Ross isn’t taking into account is the insidious micro targeting efforts indulged in by the trump campaign and trump supporting PACs. Their lies are less scrutinized when distributed to just 10-100 people than they are when broadcast over fm airwaves and super bowl ads. This is a trump campaign invention. And this is where the asymmetry arises between right leaning and left leaning social media influence campaigns
5
Questions.
Why can I follow Mr. Douthat and the other NYT OP-ED writers on Facebook and Twitter? Should I follow them?
Would the income of the above writers suffer in either the short or long run if they could not be followed?
If "social media is bad for "everything and everyone" are social media denizens metaphysical Flagellants.
Can the "word "Populism" be defined succinctly. I doubt it. Wikipedia agrees with me.
How can we discuss a subject that has no definite meaning?
What or who is a "normal partisan"?
My op-ed: global warming is not confined to measuring air temperature.
2
@diderot I agree with your demand for a definition of 'populism' whose origins lie with an earlier model of society. It used to mean "Promise anything that stirs the masses to action for their prejudices & your benefit." That's a very mild name for Trump, who has the potential to destroy the bases of civilization.
The idea that Wikipedia agrees with you is troubling. Who wrote the entry on 'populism'? What was his name? What were his credentials? Who edited it? What was her name? etc. etc. Wikipedia = social media.
8
At the age of 67 I don't visit social media and have never seen (read?) at tweet. I am similar in those facts to many in the rural lake area I moved to after NY taxes grew to a third of my social security. When speaking with my Westchester friends (on the phone) they always mention the latest critic of Trump they got off the web. Constantly. Always the same. I tell them life is too short for all that. Go outside for a walk. Ride a bike. Or if the weather's bad to pick up a book.
6
@Donna Gray
So, the answer is just to ignore everything? And let Trump and his minions trample where they may?
4
Unfortunately, it's not just comedian Sacha Baron Cohen and Douthat's weary straw-man "liberals" who conclude that social media is "greatest propaganda machine in history." It's Putin's conclusion, too. Poor deluded Putin. According to Douthat, he has wasted so much time and effort on social media in vain; more sadly, he persists in his delusion, continuing to do so. No worries, folks. Move along. Nothing to see here. The trouble is all in your sorry liberal-progressive heads.
As for the studies referenced, they suffer from the commonplace problem of failing to find evidence of the model they construct. Construing failure to find evidence of a model as grounds for concluding that something does not exist overlooks the possibility that the model simply didn't correspond to anything real to begin with. The model was defective. So, no surprise, there's no evidence of its effects.
The notion of an "echo chamber" advancing a post-truth society vulnerable to right-wing demagogues the like of Trump is not restricted to social media, as these studies have it and with which Douthat agrees out of rhetorical convenience. The very notion of "echo" presumes more than one media, to describe the symbiotic, reciprocally validating relation between stories circulated on social media picked up and propagated by other media, print, broadcast and cable, which, in turn, are given further social media elaboration and credence. Douthat got through his entire column without mention of FOX News.
10
@RRI
Your posting should have been a NYT pick. Excellent logic.
3
If social media, such as Twitter, is not very affective in swaying "the populist masses", then why is the Trump 2020 campaign investing millions in it?
7
Each time I read a Ross Douthat column, I come across the term liberalism. It appears almost as a living sentient entity going about with smugness and self-satisfaction, always oblivious of its misconceptions, if not outright callous about their implications. I want to meet this liberalism because I am impressed at how consistent its happiness is as it walks around our cities, and most often our large coastal cities. Or perhaps liberalism populates the stage of a Kabuki theater that Mr. Douthat frequents with an addictive regularity and where he gets his inspirations. But the result usually leaves me uninspired.
8
@Ken P well written and really clever. I will admit that the sentient entity you describe is how I view many (not all) of the left leaning residents of the city you and I share. I feel like I meet that version of liberalism in the smug and self righteous policies of the Seattle City Council, who care more about not offending homeless people than actually helping homeless people.
You beautifully word-smithed a description which you were being sarcastic about - but if you remove that sarcasm you’ve perfectly nailed it.
2
Confirmation bias among the sophisticates...Virtue signalling as well. What could ever go wrong with such a world view?
5
The problem isn't social media. It's the working class. Trump channels them. The media and, in the US, the rise of the religious right have empowered them.
These are people who, effectively, live in a pre-modern society. They want a world where women breed and men fight, and where Big Men, negotiating with other Big Men (in Russia, North Korea, or wherever) cut deals for them.
If, in the US, everyone without a college degree were disinfranchised we be living in heaven. They are deplorable.
3
How important is it whether Jeshua was the messiah or not? Is this like the question of fake news?
If one believes in a falsehood is that important. If not, then what is important?
So from this question leads: what's the difference what any cardinal says. On questions related to an false premise.
Good luck on that!
You have several misconceptions about how the Russians used social media to sway voters.First,populism exists on both sides of the political spectrum.It is not only the right wing.Second,the Russians fanned the flames of this political divide.They did this by targeting the thought leaders in each group who, in turn,disseminated this disinformation through all sorts of media.It's like a cancer which metastasizes.Social media is a starting point because it's the best way to push phony narratives which you call "free speech" but ,in this case, are actually lies calculated to confuse the electorate.The Russians then targeted those thought leaders using logarithms based on their social media preferences.This technique has nothing to do with which side spends more of their time online.The research you sited misses the point by oversimplifying the issue. You have unwittingly pushed the Russian narrative of the poor,populist ,right wing partisans, who spend little time online,as opposed to lazy,leftwing partisans "ensconced in (their) own self-reinforcing information bubble."The Russian trolls could not have said it better.Go back and listen to Fiona Hill's testimony.She tried to warn you.Social media isn't the source of the disinformation...it is only the enabler.
5
Okay, I've read enough. "Sacha Baron Cohen, the erstwhile fake newsman Borat, condemning “a handful of internet companies” for building the “greatest propaganda machine in history” This is indeed a fallacy, Fox News is the greatest propaganda machine in history.
10
How often do the mainstream media get their stories by reporting on things being said or "trending" on social media?
5
So, Ross, if you think that cable news (read: Fox) and talk radio (read: Sinclair) are the real problem, why not bring back the Fairness Doctrine?
10
The most recent season of the Showtime series Homeland delved into the process by which bad actors exploit social media. Anyone interested in a decent layman's explanation of how it was done in real life should check out the dramatized version, which highlighted troll farms, the sentinel/node structures used in agitprop propagation, selective manipulation of photographs and editing of text, and an excellent overview of how things go viral, for better of worse.
2
"Keep in mind, YouTube "recommended" Alex Jones conspiracy videos more than 15 BILLION times. That's more than the combined traffic of BBC, NYT, WaPo, The Guardian."
--Tristan Harris, Google Design Ethicist, Co-founder, Center for Humane Technology
8
Ross Douthat attacking someone for advancing an idea with "limited empirical support" within a "self-reinforcing information bubble" is so hilariously hypocritical I can only take this as a parody article. Bravo!
6
1. “Social media,” Mr. Douthat, has been around since ancient Rome at least.
2. The question is whether there’s been a qualitative change, with the onset of the Internet, something along the lines that Benjamin mapped out in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.”
3. The Right’s social media includes talk radio, cable TV, and the endless books and videos cranked out by cranks and crooks. And shows like Rush’s are surrounded by CLOUDS of chat rooms. Then there’s 4Chan and up. Not to mention, say, “Reader’s Digest,” and “Field and Stream.”
4. Could we please, please, please, learn to separate liberalism from leftism? Since Ross Douthat is himself a liberal in general outlook, unless he’s gone back to the Inquisition after all?
1
As I've stated before in other comments on this paper, the internet needs to be regulated (should have been regulated under Clinton administration when the net got its big start (nip it in the bud, but we missed that one)). It should be regulated as a medium of publication. A format similar to printed media in which on-line media would be regulated as a publishers with publications. As an added note: internet commerce should be regulated similar to how mail-order commerce has been regulated via the postal service.
5
This article is the battle plan for Thanksgiving dinner with my Trump-in-laws. Thanks, brother!
2
Social media--and the internet in general--is simply the most prolific mechanism for the dissemination of ideas that humans have created to date.
It allows people with loud voices to amplify their messages exponentially. And it allows people who previously thought they had very few likeminded adherents to their ideas to connect.
And, yes, social media makes it easier for hate and falsehoods to spread; but it also makes it easier for people to become educated about a host of topics and discover meaningful, worthwhile worlds outside their own, if they so choose.
The problem isn't social media. It's people. Most people in the world aren't educated (and I'm not talking in the Harvard sense). Nor are they critical thinkers (in the real sense, not the conspiracy theory one). On top of that, most citizens of the world are followers. They want to belong to a group. They want to feel like they're part of something; and they fear what they don't know--be it other races, religions, or philosophies.
Until we change human nature and biology, bad and false ideas will always spread if they function as bases for narratives we believe and ideas we already have. If social media disappeared tomorrow, another distribution mechanism would simply take its place.
7
@Joel
Excellent point. Merely because you are not ‘very online’ does not mean that your information didn’t come from that bubble.
And indeed so far as I am aware, it is largely the right that has built a memeswamp-to-mainstream disinfo pipeline.
2
You are ignoring the huge impact of organizations like Fox News, a self-contained echo chamber and information bubble if ever there was one, and which does not even figure into arguments about social media. Ross, your column today is a great example of the ill effects of picking up ideas from something you saw on Twitter.
10
@John
The horror of a conservative cable channel. The nation cannot survive with differing opinions.
@John do you think NYT opinion columns are all that different from Fox News? Isn’t that what the author is getting at? We all live in bubbles.
2
Our technological advancements have succeeded the human capacity for civil discourse. Welcome to the brave new world of hate with immunity. Some social media represent a regression in human thought and expression. There are too many incidents of social media stories being reported and accepted as truth with little regard for the consequences. Social media is the modern mob mentality. These very comment sections in newspapers are social media and if managed properly, they provide an excellent outlet for the expression of ideas. Conversely, other newspapers that allow personal attacks and employ an instantaneous message system are fraught with comments that have no place in civil discourse. The onus is on the publisher to manage the system properly because government can not manage most speech. The evidence provided by the author does not measure hate which is the end result of badly managed social media. Social media is the Wild West right now and if given a choice, it is always advisable to steer clear of less civilized regions.
1
Mr. Douthat's op-ed article "Social Media and the Populist Movement" suggests that many of the further-from-centrist viewpoints get their information from off-line sources and that many of these people are rarely online. Perhaps. But what the op-ed piece and the referenced studies do not mention is that virtually every off-line news and opinion journalist is extremely connected to online social media and their social media-influenced opinions, when reported on television or on radio or in newspapers, fully reflect the intentionally inflammatory or intentionally false positions originally posted on social media. As reported in the NYT on 6AUG18 in Kevin Roose's article "Political Donors Put Their Money Where The Memes Are," considerable money has been spent to foster online opinions to be picked up by influential journalists and politicians. When Stephen Miller gets his opinions and immigration policies from VDARE and American Renaissance (as reported in the NYT on 18NOV19 by Katie Rogers and Jason DeParle) these opinions are indirectly delivered into the mind of the American President and from him broadcast through traditional media to the American populace.
7
Interesting that the left criticizes what they perceive as social media creating a self-isolating echo chamber. Since about 2013, left web sites have cracked down on dissent, eliminating comments, popularizing a broad set of dismissive terms like "mansplaining", and politicizing pop culture criticism so that works of art and entertainment must conform to left mortality. The left is more active in suppressing diversity of opinion than ever (and of course, they love a good, simplistic twitter hit a much as anyone).
(FD: I am not a conservative)
11
But what in the world does this have to do with Cohens speech?
2
Ross seems to have missed the point of Cohen’s speech entirely. This wasn’t a pro liberal, anti populist defense. This is about algorithms controlled by a handful of companies that are in turn controlled by a handful of people having disproportionate influence on our country and world. It’s about regulation. It’s about the tent poles of democracy. Did you even watch the video Ross?
8
While some on the Right, might not be online as much as on the Left or moderate Liberals, because many of those on the Right are older and as such less online. The fact remains, the real problem is the "What and Who and How?" either side seeks their information.
If you're a one or two source of "news" type...no tweaking of algorithms, or avalanche of vetted facts is going to fix what ails you. If you are a card-carrying White Supremacist, or a hammer nails in trees (endangering loggers, etc) sort of Eco-Activist - those algorithms and facts are a waste of time.
What the US faces right now is a deficit in how intellectually curious we are as a population. Oh sure, lots of Googling going on, but those are for "fact wins" in the moment. Not to learn about the context of where those factoids sit.
We're taking facts, when they are facts, and taking them out of context to "win" a point in the moment. Both sides do it, and they do it too often.
We dont deal with facts in their context. We don't deal with climate change in a seriously broad and contextual manner. We don't deal with racism in a way that describes how its a part of the US substrate. Instead we bounce from incident to incident, bad actor to worse actor...and never drill into the foundational aspects.
It appears that more people want to be fed what and how to believe, then to do the hard work of looking for information, deciphering it and figuring out how to think and believe on their own.
2
Bottom line, the individual is responsible for their choices. We choose to believe and accept whatever matches our preconceived ideas. We look for those who agree. We pay attention to things that reenforce our ideas .Social media is a more efficient way of finding these.
It does not matter what "facts" one chooses we now can have our own facts on any subject that makes us comfortable. Its not Zukerburg's fault its ours.
1
So therefore, you also oppose universal background checks and assault weapon bans. After all, guns don’t kill people, amirite?
1
But it’s the “YouTube radicalism,” as you put it, that inspires the white supremacist mass shooters so there we are. This reminds me a bit of Neil Degrasse Tyson when he explained on Twitter how much easier it is to die of cancer than a mass shooting. Yeah we know. It’s not always about the numbers, we need to get serious with real regulation and if necessary break up these companies before it’s too late.
1
Ross, this is not 1999. It’s 2019. Social media is “the real world” for much of the West. I suggest the book Surveillance Capitalism for your Christmas holiday reading.
3
Apropos the idea that the Liberals are in an internet bubble, Dan Balz writes this morning in Wapo that the numbers are moving in Trump’s favor in Wisconsin in Wisconsin. That is the numbers on Impeachment and the General Election numbers v ALL the top 4 Blues.
Depressing but there you have it.
1
thumbs up for this piece, Mr. Douthat. Thank you.
1
I use my phone to go on line and read newspapers, inc. the NYT, and occasionally, to browse Twitter and see what inanities POTUS is belching out. I'm sure Trump people are on line less and more inclined to get their propaganda from Fox and right wing radio. I would argue that those sources are more of an echo chamber than the array of news we supposedly narrow liberals access. But then, we are hyper educated and annoying, not content to endorse old prejudices and fabricated narratives.
"[E]nsconced in its own self-reinforcing information bubble...." Yes, we often call it "reality" and I highly recommend it to you.
4
Suffice to say there is plenty of traditional sources of misinformation. The idea that somehow mysterious Russians on the internet were responsible for the colossal mess created by Trump's election is a villain of convenience. Trump's message resonated because people believe the political system is corrupt. Not that Trump has any intention of doing anything about it.The Democrats responded, after their defeat in 2016, some outsider who wrongfully gave Trump his victory. People are aware that they are losing out and the situation is getting worse. Both the GOP and the Democrats haven't materially helped their position in the last 3 years. Decadence and disinformation.
3
Leave it to Ross Douthat to reduce Sacha Baron Cohen’s expansive speech about the universal proliferation of bigotry, defamation, and hate through social media to a simplistic reading of liberals vs conservatives in the U.S. The problem, Mr. Douthat, is way bigger than American politics and should be deeply considered regardless of one’s political leanings.
6
@Sarah Klock Spot on! Thank you, Sarah.
I've had mixed reactions to SBC's brand of satire over the years but as I listened to his entire ADL speech, I found it eloquent and heartfelt and was impressed by his courage in speaking truth to power.
A few years ago, my brother and his wife met SBC by chance at a Jewish History museum in Greece. SBC was with his wife and mother-in-law. My relatives did not know who he was--their millennial children clued them in afterwards. They'd never heard of SBC but they enjoyed talking with him about the experience of Greek Jews during WWII and found him warm, gracious, low key and highly intelligent. Much as he comes across in his acceptance speech.
He may push the envelope a bit too far at times comedically (for my taste anyway) but SBC is an incisive social critic. His ADL speech was a sincere attempt to ring the alarm about the nefarious forces darkening our world today much as they did in Europe 80 years ago--only on steroids this time due to the outsize influence of unregulated social media platforms.
As you said so well, this issue "should be deeply considered regardless of one's political leanings."
2
Douthat misses the point here. On both the left and the right, nearly all forms of media, except the most mainstream liberal outlets, are anti-elite. Which means anti-education, anti-reason in this case. One effect is that college educated conservative suburban women are “proud” of Trump, because they have decided to stop learning or thinking about how anyone else lives.
It’s true: Trump wouldn’t be president without Fox News. But he also wouldn’t be president without Twitter, Putin and right wing fringe social media influence. Douthat mistakes being online with informing oneself. Hence the fact that Trump supporters are more offline than non-Trump supporters says nothing about how these voters got manipulated into believing that a fraudster will fix a system that they believe is rigged against them.
It takes minutes to get misinformed by targeted adds and bots. And it takes hours to understand the solutions to complex problem by reading multiple reliable sources.
And let’s not forget that this works two ways as Cambridge analytica has demonstrated: extracting social media data and then turning this into ammunition of manipulation.
3
@Oliver Herfort
I am Ble. I hate Trump but I disagree. The DAY AFTER Trump announced a gu I knew pretty well came up to mine and said “...I’m with Trump. Are you?...”. Millions and millions of white people were with him from Day 1. Many OPers-closes to all of them really- got on bard once he had the nod because he was the Party’s guy.
The Rest, als, OIs History.
@Oliver Herfort
The horror of one conservative cable channel. The country cannot survive with ideas different than the Times editorial page.
hmm, I did not go back to check, but my recollection of Sasha Cohen's speech missed the whole premis of this article. I don't remember the speech dwelling on or being focused on right-wing populism. Rather, it dwelled on the spread of fake political ads, grandiose conspirarcy theories and racist diatribe. And, moreover, that there has got to be a way of better regulating this mass distribution of false or otherwise socially divisive advertising. To the "point" of Ross Douthat's column, I agree! And yes, liberal critics of liberalism are well-aware of the social media "problem" in their own realm - in the end, I simply do not see the social media problem as a left or right issue, but rather one of decency on one hand and a loss of journalistic standards on the other. It seemed to me that this was Mr. Cohen's central plea - to introduce legislation, or somehow force social media outlets like FB to be governed by similar standards and restrictions that the NYT must abide by.
Again, I futher support the columnists view (or report of the results of studies) that social media is not the primary driver of right-wing populism.
2
It’s seems true that since Reagan, and the demise of the fairness doctrine, the tendency of older, and probably less educated, conservatives has been to flock to right wing old media,..ie. Fox, hate radio, where they find solace and comfort as part of an aggrieved and righteous community of ditto heads and the like.
I doubt they have the time or the inclination to stare at computer screens and phones which new conservative media requires.
But Trump, as the star of The Apprentice, for 15 years, (a fake old-media, reality TV show about a fake tycoon), had a unique platform to be introduced to a huge audience of this same constituency, as an all-wise and powerful business man, who they felt they actually knew. It’s hard to believe, without that show, Trump ever would have won the nomination, much less the election? People on the left, obsessed by the power of social media, should take note.
1
Ross, do your thoughts on the unplugged people who supported the president extend to their Fox News habits or talk radio stations? They weren’t getting their nonsense from the ether.
3
My parents get their news from FOX and they support Trump; my wife’s parents get their news from the NYT and they’ll support any democratic alternative. They both see the world very differently.
We get our news from the internet and therefore from many sources, and see more sides to the issues. We are also evidenced based and less interested in the media’s selective reporting. So, for example, I didn’t just read articles about the impeachment hearings last week; I watched the hearings - on the internet.
I suppose the question is whether social media is a net positive or net negative. Is more information, however suspect, better than less information, however reliable?
3
I don't really understand any of this. Nothing seems to be fact-based anymore. Maybe that happens when the president of the United States and his supporters have no concept of reality.
3
@Clark Landrum that statement is why democrats will lose in 2020. I’m an Ivy League educated physician and business owner with liberal social views and I will vote for Trump in a heartbeat if the democrats run a far left candidate. Unfortunately the democrats have left the realm of reality you crudely reference.
4
A vibrant democracy requires a well-informed citizen.
We don’t have well-informed citizens here. Everyone is supposedly too busy to read the newspaper for 30 minutes. Or they are too dim witted to understand that social media sites like Twitter are not sources of real information.
Perhaps we would be better off with the Chinese model? There, the citizen is told not to bother informing ones self on politics and is “encouraged” not to participate in their own governance. In exchange, one party promises stability and growth.
I don’t think that an immigrant can run for office and yet I hear the most ferocious argument about protecting our constitution from immigrants on the news, in the service, our police force, and on TV who came here by choice and love the United States have more integrity than the Senate Republicans. I also don’t think that these same Republicans have changed, they have always been racist with a wide yellow track running up their back. They are just craven.
1
Why don’t we just have elections where only the smart people vote, get rid of this populist vote. Only college educated should be able to vote. Yes, that’s the answer.
2
@Shamrock Or we could have elections where every vote counts equally, and where rural voters don't have outsize influence due to gerrymandering and the EC. Yes, that's the answer.
Since the advent of movable type, to radio, comic books, and TV attacking the medium as oppose the substance has been a popular attack by people who do not like the ideas being propagated.
Mr. Douthat is one of my favorite essayists in the Times; has been for years. With most of the others I can guess, from paragraph to paragraph, what they're going to write. Not so with Douthat. I often disagree, but first thing in the morning it's a pleasure to read something that exercises my brain. And sometimes even surprises me.
I never use social media, so I must plead ignorance. But, aren't these angry troll sites, by driving traffic to their Facebook rants, actually money making ventures? Are we sure that these Russians (et al) aren't just getting rich by rattling our chains?
1
Mr Douthat, I cannot equate intellectual curiosity and the demand for forensic analysis of evidence as ' ensconced in its own self-reinforcing information bubble'.
I would say your exhibition of prejudice about educated individuals places you in the self-reinforcing bubble you mentioned.
4
Anyone who opposes our beliefs is intellectually incapable of resisting the false information that most certainly causes that opposition. Conversely, anyone who agrees with us is a reasonable, educated and incisive individual. It’s fun to be a human being.
1
As a “liberal” child of conservative parents I have watched, with dismay, their progression since the start of cable television. Even before they would give me tapes of Rush Limbaugh to listen to, hoping I’d see the light. What I heard was an entertaining man who uses bigoted tropes – feminazis, dirty commies – to push just the right buttons and amp up the hate.
Then Fox News came along and it was a whole new ballgame. Now the bigoted tropes had glitzy images, well-dressed commentators, and doll-like women with big hair and legs wrapped so tight you wondered what really happened behind the scenes. (Well now we know.) Though their banner promised “Fair and Balanced” it was anything but. Fox was on all the time at my parents house and they lapped it up. When I asked them toward the end of the Clinton administration if there was anything they thought he did right, they just looked at me with blank stares. Hard to believe but it’s gone downhill from there.
With regard to social media, what I’ve seen with them pretty much backs up your contention in this piece. My parents are old now. They don’t spend much time online. They don’t really read any news item longer than a paragraph or two, fed through their phones. And what they see on their phones only reinforces what they are seeing on TV. Still Fox News, but now it’s on a 60” flat screen with surround sound.
I imagine a lot of America is just like them.
6
Religious institutions have been the biggest promulgators of propaganda and fake news since time immemorial. Now they just reach more people far quicker. If schools teach only one thing it should be critical thinking skills. I doubt though that the religious zealots of the world, including those in the US, will be keen on that.
2
"...any Democratic strategy will be insufficient unless liberalism realizes that before it regulates social media for other people, it should learn how to resist the internet itself."
So, liberals should not use social media to further their cause, but right wing voters are ok to continue to be exposed to the brainwashing they obtain from Fox faux news and talk radio? Where is Ross' concern that the misinformation and spread of disproved conspiracy theories radicalizes those voters? That exposure to those sources warps people's view of reality?
To make his point Ross conveniently glosses over the impact of conspiracy theories pushed by Republicans that damaged Hillary Clinton's candidacy. He ignores the damage done to Hillary's image by the constant repetition of the "Lock her Up" chant. A clear strategy by the right wing to put in people's mind the idea that Hillary had broken the law counter to any evidence proving it was so. Repeating the big lie over and over again is an old Nazi strategy that Ross should be well aware of. So one would think we do not want social media to be used as a platform to spread obvious disproved propaganda. That is a tactic used by tyrants, e.g., in Russia, to maintain their stranglehold on power and to suppress democracy.
1
@USS Johnston too funny. Or maybe Hilary was just a poor candidate and people in Wisconsin wanted to try something new. People have these conspiracy theories about the other side of aisle which are so exaggerated.
1
Perhaps Mr Douthat should have typed "interesting juxtapositions from which op-ed columns can be made — including columns about how a fixation on, well, social media, is damaging an American president’s understanding of the world." instead of what he DID type.
Right after election 2016 I decided to move to rural Red area to figure out what is happening
I am online a lot but also quit FB and Twit at that time
I believe in personal contact and 1 on 1 conversation
I am hope-full
2
It would be fascinating read a “debate” between you and Mr. Cohen.
2
Hey Ross:
if social media is so unpersuasive then why is it Putin’s strategic weapon of choice - with the tactical support of Trump, the GOP and columnists like you to explain it away - in his ongoing war with America? It’s been working.
And in light of the subject, what kind of journalist would quote from Twitter sponsored research ?
You are guilty of the worst sin of a columnist : intellectual laziness .
3
You lost me at "populism." If you think that's what's festering on FB, you ain't got a clue.
2
The studies cited in this article do nothing more than demonstrate that poorly-designed research results in faulty conclusions. The error here is to have approached the problem as if social media was essentially self-contained, and that you could measure its effects just by observing its immediate consumers.
But this is obviously wrong. In reality, we have all been dragged into the sphere-of-influence of social media because of its interaction with every other kind of information. For example, the usefulness of Trump’s Twitter feed would be fairly negligible were it not for the way it is just picked up and repeated by other forms of media, and I don’t just mean Fox News. The Times, the Post and the networks play into this same dynamic.
Twitter literally gives anyone with a talent for demagogy a way of driving the news cycle, so don’t try to argue that this is insignificant. And it’s just a single example.
5
@Bill Levine Excellent, Mr Levine. You've found the nugget and dug it up.
3
I found that Twitter and Facebook were only good for one thing: driving yourself crazy. Facebook’s only benefit is helping people keep in touch with friends and family. But I think that if Facebook had to rely on that revenue stream, it would be bankrupt.
2
Some want to control what you think by controlling the ideas you can read, hear or discuss. Sasha Baron Cohen has joined this thought police, strongly opposing the authoritarian "right" by strongly endorsing the authoritarian "left."
1
I have often wondered how anyone can take Twitter seriously. How many characters per entry is it set up for? Usually complex thinking needs more than what you get on Twitter (unless it is Buddhist thought--which it rarely is).
The WSJ reported yesterday that in the 2016 election a Facebook employee was embedded in the Trump campaign. Evidently, it was a service Facebook offered anyone, and Hillary Clinton declined. The FB programmer was a Trump supporter at first, and targeted ads to likely voters, and fine-tuned them to result in maximum donations. After Trump won he got a big shout out for his work from the campaign. He felt increasingly isolated in his work though, and began to see that Trump was unleashing the dark side of our nature (racism, hatred), and voted for Clinton. Now he's working for Democrats. One wonders if Hillary Clinton had used the same tool whether it would have changed the outcome.
4
I'm much less concerned about the specific political orientations of those who use social media than I am about the dangers of giving oneself completely over to the online universe at the expense of other universes. People are on their cell-phones all the time in every possible location as though a "real" world--one two feet away with living, breathing human beings--didn't exist at all. I'm also concerned that people in general and young people in particular have simply stopped reading anything that isn't online. It's not so much that what they read is online, but the way online material is digested (in small bites with high levels of distraction) is leading to minds incapable of sustained reflection. Hard to imagine online addicts being able to slog their way through even a short novel (and forget about Morrison's Beloved or Eliot's Middlemarch).
5
@Q Very true, Q. Also-- real newspapers, to say nothing of editions of Middlemarch, are composed by real people with names and addresses, who have legal (and moral) liability for what they publish. The Internet is a supplier of self-constructed feelings and innuendo, fakery, sophistry, libel, and many worse things. The Trump Twitterverse is the model for disinformation and fake authority; he bonds with his fans by emotion, language, and false narrative.
2
This is an example where both propositions are true. Social media is not a reliable source for news or other information. But there are many on line sources that are both relatable and important in our information society.
The divisions in the country have been there for years. Social media has just given them a means of expression. People seem shocked by the violence of racism, homophobia and sexism expressed on social media but for those of us who have worked in civil rights we have been used to seeing this on the ground for as long as I can remember.
The fact that it wasn’t reported in the mainstream media led many to assume that we really were in “post racial, post sexist” society.
Social media has destroyed those assumptions and has become its own problem. And these monopoly companies can and should do more to police the marketplace that they created.
But my advice is never use social media for news. Almost every real newspaper is now on line. Read the foreign press. They are often more informed and honest than our own. Patronize alternative media that hire real journalists, not illogical megaphones.
And only use Facebook to keep up with friends and family and understand that even Wikipedia is biased and contrary to its assertions is not open to editing by the public.
6
Whatever the reasons for Republicans living in an alternate reality.
I'd be happy if Mr. Douthat would help convince the Republican base that climate change is real.
He has children, a good motive.
5
I don't know Mr. Douthat ... was it educated liberalism that cultivated a rabid, hateful and cultish fealty to Donald Trump? And, what sort of rigorous empirical support is needed to finger Fox News for an outsized role in this?
As to liberalism wanting to regulate social media for others ... I seem to recall that it was Trump and conservatives who actually drafted a order to regulate Twitter and Facebook for bias. "They're treating conservatives very unfairly" said Trump.
You might want to rethink this a bit ...
7
All communication is powerful. The tobacco industry incentivized millions of Americans to destroy their bodies and lives with ads and movies that taught them that they would be sexy and popular if they just smoked.
The power of the internet is its omnipresence. Once online, alive forever. Good, bad, fact, lie all are the same. No one responsible, no one is to blame. It costs nothing to post, and once posted it never is lost.
Social media was supposed to be a way to share your child's first home run, or a great recipe, or connect with old friends. But that is certainly not what its now. And it's a shame.
3
Republicans are fond of having law apply to all else except them. So he is just with the Republican norm. Imagine if a Republican President had nominated a potential Supreme Court Justice and a Democratic Majority Leader had blocked even a hearing for that nominee, the Repubs would have been crying impeachment, with McConnell, as Minority Leader leading the chorus.
4
I won't argue with the studies Mr Douthat references; okay, so liberals are more internet-addicted than populists. But I don't see liberals denying climate change, opposing vaccinations, or believing Obama was born in Kenya. So what explains the infestation of those ideas (and so many more) in so many red states and rural communities? Might the "old-media" cable news and talk radio play a role?
Fox "News" and Limbaugh routinely hide behind the First Amendment while freely spewing totally unsupported or fabricated content -- which sticks to its victims and drives their zombie-like votes against their own interests. (See tax cuts for the wealthy, opposition to Obamacare, rotten piles of unsold soy beans, the list goes on...)
Whether it's 4Chan or Fox, the result is the same: poorly educated voters undoing the fabric of civil society -- and perhaps democracy itself. I may not like left-wing twitter addicts any more than those on the right, but I don't fear their ability to tell fact from fiction or to bring rational thought into the voting booth.
12
@Thomas E Beach
FYI, opposing vaccines began with Hollywood, Jenny Macarthy & Robert Deniro pushing Autism conspiracy theories they’re not exactly conservative.
How has Trump’s policies benefited the everyday people? An we say trickle down economics?
1
SASHA BARON COHEN IS one of the most creative writers to speak truth to power. His writing and films are like X rated Groucho Marx on steroids. He has risked his life by confronting dangerous terrorists in person. For this, I think that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Though nobody else will ever propose that he receive that award. We disregard his warnings at our own peril. Until and unless we return to demanding vetted facts be published as news, we risk letting ourselves and others be deceived into destroying our democracy. We The People must actively work to protect our freedom against weaponized propaganda dressed up as the truth. On the Internet, every night is Trick-or-Treat. Mostly Trick!
Good idea, Ross. Let’s not do anything to control the tidal wave of sponsored and targeted lies and hateful distortions spread on social media for the un-regulated mega-profit of a few.
Once again you show yourself to be an orthodox practitioner of Republican philosophy: Always more important to be on the opposite side of a liberal’s argument than to address a real problem and help keep dangerously jeopardized democracy alive.
5
I live in a community like most in America where the different houses of worship are concentrated near the center of town, and most anyone is welcome at any one of those houses/religions. It is like social media on the internet, you are free to choose from a whole marketplace of religions, philosophies, ideologies, but once inside a specific church the free exchange of ideas that existed on the outside, generally speaking, ends. The platform is the street, and the social media internet site is the house of worship.
There are exceptions and notable ones at that. I do not believe that the New York Times pushes social conservative viewpoints. However, before I click on and open a Ross Douthat NYT column I am pretty sure that there is a strong possibility that I am going to get a socially conservative often Catholic slanted argument. Though I am socially liberal I very much appreciate the NYT for giving Mr. Douthat this platform, in large part because the NYT is a responsible platform for the free exchange of differing viewpoints. The NYT is not Facebook, thank goodness.
5
RD ignores Cohen's a major point -- unregulated social media titans are an insidious force that allows extremism to exist and decays at our morals.
45 was not elected because of Fake News or social media echo chambers. Without the 90% of the Republican vote, he would have gone nowhere. It was very much a "mainstream" vote that got him there.
But poor treatment of immigrants, white supremacy, and Islamophobia and a decay of morals -- to the point that Coen was able to fake recruit someone to kill other innocent human beings out of misogyny...yikes..social media is absolutely complicit regarding that.
His point is that a lot of information is controlled by a few and very powerful people whose algorithms get us to engage in a conflicting or echoing way. It's polarized us and de-humanized us.
Not sure some academic studies debunking the link to social media and the president's ascendancy by 60,000 votes in 3-states while losing the popular election versus a very flawed and hypocritical opponent really is able to refute Cohen's argument.
4
...So why wasn't there a big howl over Gamergate, aimed straight at women? Is everyone so blind to the patterns of abuse, who's targeted, etc.? Media of all kinds seem to think this issue is nothing to do with them. It's not their fault that communications are now more of a risk than an asset. The mindset of populism is amplified by media, including the truly bizarre efforts to find a motive for this fraud rather than see it as the premeditated crime it is.
Most people on social media have seen all they want to see of "populism" and its herd of paid frauds. The bot factor is one of the main reasons for high volumes, not real numbers. Thanks to sloppy security, this easily preventable plague continues. There are plenty of laws covering this conduct, and they're not being enforced either.
The populist movement is no more than a paid process, a job, an industry, and that's not being explored, too. Where's the money coming from to pay for all this hate? Superficiality is not an option if you ever want to be rid of this. .
1
This article seems to gloss over the varied ways people use social media. Yes, I use Facebook but mostly to see NYT recipe posts. In my experience the inclination to post anything political on Facebook, left or right-leaning, is inverse to the quality of that opinion. No one whose opinion I value would ever be caught dead using social media to voice a political opinion. Baby photos on the other hand...
1
Douthat is in the bubble himself, believing that "liberals" which he seems to use as a term for everything left of center, are the same as Twitterverse's voices he focuses on.
Douthat doesn't understand left of center voters any better than "liberals" who try to understand right of center voters solely through a social media lense.
Douthat is right about the problem, but doesn't even see that he repeats it.
3
A great friend of mine, who I love, came up to spend most of the day on Thursday.
We were talking about the same things you have written about in this column, Mr. Douthat.
His solution; "If you want to know what is going on in the world, go talk to a neighbor."
My sense is that the real tension is not between "right" and "left", but rather between intellectual and anti-intellectual. The recent impeachment inquiry hearings are exhibit "A". Democrats, in this case appealing to the intellectuals, are attempting to be rational, to connect dots, to establish timelines and narratives that explain what occurred and to put it in a constitutional context of "high crimes and misdemeanors". The Republicans, in this case appealing to the anti-intellectuals", are engaged in conspiracy-mongering, distraction, demonization and smear tactics. Their arguments don't pass even the most basic smell test and yet, they have a vast and enthusiastic audience. Naturally, I'm loath to use the word "intellectual" because of the obvious connotations, but let's be honest, this business comes down to who's really thinking and who isn't. Trump is often called a populist. In truth he's a barbarian and he stands at the head of pitchfork wielding army of anti-intellectuals. We've seen this before. It doesn't end well.
8
@g. harlan,
Excellent analysis that gets right to the heart of the matter. Thank you.
2
Russia acquired 126 million Facebook Profiles and weaponized them, that is, Russia identified their habits, beliefs, affiliations, finances “pushed” them to support Trump, reject Clinton offering Jill Stein as an alternative and enrage Sanders supporters. Our Security Services have identified these efforts as psy-ops tactics. Advertisers in this paper and everywhere us our personal buying, and interests, and our affiliations at the cost of millions per year. Why? For billions per year in profits. If advertising did not work would advertisers be so successful?
Cambridge Analytical downloaded 70 million FB profiles and applied a sophisticated algorithm to do the same.
Social media has profound value to advertisers. Douthat tried to create a narrative that flies in the face of the entire advertising industry, that pays his salary. This is as deliberately deceitful as is the Republican support for the Russian fraud that Ukraine was the perpetrator of the 2016 election.
2
Much of this havoc was rough by allowing Wall Street (mainly but not all Republicans) peddle sub-prime stated income loans, which sent us into a mini Great Depression. That was further hampered by Republican majorities who resisted any help for individual homeowners - many who still have not yet recovered. This, even as Goldman was given a trillion dollar interest-free loan and turned into a bank overnight. That was on the heels of the Iraq debacle (again mainly Republican, but 27 US Democrat Senators did vote no). Again, Republican policy mainly - anything Obama proposed was shot down. All the while Republican on Fox peddled the theory that the first black President was not even an American.
As to Fox News. With their non stop carnival barking and conspiracy mongering. the Republican lie machine was born and nurtured. Sadly, The Republican Party was so thoroughly rotted from being stoked by Fox, gerrymandered districts, the Tea Party and failed economic policies that Trump was able to knock them over with a feather. It will be a long walk home, maybe decades.
2
Agreed. Brilliant article. I am a hardline Trump voter, and waste very little time online. I'm not on Facebook, twitter, or MySpace, and have no interest in them.
2
Here’s the thing: when did we stop thinking for ourselves? When did we stop taking responsibility for our choices? I do have a real problem with FB’s decision to publish political ads that are factually false just to pocket the change, but in the end I wonder, when did we become so stupid? After all, somebody out there is voting for people and platforms that are hazardous to our health (not to mention our wallets) and allowing the “winners” to manipulate our systems to further erode our ability to make our votes count. We’ve done this to ourselves, by being lazy, greedy, and complacent, by lapping up the ludicrous stories and reality show lifestyles, and actively spreading the lies. Do you really think the Germans didn’t know that Hitler hated the Jews? Of course they did. Or that the goods they bought on the cheap weren’t seized from their rounded-up neighbors? Or that the “work camps” were burning something other than human beings? They knew it In their bones. And they were too comfy to care. We know the difference between good and evil. We (mostly) don’t lie, cheat, steal, stiff our neighbors and treat women as chattel, but we’ve chosen leaders who do, and we shrug it off while trotting to church and waving flags. We excuse this inexcusable behavior, which would never be tolerated at home, and vote for them anyway. This is, fundamentally, our fault. We reap what we sow. It has come to this: decency must win over depravity, or we are lost. Your choice.
2
@TG Actually, the majority of us don't vote for those leaders, but their supporters have outsize influence due too gerrymandering and the EC.
From Pew Research:
"Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:
Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.
Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.
Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.
Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.
By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:
Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some – like NPR and the New York Times– that others use far less.
Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.
Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or “defriend” someone on a social network – as well as to end a personal friendship – because of politics.
Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds."
https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/
Sasha Cohen and others condemning social media as a breeding ground for right-wing populism are taking far too narrow a view of the impact social media. From the perspective of this Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram NON-user the primary impact of social media is the polarization of ideas from all sorts of groups - political, religious, ethnic, et cetera. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that a tool designed to democratize free speech for anyone who can get online can be easily subverted by those capable of employing armies of proxies (such as large corporations, oligarchs in the Trump/Putin mold, etc.) to saturate the various social media platforms with their version of the “truth”.
If you want to do your part to contribute to bettering the world, spend at least a portion of your time that would be spent on social media doing something that seems to be a lost art: reading in-depth analyses of world events and social phenomena from authors of all political stripes. And then THINK about what kind of world you want to live in.
1
I'm simply frustrated that its too easy to allow fiction to impersonate fact on the internet and there's no accountability thanks to a weird model that encourages anonymity. It is my firm belief that FOX, Rush Limbaugh, and others, have created a business model that takes actual reporting from reliable sources like PBS and NYT and picks apart that reporting without doing any of the actual work of gathering data. We've all seen it and heard it, the anchors will sit there and read the articles from this newspaper and discredit them using nothing more than republican talking points.
Yes, there are left leaning sites that could be considered echo chambers. But there's a difference between an echo chamber that echoes fact based data and one that does the opposite.
Why can't there be accountability? Before the internet, if I wanted to respond to an article in my newspaper I had to send a letter with my return address.
104
@Johnny Right! And back in the early 80's Seattle Times would publish your address with your letter if they printed it. I received annoying mail on the topic for months after they printed my letter. One thing those letters all had in common: no return address. Even then it was necessary to remain anonymous if you were going to be a troll.
10
Social media mimics human society. Some precincts are rarefied. Others are squalid.
My sense is that the extremism— both on the left and on the right— correlates with the abuse of social media. Extreme beliefs are less likely to be reality based, resulting in the production of conspiracy theories and other dubious content.
As the Twitter study showed, the problem is offline echo chambers. Populism is rising most in homogeneous areas where people spend their time with others of the same race/national origin and class. Populism does worst in areas like big cities that are diverse in terms of race/national origin and class. And online media isn't the problem--it is actually harder to avoid opposing opinions on social media and online where everyone is slinging around their opinion, compared to offline, where you can just watch curated news and hang out with friends who are just like you. We need to address the offline echo chamber problem by encouraging more diverse communities.
Douthat hits the nail on the head when he says that "what’s wrong with conservatism has as much to do with old-media forces like talk radio and cable news...". The rise of these media was not due to the development of the internet, it was due to deliberate action by supporters of the Republican Party. Of course this was long before rightist "populism" and Trump rose to prominence. In other words, what's wrong with conservatism is the methods adopted by the Republican party. Its captive media don't try to present a balanced view, they are simply propaganda machines propagating lies. This has been going on for a long time, and it is an integral part of the Republican party.
1
The underlying effect of social media is that it enables the aggregation of like minded people to the exclusion of contrary views. The local norms of opinion then evolve within the group driven as much by enthusiastic participation as by rational debate. Individuals make leave or join the group but new norms survive through inertia built into the established bias.
This differs from before the internet in the access to the original population. Now any outlier will find support within the virtual world whereas in the real world, such folk would be hard pressed to find others to agree. The virtual avoids moderation by reality.
2
I once worked with a guy whose sentences were so long and verbose that people thought him to be highly intelligent. Then someone decided to diagram his sentences. He and Ross could have been brothers!
2
I love Sacha Baron Cohen's satire but maybe in country where satirizing others is what is expected you don't see yourselves in the satire. Sasha is not a kind man he is from a family that renowned in the studies human behaviour.
Ross Douthat starts off with Sacha Cohen talking about theories with limited empirical support.
If Ross would simply look up the Sasha Cohen's in wikipedia he might have realized human behaviour is field in which the Sacha Cohen's are among the world leaders at schools such as Oxford.
Ross is a pretty smart guy but he just doesn't get it.
Entropy is the natural order of the universe and it is that entropy that signifies everything.
1
"internet giants invoke free expression while shirking their responsibility to deny such viciousness a refuge."
First they denied refuge to those they found vicious...
Sorry Ross but as long as twitter's most famous user remains a president who uses the service, solely, to spread lies, conspiracies, racism, division, hate and fear, he will be the only one setting the agenda and the debate regarding social media's worth. One can't say, flatly, that a social media forum, like the comment section, is equally good or bad because of the first two conflicting viewpoints that start a thread. It's the recommends that tell you the unspoken nature of the populist argument. You can post lies here but I guarantee you you won't be popular.
I certainly hope that Ross will be successful in getting the Trump campaign to stop wasting their money on Facebook ads.
1
Social Media's runaway with the license to allow lies and insults, conspiracy theories and frankly fake news (alternate facts 'a la Kellyanne), needs to be harnessed, and soon, to see some measure of societal justice, and peace among us. But, as long as the vulgar bully in the Oval Office is allowed free rein to destroy the truth, and confuse fact with fiction, Social Media shall remain a painful sore in our wellbeing.
1
Sorry, I am not elite enough to comprehend the author's language. I just know that a lot of old folks who adore Trump think everything they read on Facebook is true.
Facebook and social media companies with their microtargeting business models are today’s “enemies of the people” with their nuclear bomb-like misleading ads for money. Putin’s Russia, China, North Korea and other nefarious players have found the cheapest, fastest and more efficient platform to do their dirty work. Facebook’s incitement ads microtargeting left, right, center, ethic focused groups, religious, poor, rich, gender, age, sexual orientation and every combination thereof, have left people dead in the last few weeks across capitals of many nations cross the world.
The criticism shouldn’t be about the echo chamber, but about the deliberate greed and criminal intent of Matt Zuckerberg and the other social:media companies.
I suppose this essay makes sense to some people but I am not among them.
Anyone spending time complaining about social media (by which, of course, is meant the foolish natterings of others, often with different political viewpoints, and never one's own pristine output) needs to take up a hobby, some useful solitary activity like baking or gardening, and leave Facebook and such sites to the rabble for whom they were intended. It is better in any case to allow even the most malignant speech to flourish online since one would prefer to have it all out in the open rather than lurking underground. At least then we'll know what we're up against.
@Frunobulax I'm sure all of those people slaughtered in mass shootings because of someone radicalized by "the foolish natterings of others" would agree with you.
Mr Douthat would like to think that liberals are ensconced in their own information bubble but he has it all wrong and is projecting onto them what the Fox News bubble that has done to the conservatives.
1
As if social media were simply neutral transmitters of random conspiracy theory memes. But what if the intelligence services of hostile powers -- Russia, let's say -- began inventing and planting memes that our social media took up and magnified across our electorate? And what if those false narratives were adopted as gospel by commentators on, say, Fox News, or Republican Congresspersons on powerful committees, like Devin Nunes? What if, in the fever swamps of alt-Right social media, they began to plant, and magnify, anti- immigrant, anti-Semitic, misogynist, racist and above all hate-filled false narratives to divide our populace? Then, of course, we would be where we are right now, wondering how they will attack us next.
1
Let's be clear. Social media did not "cause" Donald Trump to win. There were several underlying causes.
However, in a close election, with a champion smear campaigner in Trump, it might very well have tipped the scales to alter enough minds for the 77,000-vote Trump margin in key states. In addition, an effective campaign was being made that "Crooked Hillary" was a cheater and liar. The weight of evidence was tipped such that a narrative was created that we needed a breath of fresh air with no political baggage, like a Donald Trump.
So even if there were fewer conservatives than liberals on these sites, it doesn't matter: what matters is how many votes were tipped in the favor of one over the other.
Because terms like 'conservative', 'liberal', 'progressive' and 'populist' have no fixed shared commonly accepted meaning it is very hard, if not impossible, to have any rational reasonable debate on this subject.
Beginning with the fundamental problem that there is no science in politics. And political scientists are not natural scientists.
Political ' science' is gender, color aka race, ethnicity, national origin, sectarianism, education, law, journalism, economics and history plus arithmetic. There are too many unknowns and variables to craft the double-blind and/or randomized controlled experimental tests that provide predictable and repeatable results.
Social media is merely another human communications tool that exposes the problem of our science and technology frequently running well ahead of our educational, historical, legal, moral, political and socioeconomic ability to fully and properly weigh individual and societal costs and benefits before it is too late.
It is not too late to reign in these new gilded age robber baron malefactors of great wealth.
Before they become the useful assets and/or idiots of malign domestic or foreign interests and powers who pose an existential threat to our divided limited different power constitutional republic of united states.
2
@Blackmamba
5th paragraph 'rein' I think works better instead of 'reign.'
1
Ross, you are missing the larger point that Sacha Baron Cohen is trying to make. It is not that populism needs social medial to flourish. Indeed, both of you discuss the fact that noxious ideas are nothing new. Cohen's larger point is that social media, like other media before it, acts as an amplifier of ideas, both good and bad. Cohen's question is more focused. Social media giants pretend that they are like the New York Times, trying to give everyone a voice. But even the NYT has editors who pick and choose that which we see, including comments like this. That is the responsible thing to do. There are absolute truths. The Holocaust did occur. Man landed on the moon. Cohen's point is that these giants have abdicated that responsibility claiming to have a view of free speech that relates to government, not private, for profit entities. Free speech does not mandate that the media should transmit every falsehood as an equal to some truth.
Someone has to be the adult in the room because we can all agree, as Justice Holmes said (for different reasons) you can't yell fire in a crowded theater if there's no fire. But all of us have an obligation to speak up to falsehoods.
1
FOX is in too many hen houses yet people are worrying about what the hens are doing online.
1
Ah yes, all the silliness of liberalism. If only the liberals got off their Twitter feeds they'd appreciate, like conservatives, the independent, profound, and principled intellects of a Devin Nunes and a Jim Jordan.
3
"unless liberalism realizes that before it regulates social media for other people, it should learn how to resist the internet itself."
Does the author think "liberalism" is something with eyes and a brain that can recognize things?
Perhaps as a snake would? As if social media is a mouse in the garden that should be recognized by the snake and spit out in favor of something more palatable, like frogs maybe.
2
"what’s wrong with conservatism has as much to do with old-media forces like talk radio and cable news".
Those of my relatives whom I have watched descend into idiocy have done so under the multi-decade influence of Fox News and talk radio, not social media. It started way back when Fox started a business based on carving out the 'less educated' part of the viewer marketplace, and stoking their fears and fantasies to drive their ratings.
2
Ross, you are like the toddler who, on Christmas morning, plays with the box instead of the toy. There is a lot of excitement in your newspaper right now, and your piece on social media seems a little cardboard-like in comparison. Hmm, maybe that's a compliment.
Ross, please view NYT’s own The Weekly episode 9 The Rabbit Hole how Bolsonaro’s rise to power was driven by YouTube. There is more research that comes to different results.
You never fail to make me think. I do not always agree with your position but in this case your position is provoking. I think Fox news is state news and do peruse it on line. It is like a different world from the NYT NPR screens and radio vibes. Thanks as always for being clear
You have some large holes in your thesis which I didn’t see mentioned in those studies either. Trump’s tweeter feed and the fake president who authors them may have escaped your notice; nevertheless, he’s still trades in lies and conspiracy theories every waking moment which he finds online or in his Russia in-box. Others can point out the other myriad of counter arguments.
2
Think of a time where you didn't say something when you were angry and were really glad you didn't. Social media too often takes this filter away.
I'm no longer on FB, but when I was, I edited almost all my comments, and I looked for "edited" on other comments. I'm seldom capable of writing what I want to say without editing. Frankly, neither are most people, not that it stops them from doing it.
50
Since you mention data is important to have to back up one's argument, where is yours for this progressive tendency you assert?
"But we should be more doubtful of Cohen’s larger narrative, which is commonplace among progressives — a narrative that invokes the “sewer” of social media to explain everything from climate ... "
1
Mr Douthat, Your phrase "rightwing decency and commonsense" is in these times an Olympic level oxymoron.
5
Fox News is not social media...but it’s profound impact is evident.
1
Cambridge Analytica gets no mention here? Huge farms of foriegn adversaries in places like Russia and Montenegro, trained in English, pushing right-wing views using fake accounts and VPNs? Only if we cherry pick evidence and omit huge swaths of it do we come to the conclusion Ross has.
2
Mr. Douthat, you manage to out-smug
liberals by a factor of a million.
Why is that? Your goal seems to be something other than what you are actually writing about. To score intellectual points?
No, social media isn’t the only thing that is driving the hate-filled propaganda we see 24/7. We also have FOX News and talk radio, which feed social media hate. We have President Trump, who is our biggest propaganda mouthpiece. He spews false information and hatred, and he fuels other propaganda machines. Trump also spoonfeeds propaganda to his Cabinet and WH, and to his GOP.
Witness how Pompeo has spewed out the same lies and refused to defend his own best diplomats. Witness how Stephen Miller’s history of feeding hate to Breitbart - so that they can disseminate it more widely - has been revealed. Witness how the WH and the GOP are regular guests on FOX.
Yes, we all live in some kind of bubble.
But why does Trump continue to lie and attack any kind of scrutiny?
Why is he the self-appointed Ouija Board in the WH who determines what is true and what is false?
And where does your own interest in the truth stand?
1
Ross, please thank your parents for raising such a polite young man.
I'll be blunt: the left won't be happy until theirs is the only voice, anywhere.
Oh, wait, the left will never be happy. My bad.
It's easy to draw a line backwards through the history of the United States from President Trump now, through the false narrative that President Obama was born in Kenya, through Lindsey Graham's election to succeed Strom Thurmond (a Democrat turned Republican in 1964) and the three Southern States that voted for Goldwater that same year.
Keep going back, through the lynching of thousands of black men in the South for a century by the KKK between 1865 and the establishment of the Civil Rights Act in 1965, through the century of Jim Crow laws that white Southerners used after the end of Reconstruction in 1878 to prevent freed slaves from voting, to the assassination of the first Republican president Lincoln at the hands of a slave state conservative, Boothe, in front of Lincoln's wife after Slave state Conservatives started a brutal Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands when they attacked Ft Sumter.
Don't stop there - Southern whites kept importing slaves illegally until 1860, and slave state conservatives worked, whipped, raped and killed black Americans at a furious pace.
It is not Social Media that has cursed our nation, but the Neo-Confederates of the Southern Slave States for whom the Civil War never ended, who never stopped believing that blacks, Jews, Catholics and anyone who did not share their political agenda thinly disguised as religion was not 'American'.
Slave State Conservatives are traitors to the Constitution, and they despise our country.
3
This is terribly wrong, Ross and ill-informed. Two academic studies on the relationship between "social media" and either liberalism or fascism prove nothing about nothing. I suspect the studies never laid out the particular qualities of the internet that make it a tool of extremism.
I said a tool, not a medium. A medium transmits information; a tool weaponizes it. Consider this. In 2016-18, a few Congressional Republicans were opposed to Donald Trump. The response of the Trumpers was this: We will troll you out of office! Not "run against you," troll against you. To date, around 20 House Republicans and 4 Senate Republicans have announced they're quitting, while only 5 + 1 Democrats.
Just a reminder of the pernicious influence of immersion in Fox News. Several racists I know have their TV tuned to Fox all day, every day, even when they're not home or asleep. There are a lot of open sewers stinking up our democracy.
1
Very america-centeic account. There is pretty good research showing how social media was used in the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Myanmar and the communal violence in India.
Everybody is looking for Street Creds using, oxy, videogames, vaping, weed and today Is FB and Mark Zuckerberg in particular but never the Electoral College oh no that one is sacrosaint and forever oh yes.
1
I’m going to give Mr. Douthat the benefit of the doubt, and guess that he is not aware that Sacha Baron Cohen is anything but the typical celebrity, who might be an activist promoting a cause which they have no informed understanding of.
‘Borat Sagdiyev’ happens to be the first cousin of one Simon Baron-Cohen, a clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge.
Given the broader context, it might just be more accurate to assume that Sacha Baron Cohen has a familiarity with human psychology which might exceed that of the average comedian.
Social Media. Writing, expanded by technology...with pictures. No different than Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Relax Ross. People have opinions different than your’s...and your’s...brought us Trump.
There is my self styled solution. I do not own a "smart" phone. I'm not dumb. I use the internet as a electronic utility. I have not have a Facebook account. I have no idea what TikTok is. I only read the NYT.com as a news source. I write comments here to offer a point of view that may differ from the Op-Ed columnists.
Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.
"Social media" by definition is self-publishing, potentially to audiences of many millions. Self-publishing by definition means you make up the stuff, and if the stuff is non-fiction, you make up reality as well as opinion. All of Trump is showboating and lies, including his TV show and his rallies. Social media gave him the power to re-tweet both statements and clips that are insidious (and odious) fakery. The audience is baked onto his twitter account which rebounds as a "personal message from The President." Its vulgarity suggests that Donald is a personal friend of the follower, an accomplice in private ignorance and hatred. Twitter should have banned this seditious crook-politician 5 years ago.
1
Ross... Set the example, one fact at a time. Write a column in which you present ten political facts, and tell the story behind each fact. Currently, my favorite political fact is, "The go-to coping mechanism for the Republican base is violence." Examples: right-wing murder in Charlottesville, Pittsburgh, El Paso; death threats sent to Ihlan Omar, AOC and Gordon Sondland. I've had enough of poll-driven news and columnists basing their opinions on reports from experts and think tanks. Show us your facts, Ross.
Mr. Cohen’s speech was about accountability to shared truth.
You intentionally conflate polling with data, for a column.
Mr. Cohen doesn’t hide behind a byline counting the heads on the Appian Way.
Mr. Cohen is at the forefront of ethics as art or How To Reveal the Truth by Playing to Your Prejudices!
Empirical! Right. That explains The Virgin Mary!
God (good orderly direction) you are dour.
Good piece. Is Cohen, like many in his bubble, just trying to silence those with whom he disagrees?
Please stop calling it "social media."
It is anti-social.
It is "anti-social media."
There is a sword to cut the Gordian knot of untruth in the US. End public policy that endorses holding faith-based beliefs.
1
The big lie is that economy is going fine. It's not. Middle class is slowly disappearing, struggling to maintain a sub-decent life.
3
@Roland Berger: If your income is elevated by required minimum distributions in the US, they surcharge your medicare premiums by docking your social security, here in the paradise of the mega-rich.
The problem is that the marketing techniques applied by political operatives--initially on the right, but recently from Russia and other state actors--are increasingly sophisticated and effective. They are made more powerful by the interrelated phenomena of social media and big data. In the 1980s and 90s, pioneers like Lee Atwater and Frank Luntz began to apply advanced marketing techniques to "selling" political candidates, using emotions, particularly negative ones, to create strong reactions and focus group testing messages to ensure they had the most powerful effect. The Republican Party, led by Newt Gingrich, realized the importance of establishing a strong brand and enforcing brand discipline across the party. Meanwhile, the 24/7 media channels of talk radio and cable news enabled the party to saturate the market with its always-on-brand message. Social media now allows the marketers to enlist private citizens in their marketing efforts, strengthening the acceptance of their messages through peer endorsement and tribal networks. The ability to collect data online allows the marketers to test their messages, refine them, and target them for maximum effect. We now live in a society where we are being constantly manipulated and remain blissfully unaware that much of what we think we believe has been implanted in our minds by people (or machines) trying to sell us something or get us to do something that benefits the manipulators.
1
The USA is one big fat sham in complete denial of its own rank dishonesty. Nothing is more fake about it than its claims of divine blessing under the most twisted scheme of unequal representation ever invented. The worst rise to the top, the best sink in despair, and the truth is lost in a fog of infantile blather.
10
The 'rise' of authoritarianism, demagoguery and bigotry? Bahaha! They have always been at least half of all human populations. The clear thing to me is that conservative thought is that which holds humans back. From brainwashing to outright fascist ideas. I mean look - calling Democrats Fascist? Hilarious and I have heard that one - it is called brilliant propaganda.
It truly is that lies allowed as free speech and corporations are given rights...that humans will fail.
3
Who are we to believe Ross or our lying eyes?
Donald Trump has fashioned a social media twitter megaphone that is 67 million strong and he uses it with great skill and to great effect. And there are reputable studies that show critical thinking is slipping :
https://www2.mindedge.com/page/critical-thinking-survey-2019
Skilled social media mavens and the drop in critical thinking skills is a toxic combination - left, right, and center
2
@Dazed, Not Confused: The emptier the mind, the longer it wants to live. It is a no-brainer that God can't think at all to be eternal.
Russia saw the value in using social media to pervert the political discourse. White nationalists and neo-Nazis have found online interaction and amplification a fertile avenue to spreading their message. Whatever other places Trump's constant lies and grotesque poor excuses for policies exist, Trump sees the priceless value of an unfiltered platform like Twitter where he can spew his far right, racist, nativist, white nationalist, xenophobic and bigoted garbage unadulterated and unopposed.
There seem to be a lot of malignant forces that find social media an ideal platform to try to spread their message.
Social media messages acting as a seedbed get repeated and amplified in other forms of media.
So I guess it's not such an isolated, "not real" experience after all.
1
Good grief, Ross. Did you actually bothering reading Cohen's speech?
3
Thanks for the photograph. Any assurance those signs were not supplied by right-wing provocateurs? They seem a little too perfectly designed to aggravate right-wing paranoia with old-fashioned red-bating.
1
Ross is taking this criticism of social media all wrong. His co-pundit Rod Dreher thinks that suppression of free speech by YouTube makes progressives love trump.
“Can you believe that? Simply asserting a scientific fact... is enough to get YouTube (owned by Google) to take down your video, and issue a formal warning.”
“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you for one second. I can see what you do, what you say, what you believe in. I see the power you have. I see how much you hate people like us.”
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/progressives-who-make-trump-voters/
Apparently social media just makes everyone mad.
1
Ross sorry maybe I miss your point but social media is mostly being used deviously by forces against modernity, truth, and liberal democracy. And the effects are obvious and profound!
Fact: throngs of "successful" lying propagandists, charlatans, and frankly others off their nut spout unscientific garbage, gas-light, and diss the value of truth and the ways to get to truth on internet media.
The creature in the WH relies on said media to daily effectively spew his perverted messages and fire up insane support.
Entities like Breitbart exploit said media to fan the flames of nationalism, isolationism, etc. quite effectively beyond doubt.
"Main-stream" media uses said media to up their sensationalism quota for ratings or to enforce their own illiberal democratic drives.
We have a whole Grand Old Party publicly and without shame endorsing a conspiracy narrative born out of said media - a narrative their/our real experts deem dangerous and mendacious.
We have essentially the ghost of the KGB (no slouches when it comes to spreading propaganda effectively) employing said media to confuse and distort our notion of liberal democracy.
Yes, causes/effects are not black and white. And I reject knee jerk affronts to free speech however well intended because untended consequences all too possible.
Still TRUTH must somehow shine. What side most mendacious? What side most hooked?
2
Seems pretty forthright -- you can get stupid from many sources and you can get a lot of lazy from a "decent" economy. Climate science should be our focus but instead we spend precious time trying to figure out how to untether ourselves from the millions who will dither and dope their way to re-electing perhaps the most worthless person in a nation of 300 million to lead them.
1
"small communities of depraved people, from pedophiles to anti-Semites, use online platforms in vicious ways"
Not just groups, I can think of a singular somewhat famous person who uses social media viciously every morning
1
Whether people receive the bulk of their information on line or through more traditional means is not the primary issue. It is equivalent to the distinction of someone sending you an email informing you your house is about to blow up, or knocking on your door to tell you the same thing.
I would submit that the primary threat America faces from within is elective stupidity.
1
Spot on.
As long as the writers in the New York Times use the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center as implicitly objective, reliable sources of information, anyone who disagrees with them will be slandered as bigots, antisemites, racists and so forth. In such an atmosphere, it is pointless to seek to articulate even the most moderate of dissents. I don't use Facebook and I have no particular liking for Zuckerberg, but the notion that Zuckerberg should expel every polemicist whom Baron Sacha Cohen considers repulsive is itself repulsive to anyone who appreciates the First Amendment.
Conservatives mansplaining liberalism to liberals is a constant source of amusement.
2
Social media has had profound impacts in other parts of the world, consider the Rohingya crisis in Burma as one example: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebook-genocide.html
why am I not surprised that Douthat doesn't get the intertubes any better than he gets any other aspect of life in the current, or heck, even the past century.
Suppression, rather than activation, of voters was the operative element of Russia's disinformation attack on our 2016 election. That stark fact is not at odds with your quaint "analysis" -- it renders your puerile essay, save possibly for your penultimate sentence (I'm feeling charitable), an extended non-sequitur.
There's something happening and you don't know what it is, do you Mr Douthat?*
*(with apologies -- there is, obviously, no Ballad of a Pudgy Man)
1
People have always been stupid. They were stupid before social media, and they'll be stupid when whatever follows social media captures our pea-brains.
1
None of your cited studies included a malignant narcissist with a $120 million war chest committed to spreading his lies through Facebook.
Like Cohen said, Facebook would have let Hitler run anti-Semitic ads.
3
Re "... it makes political liberalism seem like an airless world filled with hyper-educated ideologues."
I, a modestly educated (BS) old-school center-left person, am in complete agreement with Douthat that the online "left" (it's always amusingly imprecise when "the right" flings that label like angry monkeys hurling feces at a pane of glass in a zoo, given that the United States doesn't really have a traditional, i.e. socialist or social-democratic, left) appears to be far off course with views that do not comport with the majority of liberals, especially more centrist liberals, in the nation.
Thus, candidates enthusiastically float ideas that — whatever their merit or lack thereof — are anathema to the vast majority of Democratic voters, such as flirting with open borders and providing taxpayer-funded social services to undocumented aliens, extreme positions on gender beliefs and language and, of course, the idea of ramming "Medicare for all" down the throats of tens of millions of people who, regardless of whether they are right or wrong about the ultimate consequences, are uneasy about losing their private insurance.
That said, and despite the work cited by Douthat, I highly recommend that people read the new book "Mindf**k: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America" by whistleblower Christopher Wylie. If you don't think that the racially motivated right wing has deviously manipulated social media to influence world politics, you wlll after reading the book.
"Offline" = Fox News
1
I guess I am confused by the double standard we have when it comes to hate speech. If someone or some group writes on a wall “Kill the Jews” or “ shoot all the Blacks” and they get caught they will be arrested and tried for Hate Speech.
Yet Hate speech is ok on Facebook and other media under the pretext of “free speech”. Why doesn’t the same law apply to both instances?
73
@Jean: People can and do prove themselves fools by speaking destructively. Ridicule of such people is free speech. Absent the ridicule, these speakers are dangerous.
4
Well, the person in your first example wouldn’t get arrested for hate speech. They might get arrested for vandalism, but not the content of their speech. Even hateful speech is protected under the First Amendment unless it is an incitement to do immediate violence.
The real legal quagmire you should look into is how social media is protected from liability under the Communications Decency Act and whether that law should be amended to consider Facebook et al as “publishers” because they do in fact curate so much of the content on their platforms, leading to echo chambers and mutually reinforcing extremist postings
17
@Matt Unless you can convince me that every time I post a picture of my lunch on Facebook, it is screened before it actually goes up, I will not agree that Facebook is a publisher.
Facebook is just the supermarket bulletin board writ large. If something offensive is pinned up and the store manager notices it, or it is pointed out to him, it will be removed. Otherwise it stays up, and neither the store owner not the manager is responsible for its existence or any ill effects it may cause. The same is true of Facebook, just on a larger scale.
4
Actually, Mr. Douthat, all of the progressives I know are more concerned with the effects of Fox News, Clear Channel Radio, Sinclair Broadcasting, and think tanks and university departments funded by billionaires like the Kochs, Mercers, Olins, Scaifes, Coors, etc., etc. This decades-long, concerted effort to disseminate lies to a significant portion of the population started us down the path to Trumpism and today's fact-denying GOP. Add in the rise of social media companies and their inability or unwillingness to combat international disinformation campaigns, and you have the perfect storm for authoritarian regimes. Read Hannah Arendt if you haven't already on why creating such a truth-free climate benefits regimes like Putin's and Orban's and Trump's. Concentrated wealth, allowed to use that wealth to influence public policy, has been a disaster for this country and the entire world. It has also been the program of the Republican Party my entire life. And you still support it almost blindly. Shame on them. Shame on you.
4
@AMinNC
So let me get this straight. The Mercatus Center at George Mason University funded by the Koch Brothers has been disseminating lies for decades? You and all the progressives you know need to get out of your giant bubble and open up your minds. It would be easy to point a finger at billionaires named Steyer, Soros, Stryker, and a host of Hollywood moguls who promulgate progressive propaganda. Whatever happened to the battlefield of ideas?
@Art Hudson Yes, they have. They have been funding "scholars" who are expected to disseminate supply side economics and conservative economic theories. Period. They do not get hired unless they promote this ideology. These are not open ideas factories with faculty representing multiple and factual perspectives, that universities are supposed to be, they are ideologically-based information factories funded by people who benefit directly from the policies these "centers" promote. Seems to me that you need to do a little more research on what the Kochs et al expect to get from their money. People like Steyer are using their billions in part to fund initiatives that don't directly benefit themselves at the expense of others (supporting climate change efforts, for eg), and some that directly harm their fortunes (increase taxes on the rich). The right wing billionaires fund projects that are to their benefit, at the expense of all of us. PLEASE, do some reading on this.
I never knew that Sasha Baron Cohen was so smart, and so aware. I loved his address, and though he was absolutely correct in all his claims. I'm a new fan. It's good to hear the truth once in a while.
I’m married to an economist so I well know the “sins” of voicing an opinion without empirical data but based on my business and teaching experience I’d have failed if I couldn’t sometimes simply look at what was in front of me and call out a variety of factors causing or adding to systemic problems. I don’t care if people get their news directly from FB or if FB posts offer back up / fodder for newspapers and radio. Social media has a speed and reach and anonymity never seen before, and this mixed with current “real-world forces” and our collective proclivity to lie for gain makes it important to ask for responsible action on the part of owners (unlikely to happen, as history has taught) and government regulation (required). For me, full stop.
73
@Christy -- Private editing worked fine for centuries, and precluded any need for government censorship. It was the best solution yet found to assure responsible and useful publishing.
Congress, in an epic blunder, made it legally possible to publish without editing anything—by passing Section 230 of the Communcations Decency Act. That stipulated an end to publisher liability for defamation, at least as a practical legal matter. So now everything can be published online with no requirement that anyone read it first.
That is an ongoing national disaster. And it could be reversed in a day, by repealing Section 230.
32
@S.P.: The only thing wrong with this experiment is want of real public search engine going back to its beginning.
2
@Christy: An immune system needs to evolve against any new pathogen.
3
Agreed, social media have less influence than many believe in determining the vote.
Trump and Hillary both had unprecedented high negatives among voters in 2016, regardless of their social media profiles.
Hillary is off-stage now. Trump continues to have unprecedented high negatives. The only remaining question is whether Democrats will continue their usual behavior and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Only a few candidates can possibly lose to Trump in 2020. The D's will, undoubtedly, pick one of them.
46
@ed connor
A heavy Democrat turnout in 2020 can prove you wrong.
Given that “Democrats” look for “perfection”, I am not holding my breath.
1
35 years in media - from tv production, print and online journalism to marketing and commercials - and for the last 10 years, social media. Cohen is spot on when he describes it as the greatest propaganda tool ever. The micro-targeting to audiences is extraordinary and very inexpensive to do so (have done this in both English and French to relevant markets). I'm lucky, all the projects I've used it have been for not-for-profits and very successfully.
However, there is a very sinister side to this level of invasiveness…Big Data isn't your friend.
One point Cohen makes is that other media, even advertising, is much more regulated than social. They've been playing catch up with sponsored posts that have to go through an approval process (that isn't fool-proof). Otherwise, free-range.
138
@Graeme Simpson: Greetings to the only other nation in the world that indulges prescription drug advertising outside of medical journals.
2
Forgive my skepticism over social media's supposed minimal role in propagating right-wing extremism. Twitter became a household name thanks to Donald Trump's reliance it. During the 2016 election, Russian agents of misinformation did not rely on the traditional media for their nefarious goals. It was social media that provided them the means to sow confusion and discord to help Trump.
178
@Nav Pradeepan the argument "It was social media that provided them the means to sow confusion and discord to help Trump." Is getting old, did you not read the part of the essay where Ross provided research showing there is yet to be evidence that social media helped the Trump campaign??? Tired of hearing people make arguments but offering zero evidence.
4
@Dexter Lensing Ross cited a study. He did not provide research. You can't tell whether he cited the study's conclusions, orif he did, whether he cited them correctly.
14
@Nav Pradeepan: Russian penetration is amazing. They have the whole Republican delegation to Congress and Senate speaking their script to rationalize keeping Trump as president.
There are prescribed levels of exchange between governments. Investigation of Hunter Biden for alleged violations of US law is below Trump's pay grade. Getting foreign nations to cook up violations of foreign law by American citizens is verboten.
11
I can actually agree with Ross Douthat here, because of the fact that many of the reactionary populists are not any more on-line than anyone else.
But especially in the US, we can't escape the pernicious effect of five words:
Fox News.
Right wing radio. (The latter served up by other reactionary media conglomerates.)
The left has nothing comparable to these in their ridiculous passing off of propaganda as "news". And the dumbing down of Americans (especially those in less urban areas), who for the most part haven't had civics education in schools or in the media in decades, and so have a tendency to believe anything uttered by an assured loud voice, especially if it's on a studio set, goes a long way towards explaining both our reality deficient populace and our polarization.
238
@Glenn Ribotsky
Fox News. Right wing radio.
It defies logic to me that these things could have taken the hold they have unless they arose in response to prevailing conditions.
They arise in part because there is widespread perception that main stream media outlets, much of the education system and popular culture propagate programs and values that are not widely comfortable for mainstream Americans, such as has been referred to as 'the silent majority'.
As narrower interests at the extremes continue their pressure, power will yield to it. However, Trump's presidential victory might be evidence that things can go too far.
If enough pressure comes down on the powder keg, things could get even nastier. Choosing sides might mean an end to silence; some even opting for the side that seems far better armed.
7
@Glenn Ribotsky
You took the words out of my fingers.
I would add that the internet has disrupted society in both good and nefarious ways. One of the worst is providing an easy means to give conspiracy theories and falsehoods a veneer of validity by making it easy to disguise propaganda as fact-checked journalism.
13
Here's something that would help -- we let political & partisan entities broadcast on social media, but do NOT let them use microtargeting to covertly send different messages to each splinter off their audience. That would reduce the "closed bubble" conspiracy theory phenomenon.
1
Fox News and Conservative talk radio (e.g. Limbaugh, Beck, Ingraham, Levin) are the true culprits in the destruction of America.
They planted the seeds of lies and divisiveness, and tended them until they matured and flowered. Social media was merely the wind that dispersed the new batch of seeds.
However, it must be also said that the Conservative punditocracy (e.g. Douthat, Brooks, and Stephens) helped, by shoveling generous helpings of compost and manure into the garden of lies and divisiveness, fortifying its growth.
12
@Paul-A
I must respectfully disagree wtith your assessment of Levin's show, "Life, Liberty and Levin." Here is an interviewer who allows his guests to speak for long periods, uninterrupted by Levin's need to make it all about him, a quality from which Lou Dobbs, and Tucker Carleson seem to suffer. Levin introduces his guest, asks him a question, and sits back for what is essentially an erudite lecture.
One may disagree with the world view of the guest, and of the host, but I do not agree that Levin is anywhere in the neighborhood, town, city, state or country of being a "true culprit in the destruction of America." Quite the contrary.
For that reason, I think we would all be better off debating individual points raised on shows we don't like, rather than attempting to discard all of them out of hand as "divisive." Anyone who disagrees with our narrative can be dismissed as "divisive," but America is founded on the principle of free speech--give and take, speech and counter-speech.
@Paul-A: Charlatan broadcasters collect credulous viewers for charlatan advertisers.
@Paul-A Exactly so. Follow the money. One can almost hear Murdock laughing at the willing deplorables as they march in lock step with the GOP and trump.
I would argue that it is not just those who post who tend to control the dialogue, but it is also those who offer subjects to post on, as well as who control which subjects, articles, and op-eds may not be commented upon-- as has become more and more common among news outlets.
@Oxford96: This place would be it, with a real search engine.
I can't believe I agree with a Douthat column,but I mostly do. However, I am very liberal and I have never and will never be on any social media like Twitter, Facebook, etc. I read news from the most journalistically responsible sources I can find online, directly from their websites.
Also, I find it ironic that as part of the curriculum at the university where I teach we have stipulations about "responsible speech" and then we send them out into Trump-world, where apparently there are no boundaries that can't be broken. Our children are often more responsible than we are.
7
@LS
How is this --commenting here--different from "social media"?
@LS: Adult supervision vanishes after graduation in the US. Most arrive naive, for want of knowledge of science and history.
@Oxford96 Yes, you may be right. The difference for me is that I trust the NYTimes to have journalistic integrity, that the information I get here is as truthful as they can discover. I don't know if that's the case on other kinds of platforms; it seems not.
I think the truth can be manipulated and distorted and it seems logical to conclude that the more media outlets we have the more difficult it becomes for people to discern the truth.
The real challenge is when the truth is irrefutable and live on television (I.e., impeachment hearings, tweet smearing and devastating weather events) and people still ignore or spin the truth for their own profit.
In American politics at least, the solution is to take the money out of politics. Good luck with that.
3
@Gary
The impeachment hearings are not showing us the "truth" any more than any news outlet or even letters editor does. The "truth" which you are intended to see and hear is a curated "truth," and these hearings are a perfect example of that. Only one side controls everything; the witnesses who may be called being the most egregious quality. We are being exposed to a part of the "truth" and there is a very good reason apparent from that, that in a real trial witnesses are asked to swear that they will tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and "NOTHING BUT the truth. When a witness is not called at all, it is clear we are not getting the whole truth, even though we may be left with the false imperssion that we are.
@Gary: Truth is fractal. It repeats in a pattern one learns to read.
@Oxford96 All truth is “curated,” as you call it. I would call it “edited.” The chief problem with so-called social media is that it lacks editors, as distinct from this first-rate newspaper, which has them. In short, the “truth” requires human beings exercising judgment—having “witnesses” is not what truth hinges on.
Your own theory of “truth” is in fact quite religious, thoroughly Protestant, meaning that direct contact with the almighty “Truth” is somehow possible. In a democracy we keep religion and government apart, as much as possible. That does not mean that truth is impossible.
2
I think you're focusing too narrowly on the term "social media." We should perhaps more accurately emphasize the relationship of right-wing populism to an individual's "social network."
Finding Trump supporters more offline than online is hardly surprising. However, this misunderstands the relationship. Just because an individual is offline doesn't separate them from the influence of what is happening online. Fox News echos and exaggerates right-wing disinformation from the online world into the offline media networks. Fox News viewers then parrot these talking points to people who may not consume any "news" at all.
You don't actually need to interact with social media to find yourself influenced. There's a trickle down effect to right-wing propaganda with no true equivalent on the left. Rachel Maddow is perhaps the closest thing in news media. We might more accurately comedy news media as the great influencers on the left. Stephen Colbert as just one example.
However, you miss the dynamic entirely. The left is more accurately described as a "ground swell." A great surging mass of online opinion and emotion swinging this way and that. Right-wing populism is a highly targeted top-down communications campaign designed to empower minority interests in the United States. Traditionally moneyed interests but now foreign interests as well.
As Bret Stephens noted, it's the type of thing you'd see Russia doing in Ukraine. Only now its happening in the US.
16
@Andy: Many Trump supporters believe that relations between nations require conduct that they would not and do not tolerate in their own private lives.
2
@Steve Bolger
And you think this is a bad thing???
Most of the Populist may not be online but their dystopia and "fictional narratives" are forged online and, like a wholesale distributor, pushed out to retail.
4
@GTR
What gives you so much confidence that their narrative is fictional and yours is not, except your own narrative?
@Oxford96
Devan Nunes, Fox News and the like on one side. Fiona Hill, Bill Krystol, George Will and the like on the other.
1
In a classic "I know what I am, but what are you argument", Mr. Douthat attempts to malign liberals by saying we live in a more encompassing political vacuum than conservatives. Social media was envisioned to be the marketplace of ideas, where people could discuss their differences, share facts, and hopefully reach common solutions. That dream has become a nightmare. Groups with specific agendas have come to dominate social media with the intent on driving support through whatever means necessary. Political groups have seized upon this. And no group has done this more effectively than Donald Trump and the conservatives who back him.
Our "tweeter in chief" was elected in part through the use of organizations such as Cambridge Analytica, which targeted specific groups to spread disinformation and lies. Conservatives stood idle when Russians peddled conspiracy theories designed to tip the election to Trump. Since he has assumed office, Trump has lied to the public constantly through the use of social media. His intended target, his "base", lap up every word of his nonsense.
So when Mr. Douthat says liberals use social media more than conservatives, that's probably true. After all, I've taken the time to write a response to this column. Mr. Douthat's true believers just read the column, nod their heads in agreement, and move on.
9
@Alfred Jingle: I am at a loss to understand why you think Mr. Douthat has true believers. (No disrespect, Mr. Douthat.) Or, if he does, why they would not their heads and move on. Where did you form your beliefs about that?
@Stan Sutton
I don't know Stan. I think a guy like Douthat must have somebody who believes him. After all, his opinions reach millions of readers. Ours, not so much.
But I think you have one thing right. His readers "not" their heads in agreement. Except you spelled it wrong. They "knot" their heads in agreement, as in banging their heads on the table after reading his column.
1
@Alfred Jingle: Thanks for fixing my spelling. My fingers may not be quite as smart as they think they are.
The "social media will kill the republic" meme is all about Facebook. Many people, myself included, are now desperate to find a way to prevent Brad Parscale from flooding it will false and defamatory "news." Because it is estimated by many, including all of our intelligence services, that the venom it spews is destructive and helped get us tRump.
Fox News - the propaganda arm of the new tRumpist GOP - is arguably the bigger problem. There is no mechanism for countering that. Except maybe raiiing about it on Twitter.
12
@kgeographer Or maybe get Bloomberg to put his money into buying Fox!
@kgeographer So would you recommend censorship of non-progressive news sources? Afterall, Brad Parscale is Trump's campaign manager for the 2020 election. Is he supposed to tout Elizabeth Warren and Medicare for All? Do you believe that CNN, whose boss has been demonstrated to have set impeachment as his chief goal in political coverage, is incapable of Fake News? With regard to Fox, several of its anchors and contributors, including Chris Wallace (Fox News Sunday), Neil Cavuto and Bret Baier are frequently critical of Trump. It seems you'd prefer your own new echo chamber.
1
I just finished watching a week of impeachment hearings that put on sublime and awful display the deplorable dishonesty of contemporary conservatism and it’s threat to our national security, and Mr. Douthat’s news judgment tells him that what’s important for us to discuss this week is the relatively academic claim that social media is to blame. I’m still reeling from watching the GOP’s mendacious defense of a criminal president, what the capture of that party means for the future of our democracy, and how we can possibly save ourselves.
55
All great data here, but by the end it hit me: talk radio is the original social media, and has been a disrupting force for three decades now. That and the three (or more?) 24/7 cable news channels competing for viewers. It's not that we have too much information, it's that we have too little discussion -- radio and television are one-way entertainment delivery systems.
9
I think this misses the point. All that social media shows us, especially Facebook, is how easy it is for anyone to hide while smearing the rest of the world. Anybody can and does say anything on social media because they can hide behind fake personas. This is not the way it was intended. Social media was based on the social networking construct that each of us is no more than 6 degrees of separation from any other person on the planet. But that supposes that we’re all honest about who we are. Anytime Russian security forces can masquerade as individual Americans with a real complaint you are going to fail the fundamentals of social networking. The answer is to force the vendors to strip away anonymity on their services. It’s not hard but it requires changing the business models of these companies and that is.
10
If this is not a "how many angles can sit on the head of a pin?" then I don't know what is.
This discussion below does help in one way. One commenter notes the difference between social media and online news sources. Not the same thing. Nice to make it clearer in our thinking. Sometimes the obvious needs to be pointed out. Kudos
1
Good column, skewering the latest pronouncement from those who keep wondering why their ideas and proposed policies are so unpopular. The real question is why old-fashioned liberals apparently decided, in the last few years, to rename themselves progressives and to abandon their liberal principles and join the far left. Opposition to Trump doesn't justify such extreme behavior: opposing him shouldn't make you a socialist.
1
@Ulysses What makes you think old fashion liberals have abandoned their principles and went to the far left? I keep hearing that charge being made on Fox but it simply isn’t true. You’ll see when our candidate is finally selected.
10
@Ulysses Disagree. "Opposition to Trump" definitely justifies extreme behavior. Trump evokes it as a rational response to his own extreme threat to the ountry AND the world. If only more of us were "socialists". you use the term in a dispraging manner (parroting your cult leaders) because you have no understanding of the meaning of the word, nor any genuine sense of unity with the actual "American People" we are all in this together no matter ho uncomfortable that fact makes you (a condition for which there is also a name: "sociopath")
@Robert Kramer I'm with you Mr. Kramer. It is no more valid to say that pure socialism is the way, where the state does everything, than it is to say pure capitalism is the way and that business should do everything, including charging me to use the sidewalk to walk to work. 'Us' vs. 'Them' is killing us. How about 'We' get together and sort things out.
1
Given that the users of social media skew young and Republican voters skew old, I'd expect people who get their news online to be less likely to support Trump than those who get it offline. I'd also expect Sinatra fans to be more likely to vote for Trump than Lady Gaga fans, but I don't think anyone would claim that that says much about the influence music has on political choices.
2
@SAO
A lot of older people use Facebook to keep up with family, and then Facebook shows them 'news" from anonymous unvetted sources. Worse, everyone on Facebook, young and old, is microtargeted for appealing propaganda messages. Propaganda and advertising WORK -- that's why they're multi-billion -dollar businesses.
67
@SAO My experience has been that older users of social media and the internet are more trusting (read: gullible), having grown up in an era when there was one agreed-upon truth in important issues. When you read it or heard it, you took it to the bank. How often did I have to correct my (smarter than I am) father when he would forward long debunked memes that outraged him by linking him to the truth. He was sheepish and apologetic, but then it would happen again. The sheer volume of lies is part of the issue for those in silos - read or hear about a lie often enough and it becomes your truth. Factor in that media are money-making organizations and headlines (true or not) make money and retractions, buried on page 6, don't.
@SAO Right, but conflation of cause and corelation is Doubthat's primary writing technique, in service to his far-Right theocratic ideology.
On the downside, media creditability and the likes of Walter Cronkite are gone forever. On the other hand, Trump's style, the outrageous lies, have had unintended consequences. People are looking harder for the truth. In the future, facts that matter will require credible sources and evidence. Hot air is loosing altitude.
3
Hold on, a lot to unpack here. Let’s start not with social media, but the advent of the internet itself. Polarization in this country began to ramp up when folks could go online and find reinforcement for any crazy theory they had. Social media has only exacerbated this phenomenon by pushing said incendiary content directly to you, no need to proactively search anymore.
In my mind, this explains the severe polarization, but not the rise of right wing populism. Here is where Ross gets it wrong and naturally so, because it would require a deep soul search into his own ideological origin story... the populist narrative has been the GOP strategy for at least a generation. Roughly the same amount of time Ross has been politically conscious. Conservative ideology has been decreasingly popular over the same generation. Smart people on Ross’ side are very cognizant of this and have pushed a populist, anti-“elitist”, anti-intellectual, anti-science, anti-immigration, socially regressive agenda in an effort to retain an unnatural coalition of corporate and big money, religious fundamentalist, and white suprematists. The key is getting the latter two camps to vote against their economic interests, hence the need for the propaganda and conspiracy theories of right wing populism.
So it’s not social media, it’s the GOP strategy. Ross needs to look in the mirror and acknowledge he had no problem with this until the main beneficiary of that strategy was too ridiculous to defend.
27
@Ben I blame Rush Limbaugh's initial poisoning of the raio airwaves in the erly 80's and Reagan's ending of the Fairness Doctrine for media (How did Republicans get away witH isawvowing fairness? (The irony is that now they pretend to want fairness' and invoke it as a weapon against any form of opposition to their cult leader.)
1
'And if those voters are the battlefield, than any Democratic strategy will be insufficient unless liberalism realizes that before it regulates social media for other people, it should learn how to resist the internet itself."
Mr. Douthat's closing sentence can be more easily parsed by changing "than any" to "then any" and inserting a comma following the word "insufficient":
And if those voters are the battlefield, then any Democratic strategy will be insufficient, unless liberalism realizes that before it regulates social media for other people, it should learn how to resist the internet itself.
Makes much better sense this way, no?
1
The problem is the algorithms that social media use which after a short time creates a self-full-filling feedback loop reinforcing your own closed world view. You think it's you and your like who are right against them who are wrong. This can be easily manipulated by the powers who want to create discourse from within and from without.
6
Social media and populism in the U.S.?
It appears to me the U.S. is in a struggle to enshrine into law either a left wing course of action or a right regardless of Constitution/current law, and much of the methodology of transcending current law/Constitution consists of garnering as much public support as possible, likes and dislikes, therefore both political parties are in a struggle to control all means of communication to their interests.
And a lot of this problem has emerged from the situation of globalization and the left imagining a transcendence of national interests and something of a European Union situation worldwide, while in actuality it appears right wings everywhere for all their differences are locking themselves and each other into place into something of a right wing and worldwide "confederation" against the "federalism" of the left.
The Trump Presidency will probably in 20 years be considered the first clear battleground of this problem. For the past 4 years you have had the left going beyond law (although of course seeking as much as possible to connect itself to law) to associate Trump with Russia because it knows the grave danger of all these right wing movements developing across the world, while the right in turn tosses aside law because it prefers the U.S. decisively similar to right wing places elsewhere than the alternative.
It really is an extraordinarily tangled and difficult to describe situation. Expect much ink spent in grappling with it.
2
@Daniel12: The US Constitution was incubated with liberty to enslave, which is why it has failed.
While Douthat is probably correct in saying that old-media forces like talk radio and cable news dominate what passes for conservatism today, he neglects the effect of what the Russians and Cambridge Analytica (CA probably swung the Brexit vote with its nefarious activities) have done on the internet with their concentrated efforts at the margins. Christopher Wylie, the former research director at what later became CA, has testified in Senate hearings and appeared on PBS' Fresh Air (Tuesday, October 8th), where he described in great and frightening detail exactly how CA accomplishes its aims.
12
@MS: Many people who call themselves "conservative" in the US don't even know that they are really revanchists pining for a lost utopia that never was.
I've never participated in social media beyond texting those friends and family whose phone numbers I know in order to be able to text and call. I get my news mainly from the local TV network affiliates and online newspapers, mainly the NY Times and the Washington Post.
Any other source that is not mainstream will not inform me because I don't go there.
7
If your local TV network is owned by Sinclair, I'd take it with a grain of salt.
5
@tom boyd
Nobody asked.
I think Mr. Douthat is on absolutely right in that social media acts as a radicalizing force to those who use it, both right and left. The middle ground in public discourse doesn't flourish on a platform that rewards strong statements. That's why you rarely encounter strong pro-Biden Tweets. He represents a sensible middle (or middle-left), a viewpoint that doesn't get you much in terms of retweets and new followers. But he's still leading in many polls at this (ridiculously) early stage in the process and could possibly win the election, even without ardent Twitter champions.
4
@Brian The reason you don't see pro-Biden Tweets is the same reason he can't raise money from everyday citizens. and has to go to big donors. His support is broad, but not deep. He is still a place holder until the general public, who really isn't yet paying attention, gets to know the other candidates. People still name him when they want to get the annoying pollster off the phone and get back to dinner.
4
@Brian The so-cllae Middle is not sacred when we are faced with Russian propaganda coming from the potus an his entire cult of a Party.
@Brian: The absence of a real search engine sure trivializes this place.
Social media cannot account for the impact that Fox News has in terms of being the personal protection agency of Donald Trump. The propaganda that the impeachment is all about "likability," is their latest narrative to blind the public from the real "l" word, Trump's lawlessness. Facebook is a major liability in terms of foreign interference in our elections, as it was in 2016. But in terms of the public, social media in no way compares to the constant think-tank propaganda of Fox News, as we are currently witnessing during this impeachment process.
28
@1blueheron
So true.
Its so much more than an echo chamber. Its more like a brain washing machine. That is the impression I get when I try to talk to friends and relatives who are fans.
For those who missed it Tobin Smith provided an excellent piece in NYT on how Fox News develops daily propaganda. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/opinion/vindman-fox-news-.html
2
Not sure that Mr. Douthat's analysis is any better than Mr. Cohen's. If social media couldn't be easily "weaponized," Putin and his cohorts wouldn't be trudging all over it. There is a problem across all media (TV, radio, print, online) in which propaganda sprinkled with out-of-context facts is passed off as news. While this is not a new phenomenon, Father Coughlin's radio broadcast and newsletter of the 1930s is an example (shut down by the U.S. government in 1940 and 1942), mass-media during the 1950s and 60s had a very homogenized quality. During this same time-period the differences between Democrats and Republicans were often nominal and few people seemed consumed by these differences.
14
@Lar: People have no idea how Facebook data is used. Even magicians use it to simulate mind-reading.
“Donald Trump owes his (relative) resilience to the inertia of medium-information voters enjoying a decent economy, not to YouTube radicalism.” Ironically, the statistics show that the very senior voters, probably 70 and older, were a mainstay of Trump votes for the reasons Douthat describes. However, he ignores the fact that, almost four years later, lots of those very senior voters are looking at the grass growing from the roots and the current less senior voters are more internet savvy. Are they in a liberal bubble or conservative bubble, I don’t know. Trump uses advertising soaked in lies on social media to influence voters and lots of seniors use Facebook.
5
Social media resembles another version of Henry Ford's assembly line production factories. Through automation, information is now produced, packaged, and distributed in units that are relatively inexpensive to make and practically anyone can afford to receive them.
One of the best innovations brought into my personal space and my family household is 'Caller ID' (Yes, we still have a landline in addition to our iPhones.) If the phone rings and we glance at the ID screen and don't recognize the source, we ignore the call. This has saved countless hours of our personal time that could have been wasted with marketers of one type or another. Maybe all political ads and political narratives on Facebook and elsewhere need to come with an ID tag. If we don't recognize the source of the info-product, we can choose to ignore it.
14
@Dan: All the junk telephone calls further isolate real people from each other. The US is a playground for the worst of the worst.
1
Mr. Douthat reveals the foreign body polluting his conservative punch bowl with the assertion that Trump’s resilience rests on the “inertia of medium-information voters enjoying a decent economy, not to Youtube radicalism.”
Remember, it was Obama who presided over the recovery from the global financial crash of 2007, 2008 and it was Obama who cut unemployment from over 10% to bellow 5% by the time he left office. Market lore claims, ’the trend is your friend,’ and if economic factors were the key issue for Douthat’s inert voters, they would have voted more convincingly for a Democrat to continue Obama’s policies.
I think farmers, manufacturing workers and bankers, might not feel secure in Trump’s economy right now, yet still support Trump’s validation of their identity as ‘real’ Americans, especially those ‘real,’ white Americans.
20
@Stephen Greene: Trump is charging $1 trillion per year to the credit cards of his suckers.
2
@Steve Bolger You're correct, Steve. Even those of us who would choose not to hand over our cash have no choice in the matter...
Douthat's echo chamber is at work in this column. He posits, based on the Cohen speech, a "liberalism" without really defining it. Then projects onto it a set of assumptions. I've read few analyses of Populism which declare the internet to be the sole reason for its rise. Moreover the rationale for regulating social media is based on much more than simply political malfeasance. He is creeping up to the Right Wing Libertarian argument that any and all regulation is an attack on freedom. It's the NRA 2nd amendment crowd's rationale for the arms industry equipping Americans to undertake regular mass shootings and daily murders. There are sensible ways to regulate social media without inflicting massive regulatory abuse for the betterment of all. Just as there are sensible ways to regulate firearms.
41
Question for Ross: How many of Trump's twitter followers only started using that social media tool after Trump got elected (I bet half), and how many of those followers only follow Trump in their twitter feed? Check the stats on regular FOX viewers who only get their "news" from that single source.
It's all about limiting the information, controlling the message.
25
Very interesting. Social media created by Progressives, managed by Progressives and taken very seriously by Progressives is shielding and distorting their view of political Reality.
Thus we have Democrat presidential candidates proposing agendas the majority of the country will most likely reject and candidates with personalities even more clinical than Donald Trump.
So it turns out Ross is right, "Social media is bad for everything and everybody, for human beings and journalists and other living things." Especially Progressives. That's not very progressive.
9
@Michael Dowd: It is amazing that the American public bawls about rapacious corporations even as they subject the singular corporation (the biggest one in the world) they all own one voting share each in to the worst management that can be sieved through a psychopathologically unfair political process.
1
We simply mustn't harm the social media giants, theis leaders are ALL kneeling at the altar of progressive Democrat politics, even Mr. Property Walls himself, Steve Zuckerberg, Hawaiian Island owner.
But there are not many of the political right on Twitter, and those of the Right on Facebook aren't political at all but moms and grandmothers for the most part.
But thanks are due CNN and CNN-style political people running the coastal media world for getting those moms and grandmoms to realize how important voting will be in the future - to turn back the hyper-politicization of our culture.
2
@L osservatore
Have you been on youtube in the past 10 years? You can't go one video without getting a political right wing rant video in the recommended feed.
Ross says Trump's teflon comes from "the inertia of medium-information voters enjoying a decent economy." But is the economy so decent when 95 percent of the income gains during the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis have flowed to the top 1 percent of earners (see Emmanuel Saez research)? Do those getting by on part time work, or those holding down two jobs, or those on minimum wage delude themselves into celebrating this economy? Or are we talking about small business owners who can perhaps celebrate that their labor costs are depressed by the desperation of their employees in a market with few really good jobs.
37
@cowboyabq
Right On! The economic statistics only look good if you are well-off. Mr. Douthat must have a nice 401k and an investment portfolio.
ObamaCare was a start, but flaws in it force me to work 3 part-time jobs because my employers won't give me a full-time position because they would have to provide me with health care. If Republicans want me to take them seriously, they could have addressed this problem and the myriad of other day-to-day problems facing the 99%. Instead they just keep throwing money at the 1% and half-heartedly trying to kill ObamaCare. They think that their own personal gravy train is somehow beneficial for those of us without a ticket.
7
Douthat misrepresents Cohen’s argument to critique it.
Cohens argument was that fringe extremism now has an unprecedented distribution channel which is influencing mainstream narratives.
Douthat distorts that to focus on populism and then cites studies on social media and populism to counter Cohen.
129
@Alix Hoquet - -Those extremists can't change elections, even if they all moved to one Congressional district. The news media find a way every day to make them look a hundred times what they really are, and look silly doing it.
The goons of Antifa are a tiny number too, but they actually have some city governments supporting them.
@Alix Hoquet This comment should be a NYTimes pick. It captures the essence of both Cohen's argument and Douthat's distortion of said argument. This is how propagandists like Douthat work: they stay close to the facts in order to misinterpret them.
13
@Alix Hoquet Every time I read a Douthat column and ponder his conclusion to whatever facts he relates, my brain wanders to that note I read about how to pronounce his surname. Doubt it.
6
The world wants confirmation bias.
The truth is usually an inconvenience.
25
Hands up and surrender, Ross. You don't know what you are talking about.
And, Borat doesn't know either, and all the people you quote and whose names you drop to make you feel more important and prestigious.
Let's all face it: we collectively have no idea what is going on.
One thing only is certain: the modes of communication determines the modes of reality.
From oral history societies to AI Wall Street computers, communication is shaping us individually and collectively.
We have no control over it, the way we didn't have control over the introduction of writing, or the introduction of the movable characters.
It's not technology per se that changes the world, but the evolution of the modes of communications, that have always been outside the control of humans.
So, Ross, just focus on writing banal ideas that still get you a paycheck, and make sure you set aside some savings, because your mode of communication is not going to last very long.
16
@College Prof
This is part of the problem. The ability to easily insult and denigrate people online, with a few keystrokes. You write:
"...and all the people you quote and whose names you drop to make you feel more important and prestigious."
"So, Ross, just focus on writing banal ideas ..."
You may not agree with Mr. Douthat. But why be mean? Why?
3
@College Prof
Ironic that College Prof writes this on an electronic comment page... and probably read Mr. Douthat on the website.
1
@Rosebud I fail to see the irony. My mode of existence has been dramatically changed by the now modes of communication. Do you see any irony in your use of the same modes?
Hands up and surrender, Ross. You don't know what you are talking about.
And, Borat doesn't know either, and all the people you quote and whose names you drop to make you feel more important and prestigious.
Let's all face it: we collectively have no idea what is going on.
One thing only is certain: the modes of communication determines the modes of reality.
From oral history societies to AI Wall Street computers, communication is shaping us individually and collectively.
We have no control over it, the way we didn't have control over the introduction of writing, or the introduction of the movable characters.
It's not technology per se that changes the world, but the evolution of the modes of communications, that have always been outside the control of humans.
So, Ross, just focus on writing banal ideas that still get you a paycheck, and make sure you set aside some savings, because your mode of communication is not going to last very long.
2
Populism is a term that gets thrown around a lot.
Trump and Sanders are both referred to as populists, by writers in this paper.
If a writer is going to use the word, they ought to define it up front.
19
@Raz Populist. N. "a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups." Seems to fit the bill in both cases to me.
1
When you broaden the view to the world, then the impact becomes clear: the Internet is impactful. Why do Iran and North Korea limit access? Why does China have surveillance of social media? The plain truth is that the spread of truthful (and fake) information can motivate populations to challenge authority. How to measure the impacts remains to be seen.
10
I read Douthat's column and I listened to Cohen's speech. There's no comparison. Here's a quote from the speech: "Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march."
Here's another quote. "All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history."
48
So basically the election of Trump was skewed by age of the voter?
It is important that progressives post and promote Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the defining line between them and us.
The one thing Putin, Trump, Farage etc are against is this document - probably the best piece of document in human existence.
It may not be perfect but opposition to it it would be equivalent to those who despise the Magna Carta back in the day.
8
I agree that the supporters on the right are far more influenced by Faux News and right wing radio than social media. While Trump may have 60 million twits following him, if his tweets weren't picked up and reported by the normal media vehicles, would anyone really care?
No, the impact of tv - especially Faux News - and radio, is far greater to the Trump and Republican base. And the finger of blame can be pointed at the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 - this began the rise of right wing propaganda being generated without any checks or boundaries. We're approaching - if we're not already there - the point of another Civil War unless the source of this divisiveness is reined in. We need to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, but update it to include all forms of information distribution. Of course there should be allowances made for free and uncensored expression, but this has to be subordinate to the greater good.
When the Founders spoke of "free speech", they lived in a time when that meant standing on a soapbox on a street corner and addressing a crowd of a few dozen or so. Printed information was limited and slow. Now, with the ability to reach millions in an instant, ideas and opinions can spread at the speed of light, regardless if they're true or false. I believe censorship is a slippery slope, and do not suggest it lightly, but you can't yell fire in a crowded theater, nor should you be able to spread rhetorical fire without consequences.
16
@Kingfish52 -- Problem is, what consequences? Government censorship is far too dangerous. The right solution was found centuries ago, and long used successfully. It was private editing supported by a government mandate against publishing defamation. That assured that nothing would get published without someone with skin in the game reading it first. It worked. Go back to that.
What changed was a disastrous legal blunder by Congress. It passed something called Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That green-lighted publishing of unread contributions by online publishers, by suspending their defamation liability. It was a crazy thing to do, but only traditional publishers themselves were in a position to understand that. Now everyone can see. Repeal Section 230. Everything will settle down.
6
@S.P.
You really think repealing a single act made before the internet will fix everything? Companies need to be forced to crack down on hate speech and have clear terms of service the prohibit propaganda.
Best comment. Thank you Kingfish.
Ultimately, we all have to decide what we want from information sources and who we trust. People who get all of their news from Fox, for example, don't have a gun held to their heads. They are part of a feedback loop in which Fox tells them what they want to hear and they reinforce Fox by watching and generating revenue. Anyone who wants their preconceptions and prejudices affirmed is going to find a source that meets their perceived needs, whether it's cable TV or social media or even print.
In some ways social media gets a bad rap. I find Twitter an excellent source of information or pointers to information because I'm very selective about whom I follow. Since I'm very concerned about the climate crisis, I follow people like Michael Mann and Katharine Hayhoe, not Franklin Graham. I operate on the assumption that if I want scientific information I'll look to scientists, not people who claim they're speaking for God.
At a time when editing software is making it ever easier to generate videos that show people doing and saying things they never said or did, we need trustworthy sources that have the expertise and resources to help us sort trash from fact. I've got limited confidence in social media companies to fill that role.
I'm not saying that there's nothing we can do legally or technically to clean up the information channels. But in the end we're all going to have to take responsibility for picking the sources we trust, just like we always have.
7
@writeon1
I am glad you can find good stuff on Twitter. Personally, I treat anyone who has time for Twitter as suspect. I barely have time to write a comment or two on the weekends, let alone follow someone on Twitter... let alone write stuff on Twitter.
How on earth can a POTUS have time to Tweet? Or play golf for that matter. I can't imagine how a POTUS can get even 3 hours of sleep per night. And yet our current POTUS Tweets all the time, watches TV all the time, plays the longest, slowest game ever invented (golf), and can hold pep rallies all over the US.
Perhaps it a good thing he isn't actually presidenting. When he does, it looks like Ukraine.
139
@writeon1 -- Nonsense. The question online is what limits falsehood. Doing that requires article-by-article review, prior to publication, by someone sophisticated enough to research and confirm truth—a process which requires time and resources.
No news consumer, however critical or sophisticated they suppose they are, has the ability to do that. The nation cannot be protected from purposeful deception in publishing by any means except private editing, applied prior to publication. That is the method which worked for centuries, and it is the method to which the nation must now return.
1
@S.P. Which is exactly my point. I can't analyze every article I read and I don't have the resources to detect sophisticated deep fake videos etc. So I have to pick sources that will do it for me.
I've decided to put my confidence in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Guardian over Fox News, Red State, and Infowars. Facebook et al. could do a crude but useful screening, but I like to pick my own gatekeepers. And I'm pretty sure that if Facebook does the screening – and it may be unavoidable – there are going to be plenty of people with legitimate complaints about the results.
It pains me to say this, but I totally agree with Mr. Douthat. And to risk sounding like a crazy right-winger, while there is little doubt there was Russian "interference" in our elections, I've seen no evidence that its effect was significant. The greatest country in the world doesn't need Russian help to make truly horrible decisions.
In any case, my takeaway is that all us Democrats/progressives need to get out there and talk to our fellow citizens or at least support those who do in a meaningful way. Canvass, get involved in your school board, city council, county council, write and meet your representatives and so on and so forth. Media schmedia, there's still no substitute for talking to someone face to face.
7
@Alex Kodat
On the other hand, if you've seen no evidence, that could be a sign of its effectiveness, that's the goal, right?
3
Everyone seemed to believe that Hillary rigged the primaries. They also obediently pretended to care about poor what's-their-faces who were killed in Benghazi so they had an excuse to NOT vote for a qualified candidate - apparently any lame excuse will do.
I'd say it was pretty effective.
When I read terms like “political hobbyism” I wonder where does that ready for copyright insult come from. Think about it; it won’t take long. Running interference for the big corporate interests as Ross often does, it not surprising that this “the Internet has no influence” claim surfaces here.
I remember when the tobacco companies said that advertising doesn’t work at the same time they were spending hundreds of millions on it. The internet and social media, websites, Facebook pages and the like work! People argue differently because they would like to avoid having to take responsibility for their actions and the billions they make.
Newspapers and other media outlets have had no problem refusing anti corporate Advertising (and programming) for years. Where was Ross then?
63
I’m surprised that Mr. Douthat didn’t point out the central flaw in progressive arguments for governmental regulation of social media: They are arguing that the TRUMP ADMINISTRATION should be given the power to control what they can say on-line. This is unintentional irony at its highest.
3
@Scott -- My progressive argument is no government regulation of speech. Just return to private editing, prior to publication, and re-impose long-practiced-but-foolishly-abandoned liability for defamation.
In short, use the method which worked for centuries. Congress, panicked by the internet, blew it up by passing a law suspending practical defamation liability for online publishers. Now put it back as it was. Pretty simple, actually. And no government censorship required.
4
It is odd that Ross Douthat is so fond of telling people what they ought to do but is very choosy about other people's right to do so.
While Sacha Baron Cohen's acting is over the top, and sometimes execrable, he is speaking in the first person here, and using his intelligence to point out a problem that is making us all less free in the name of so-called freedom.
Lies should never be able to overwhelm the truth.
This is a problem, and we are in danger.
If we don't fix it, the planet will, by making itself less hospitable to humanity. It has already begun the physical process of reacting to our many insults. Our greed and exploitation of a finite planet cannot go on indefinitely.
60
"Spend all your time on Twitter and Facebook and it seems that Twitter and Facebook must be essential to the far right’s appeal,"
I spend zero time on twitter and very little time on Facebook.
I very rarely see anything about politics when I'm on Facebook and I sometimes wonder who these people are that are getting their news from Facebook and Twitter?
If I had to guess I would say most of my friends and acquaintances get their news from two sources. Online news sites including The NYTimes and Washington Post and television news channels like CNN and Fox news and MSNBC. Many of them tell me about things they saw on news sites or what they saw on TV. Never has anyone told me they saw a political story on Facebook or Twitter.
From observation of my friends and acquaintances Fox news is what is "essential to the far right’s appeal."
15
Cohen needs to look in the mirror. I'm a liberal guy, and I saw Borat in the cinema with a Kiwi friend down here. Both of us hated it.
It just promoted the idea that the middle of the US is a monolith, or that people who disagree with you deserve to be publicly ridiculed. I worked in documentary for several years before moving down under. There is an ethical part about filmmaking: you need to be upfront with your subjects about what you are doing.
And yes, before someone comments on it, there are occasional exceptions to that rule--such as serious undercover documentary work infiltrating hate groups, for example. However, that is not the case here.
I have never been convinced of anything by being yelled at or ridiculed, so I do not imagine others do either, whatever their political leanings. In fact it is that kind of discourse that has completely turned me off to a lot of the Republican party. We don't need to stoop to the same level.
As Michelle Obama said: "When they go low, we go high." That is a good mantra to live by and a good mantra for positive change.
11
@Bill
They won be playing dirty. Liberals need to win by playing dirtier and giving every low blow possible. Mantras won't help when we're all dead
1
"Sacha Baron Cohen is the latest champion of a theory with limited empirical support."
In a week during which the President of the United States, faced with impeachment, has been championing a theory, with "limited empirical support," that Ukraine framed Russia for the 2016 attack on our elections--a week in which the President has been ardently and publicly affirmed in his support for this theory by leading Republicans in the House--a week in which the National Security Council's erstwhile expert on Russia-Ukraine relations has warned Republicans that this theory, with limited empirical support, is in fact a product of the Russian intelligence services, designed to disrupt U.S. politics, and succeeding in doing so with help from Trump and congressional Republicans--to read Ross Douthat taking off after Sascha Baron Cohen for promoting theories with "limited empirical support" is darkly and bitterly funny.
319
Once again, Mr. Douthat opines that liberalism is a failure, while conservative religious thought is what the world needs to prosper. Painting with a broad brush, he ignores the history of western civilization and its values as a tool of wealth extraction aimed at the resources of the browner parts of the world.
He and his cohorts are why we have Trump, his corruption, and the generations of damage to individual freedom yet to come.
And sadly, your imaginary friend in the sky will not save this world.
64
@laughing_rabbit
Liberalism, is not a failure.
Progressiveism, is a failure.
It's an important distinction.
1
What the Left fails to realize is that social media/the internet did not force or shape conservative views, but merely reinforced those views and drew them into sharper relief. To that extent, a conservative website or Facebook page's comment boards are ostensibly no different than the pre-social media forum of meeting in someone's living over cocktails.
No, what is different is the opposition's inability or refusal to see differing views in their proper context, to distill the message from the forum, true signal from white noise. As Mr. Douthat successfully argues, it is largely the Left that is tone deaf. It is the Left which has fomented the political/social/cultural divide in this country and throughout larger Western Civilization; and the onus is on them to bridge that divide.
Unhappily, most of us do not see a way out of this, at least through the historical mechanisms of laws and politics. "It's us or them" is the unshakable viewpoint of both the Right and the Left. We are quickly moving to a point beyond laws and elections. A place beyond reasoning.
You're absolutely right, Ross Douthat. And to further prove the central thesis of your essay, your well considered views about to be assailed in the very way and by the very means you no doubt expected.
The cold of winter has descended upon our time. The chill has been in the air for years.
9
@David Bartlett -- "To that extent, a conservative website or Facebook page's comment boards are ostensibly no different than the pre-social media forum of meeting in someone's living over cocktails."
Sure, cost-free, anonymous, world-wide publishing is exactly like a private get together among friends. Not buying it.
Speech and publishing are not the same. Publishing has always been accurately regarded, in law and in politics, as far more consequential. So consequential, in fact, that serious legal impositions against defamation had been applied systematically against publishers, but almost never against speakers.
That changed with the internet, when law and custom suspended the long-time limitations on publisher defamation. Time to change it back. Private editing is the answer to internet problems. Government censorship is not.
5
@David Bartlett
First, as always, Douthat posits a silly argument condemning the left for some spurious faux pas while his fellow rightwingers burn the whole planet down in order to “own the libs.”
As for, “ What the Left fails to realize is that social media/the internet did not force or shape conservative views, but merely reinforced those views and drew them into sharper relief”—replace “social media/the internet” with “Russian manipulation,” and you have yourself a factual argument. And those views that Putin “reinforced” are vile, by the way.
@David Bartlett
" it is largely the Left that is tone deaf. It is the Left which has fomented the political/social/cultural divide in this country and throughout larger Western Civilization."
Care to give an example on the left as nasty yet as popular as Rush? Or a vicious and norm-trampling as MItch? Or as hateful as The Donald?
I didn't think so.
Oh that's right; we made up Global Warming to make conservatives feel bad.
Reading this op-ed gave me a feeling of vertigo as if I was looking up a circular staircase and was struck with a case of acrophobia. First off, I never trust empirical studies funded by the very same companies that benefit from the results as the research methods always become suspect. Secondly, of course social media reinforces existing bubbles as this is an extension of everyday life. For example, before the internet, curious people would make use of the library for information. Those who gravitated towards magazines could chose between a range of interests including everything from the Economist to the Nation to the American Spectator or Conservative all the way to Guns & Ammo, People, Architectural Digest or Mad Magazine. One's choice of reading material would certainly both inform as well as reinforce existing viewpoints. The difference being that there wasn't a hyper partisan atmosphere of us vs. them with hundreds of cable TV shows further splintering people off into disparate silos. When there were 3 channels with the same facts presented, people tended to agree more often. Facebook & Twitter, on the other hand tends to engage people's emotions which connects disparate internet users together in their common hatred of the opposing team or political party. This division benefits politicians who use disinformation to rile up their base. The less informed the political base is, the easier it is to spoon feed them sound bites or jingoism that is simple to repeat.
18
@Dunca -- The real difference between those publications you cite and present internet practice is one you did not notice. Every word in each of those publications had passed review by a private editor—who was usually a sophisticated person with time, means, and motivation to discover whether the information was true. None of that applies to internet publishing today.
8
@S.P.
You bring up an excellent point.
Many years ago, when the concept of blogging was brand new, there were many critics of the practice (mainly from what is now called the "MSM" by the right-wing) because of the very possibility that a blogger with a large audience could say anything, pass it off as fact, and there was no editor to check it before publication. They pointed out how dangerous this could potentially become.
At the time, I was extremely naive and full of the libertarian dreams of a full exchange of ideas on the internet, and I never imagined a situation like we've come to now. I disregarded their concerns as the angst of a storied elite who could no longer hold the gate against the people wanting their voices heard.
Boy, was I wrong.
3
@Dunca Don't worry about politicians. Does the tail wag the dog?
1
Ross wants to focus on social liberalism and elite failure, to not let social media obscure preexisting problems. But the internet has clearly played a massive role in driving populism (see Megan McArdle's column, which I link to below). I have no doubt that Catholic conservatives have a point when they critique Liberalism as such. Leo Strauss believed valuelessness or relativism, where the most outré ideas are accepted and meaning is stripped from life, was Liberalism's ineluctable endgame.
The perpetual overturning of the taken-for-granted world, the endless uprooting of established practices, mores, and beliefs, the descent into moral relativism, spiritual emptiness, loneliness, and ennui, these are real problems. And they're often dismissed by libertarians and modern liberals alike. Individuation is rare. Most people live in a different world from the one intellectuals inhabit. And the way their world looks and feels, we need to try to understand and to care about deeply.
The Left wants us to accept materialist causes for populism, but, while I do not dismiss these entirely -- far from it -- I'm afraid I can't grant this. The world is infinitely complex, and there's no Final Solution that will forever after pacify us. For all that we hear otherwise, nonmaterial factors surely play a huge role.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-connects-trumpish-figures-around-the-world-the-internet-is-the-best-answer/2018/12/31/40a0f3c0-0d4a-11e9-831f-3aa2c2be4cbd_story.html
3
@David L, Jr. Bingo! Non-material factors drive the base. Sense of worth, which is hard to come by for a lot of these folks is Mother's milk.
1
@David L, Jr. I realize this is quibbling, but saying the world is "infinitely complex" is misleading in the sense that there is no actual infinite anything. Even the universe is thought to be closed. Infinity is a concept best not invoked when dealing with earthly problems.
2
@David L, Jr.
Important points, well stated!
Statistics guru Nate Silver is currently being bombarded with abuse on Twitter for making this obvious observation:
"Reminder: There's never really been any evidence that the Trump campaign's digital ad targeting on Facebook was either an important factor in the campaign or was terribly effective."
twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1198291625505632257
9
@Richard Head -- In general, the evidence that it is effective is to be found in its persistence. It takes effort to do it. The folks expending that effort think it works. Generally, they are better positioned than anyone else to measure the results.
Add to that the howls of protest if someone suggests regulations to rein in targeted advertising. Those howls tell you something about effectiveness too.
5
Can we be honest and real? Once again, the world’s troubles are blamed on “populism”, defined as “a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups.” You think?
In the US, it began with meritocrats selling deregulation as prosperity, to Trump’s blaming elites the penurious woes they got instead, while he also sacks the country’s coffers. Not much difference between the two. While the Meritocrats off-shored all US manufacturing and technology for self enrichment, Trump is finishing up with destruction of our institutions and democracy itself for personal enrichment. The story is same across the world. International disenchantment with income inequality has been clearly expressed, in the last few weeks, in public demonstrations from Bolivia to Johannesburg to Algeria to Cairo to Lebanon to Paris.
Bottom line: Vulture capitalists support centrism because the system works for them. Deregulation is the way to loot without penalties. It’s not surprising then, that social media is the exploitative tool of the moment: without regulation, Matt Zuckerberg is making a killing by allowing the killing of democracy everywhere. Like Trump, vulture capitalists only care about their personal wealth. i.e. “Ambassador Sondland”.
27
@Ted love the “vulture capitalism” as as a true take on the VC (venture capitalism) currently in vogue as a means to further enrich themselves. Touché!
Ross has a point, up to a point. Progressives are human, too, (last time I checked) and they are every bit as susceptible to the lures of social media as anyone else. But there is overwhelming evidence that the social media spawn extremism, and it is most conspicuously and notoriously on the Right.
Ross accuses the Left of wanting to regulate, and indeed they do. But I ask him, do you have a better solution for online hate mongering?
7
@Ron Cohen if you are going to argue there is overwhelming evidence that extremism is most notorious on the right than you need to prove it by giving the evidence (i.e research etc).
2
@Ron Cohen -- I have a far better solution. Repeal Section 230, the law which suspended liability for online publishers, and gave them something never before seen in the history of publishing—an ability to publish as much as they wanted, without reading any of it first, or ever.
Government censorship is the wrong way to go. Far too dangerous. Private editing, as was practiced in all publishing prior to Section 230, is the solution. Let private publishers decide what to publish, even decide arbitrarily. But hold them civilly accountable for defamatory falsehoods.
9
@Dexter Lensing
You don't have to prove what's right in front of your eyes. Not unless you're needlessly myopic, or having something to gain.
1
I don't know what "progressives" have to do with anything. The problem we're seeing on social media is that it can be used to spread all kinds of conspiracy theories and false news items. It can even, as we have seen, spread fake videos that look real. These things are believed by naive and poorly educated people. They don't know what or who to believe, and thus can't make informed choices about who to vote for, what to support, or why.
23
@Mary Newton
It seems true that it might not be the Internet that's causing the problems with conspiracy theories and false news. Fox News is a pretty mainstream influence and it's making lots of money by indoctrinating its base on television. Talk radio is even more primitive when it comes to influencing.
We've had chain emails for a long time that spread misinformation. Yes, they are spread on the Internet, but I think the point is that the new technologies, including social media are the big danger.
There's something bigger here and it has little to do with Sacha Baron Cohen. When many influencers are acting in concert, it's hard to blame just one for acceptance of lies and misinformation.
Why have political strategists assumed such importance? Big money means the ability to buy the best public relations. That seems significant.
The use of data analysis is effective in manipulating public opinion. That influence could manifest itself as talking points developed from focus groups or it could be much more sophisticated. We should try to keep in mind that it's not just politics.
2
Social media exploits laziness on both sides of the political equation. By this fact alone, it is dangerous
19
The raucous cacophony on social networks is a new and unsettling thing. Unsurprisingly, nefarious actors have utilized this open environment to destabilize our social cohesion & we can surely expect this to continue. That’s deeply distressing & Baron Cohen makes an important point. But how is social cohesion to be protected without abandoning our important commitment to the right of each person to freely speak his or her own mind? I don’t know, but I do know I dislike the idea of tech companies enforcing speech regulation even more than I dislike the idea of bureaucrats doing so. It seems to me the real answer must be public education. We can’t hide from the modern world or make it go away, so we have to raise our kids to successfully navigate amidst the cacophony. Alas, that’s no easy thing to do.
5
The prescription that Sacha Baron Cohen prescribes for the serious problems associated with social media has of itself problems as well but the disease for which the prescription is intended is real which he describes as “ Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. ”
One can argue that this disease is the result of ignorance, which is true to an extent, but the real concern is that it is a willful ignorance.
15
I agree that social media is a reflection of society, not society being a reflection of social media, if that's what you mean.
5
Trump supposedly has 60 million Twitter followers, and he is the all time champion of alternative facts, otherwise known as lies.
Now if that isn't a social media populist movement, I don't know what is.
275
@cherrylog754 Oh well heck. My twitter feed follows Trump -- for the entertainment value. You can't make any calculation of Trump fans frrom the the number of his Twitter followers
2
@cherrylog754
Just because people are following Trump on Twitter doesn't mean they are his supporters.
1
@cherrylog754 This is probably a stupid question, but I don't twitter. How do we know, exactly, that Trump has 60 million Twitter followers? There have been lots of inaccuracies in what he has said before, so how do we know he is not making that up?
2
"This kind of evidence doesn’t mean that online conspiracy mongering has no influence on populism. "
No it doesn't. Especially when the President of the United States is a chief of online consumer of the conspiracies, some which seem to be designed to manipulate him. Or his enablers in Congress. Devin Nunes beclowned himself in the hearings by seeming to have done all his "preparation" by reading bottom feeder Twitter feeds.
Perhaps when we have a stable adult in the White House again and send Nunes and his I'll home, social media won't seem so damaging. Perhaps.
11
Progressives want to regulate things. They don't trust that the people of a democracy will make sensible solutions if given the power and unchecked flow of information; they are fundamentally elitist in their outlook; the people need to be led in the correct direction by wise leaders who know best. This goes back all the way to Teddy Roosevelt, who felt strongly that white men had a burden to educate and lead the dark-skinned out of ignorance outside the US, and Woodrow Wilson, who felt the same about black people inside the US. FDR felt the only way to govern a modern economy was central government control, despite the evidence of a continuing 8 years of Depression that argued against him (he was saved by World War Two). The writers and speakers of the progressive movement were strongly anti-democratic, favoring an executive which, once elected, should be given the power to force the people to goodness and light despite public opinion. Progressives have always favored regulating speech and behavior because the common herd does not know what is best for them, and must be led by the enlightened. That authoritarian strain has remained dominant in the progressive movement for a century.
9
@Tom Meadowcroft I don't agree at and I wouldn't call myself a progressive - progressives I think believe in enacting laws that are passed democratically and following them whatever they are but towards becoming better. Progressives may reject individualism but they don't support authoritarianism either since they know what that can lead to. Every progressive I know supports the passage of laws by democratically elected representatives that bring out the best in us.
The arc of history has moved progressively.
45
@Tom Meadowcroft I would further add that what you write: "Progressives want to regulate things. They don't trust that the people of a democracy will make sensible solutions if given the power and unchecked flow of information" is contradictory.
I'd say progressives ONLY trust the people, not the elite nor one side of the equation. Progressives don't want a regulatory dicatorship but rather want a regulatory democracy which is what you're saying. I mean how exactly will "sensible solutions if given the power and unchecked flow of information" be implemented except via regulations and laws in a democracy? People don't spontaneously self-regulate. The agreement we all make in a democracy is that we realise we're all not perfect but in our moments of sanity we can do better and if we can codify that, we can all be pushed towards something better.
I do think it's possible one day for humanity to have a world without laws and I believe it is science and technology that'll get us there. I think the likelihood of this happening is low but if we surviving the coming bottleneck (great filter) then we'll be able to make this happen. But right now humans are too selfish and self-centred to be trusted individually - it's only through collective decision making that we can evolve (socially).
7
@Tom Meadowcroft
Your telling of economic history misses the mark.
The great depression was all about debt, inequality, and lack of demand.
FDR's spending worked well from 1933 to 1937, to stimulate the economy. When FDR reversed policy in 1937 - reducing spending - the results were terrible.
The spending on the war was *government* spending. The public debt created by that spending was *huge* - yet was manageable. The flip side of that public debt was private *assets* - with much of those private assets distributed among the masses, in the form of war bonds, savings from war jobs, and service pay.
Pure Capitalism is better than pure socialism - but still too flawed. China has a national industrial policy, and it has really paid off for them. The US has put itself at a disadvantage.
Pure, unregulated capitalism has never proven to work. One can argue about where the best compromise lies. I say that is best determined pragmatically - do what works, and adjust as needed (which was FDR's openly declared strategy). This, as opposed to Republican's policy of doing nothing.
Regardless of what point on the spectrum from economic anarchy to socialism one sees as ideal, government will always be powerful enough to present danger to freedom.
That is why honest government is paramount. Unfortunately, officials of both parties seem only to see the dishonesty of the opposite party.
Calls by some on the left to silence and censor speech, scares me far more than Trump.
4
Populism has risen in the West because of the economic dislocations visited on the masses by elite profiting from globalization and tech, for which the masses have paid with their jobs. Populism will only worsen as robots eviscerate lots more jobs and people than globalism and tech already have.
12
Exactly right Mr. Douthat. Donald Trump is a creature of television who can scarcely take his eyes off it, especially when he's on the air. He honed his demagoguery on audiences for WWE Wrestling and reality shows. In a world constructed by talk radio and Fox News, Twitter provides adventitious support, but it's more like a dagger than the bludgeon of the other two giants.
11
Good points. I've been learning just how few people follow the best sources of information, even if they are aware of them. Even fewer people engage in online polemics, possibly because of the great sea of opinions, lack of time or lack of interest. And as David Brooks has pointed out, Twitter is not the real world. Those who are disengaged from information often view media and anything elite with suspicion. Because those are the people who say they know so much and often lead their constituency into economic ruin.
1
I think Ross is right on one score: the power of talk radio and cable news to inculcate group think on both sides is far more powerful than social media.
But his assumptions that it's mainly liberals thriving on social media to reinforce its attitudes is likely no more true than the MAGA crowd throwing away their cell phones.
I spend a lot of time online but rarely on social media. I read digital publications, shop, research, and write-not necessarily in that order.
But while Ross seems to think that I, along with Cohen other liberals, want to censor social media for its outsized impact on rising reates of populism and bigotry, I cry foul.
Is it wrong for any of us, whatever one's persussion, to insist that social media companies take more responsibility for the veracity of its content?
I'm not talking about opinions, which are subjective, I'm talking about facts which aren't.
212
@ChristineMcM
I agree with all this, but I think it's very hard to separate opinions from facts. One of the flaws in contemporary journalism is opinions seeping into reporting. We see it in headlines and the choice of words in articles. Often, the opinions are thrown in, seemingly without thought.
12
@Betsy S: I think that's true to a certain extent in both conservative and liberal media, like the NYT, WSJ, Boston Herald vs Boston Globe, and the like. But in social media, one can post just about anything, and the Russians have, lurid beyond the fringe theories and statements that have simply no basis in fact. That's what I"m talking about. There is a far greater freedom (lack of censorship, fact checking, overall governing communications policy) that turn social media into an absolute maelstrom of wacko and demonstrably false ideas and reporting. Example: Hillary Clinton as masterminding a child sex ring in the back of a pizza parlor.
Such distortions, redirections, and disinformation campaigns tend to be malign when planted by foreign adversaries or even simply malicious political operatives. The ideas take root and become, with repetition, reigning ideas as we've seen with the "Crowdstrike and Ukraine grabbing the DNC server junk. It's as if a political version of the National Inquirer were mandatory reading for certain members of Congress.
11
I listened to the entire speech on YouTube and found it quite compelling. I recommend that readers watch it and make up their own minds.
83
Aren't the meanings of the words 'regulate' and 'resist' two different meanings? You seem to use them interchangeably. If the internet was regulated we wouldn't have to resist would we? We could depend on it being a fact-based world or clearly marked 'opinion' world. And then we'd be in the same world. Which would be really great for America and the world.
81
@sophia But who would do the regulating? I recall it was only a few decades ago that NBC, CBS, and ABC had a monopoly on television news. They all had a liberal bias in their reporting. This monopoly was a major reason why Fox News was able to get it's start.
1
@joe
"They all had a liberal bias in their reporting. This monopoly was a major reason why Fox News was able to get it's start."
Then it wasnt in reality (you can also insert fact for for the word reality) much of a *monopoly* then was it was it ??
As for the *who*, the FCC. You know, the Fairness Doctrine ("to provide adequate coverage of public issues, and to ensure that coverage fairly represented opposing views ...& required broadcasters to provide reply time to issue-oriented citizens").
Upheld by the SC 8-0 in 1969 regarding the question of First Amendment rights as per the Doctrine. Why no Fairness Doctrine now? Whining from conservative Congressional Republicans about First Amendment rights who (surprise!) killed it.
Liberal bias in the media you cite, or facts -- rather than what is offered at Fox and Britebart et al which is opinion masquerading as fact.
3
@sophia
Thank you. It is indeed necessary to check one's sources and make up one's own mind.
1