This resource is the clearest and most concise summary of all of the problems that social media and our over engagement of technology has lead to. In all the journals so far (or at least the second one?) I have used this page to get a better understanding of the issues we’ve talked about in class and used this as a tool of how I’d like to present my ideas.
(https://humanetech.com/problem/)
I read this report in conjunction with our in class discussion with the Amazon strike. I’m citing this article in particular because it does a great job at explaining exactly why Amazon has a huge carbon footprint in comparison to other tech companies and why something needs to be done about it.
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/legacy/Global/usa/planet3/PDFs/clickingclean.pdf
This article works pretty much in tangent with the first reference. The CHT is an incredible resource for this topic and this article just goes further in detail about the organization and gives the whole program a lot of credibility.
These articles are very interesting, as each individual writer has a very unique background and takes away an entirely different answer to the “How is the Internet changing the way you think?”. While this resource didn’t have a clear and concise way to communicate each idea like the CHT resource did, there was still a large variety in responses, touching some topics that CHT didn’t even discuss.
https://www.edge.org/responses/how-is-the-internet-changing-the-way-you-think
Question:
What role has media and technology played in the ideological polarization of our country?
Resources:
My social media feeds look different from yours and it’s driving political polarization
USA Today, Robert Elliott Smith, Opinion contributor
Media factions are source of our polarization
HeraldNet, Don Thompson
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/media-factions-are-source-of-our-polarization/
Chance, not ideology, drives political polarization
Phys.org, Cornell University
https://phys.org/news/2019-08-chance-ideology-political-polarization.html
Political Polarization & Media Habits
Pew Research Center, AMY MITCHELL, JEFFREY GOTTFRIED, JOCELYN KILEY AND KATERINA EVA MATSA
https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/political-polarization-media-habits/
Political Polarization on Twitter: Social media May Contribute to Online Extremism
Harvard.edu, Sounman Hong, Ph.D.
How politically polarized media is driving our alternative realities
PBS NewsHour, John Yang
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/politically-polarized-media-driving-alternative-realities
Political Polarization & Media Habits:
There are so many good graphics, statistics and points made in this article! A lot of the big take away are discussed in the first couple paragraphs. The left and right differ largely when it comes to media usage. While the left follows a variety of media outlets, the right focuses largely on Fox News. The left is more likely to unfriend someone on Facebook due to political views, while the right is more like to hear political opinions which match their own. The left trusts 28 of the 36 news sources surveyed, while the right trusts only 12. Both sides shared the commonality that the farther to their respective side they were, the more likely they were to post online.
How politically polarized media is driving our alternative realities:
This is a transcript of an interview between a democrat, a republican, and an independent in which they discuss how they consume media, which outlets they trust, and how their beliefs reflect that. I’d say the largest take away that everyone seemed to agree on is that the news is now being shaped for the voter, rather than a voter being influenced by the news. With a variety of outlets and ways to consume, media users are more inclined to seek out information which confirms their world beliefs rather than challenges it.
Summary of Findings:
I consider myself to be fairly far left. The weird thing about this assignment is: I really don’t know what I should be trusting anymore. A lot of these resources make the right look not the best, am I only being exposed to this because I vote left? Is this what I am being lead to believe or is this the truth? Am I subconsciously choosing sources which don’t challenge what I believe? Regardless of the answers to those questions, we can at least see that the way politically biased media is presented, consumed, and shared isn’t being done responsibly and deserves some sort of cultural or even technological reform. While bias will always exist, we can’t continue to shape the media we or others consume to fit our values in any way (with good faith at least).
Solution:
Finding a concrete solution to such a large, permeating problem, without redoing the entire news media complex is definitely a challenge. However, The Pew Research did a really interesting study that found that when people react to media together, as long as the individuals fall in many different spots on the political spectrum, the people who viewed media with other individuals input agreed more with each other than those who viewed media individually. With this in mind, we could build a news sharing platform with absolutely no bias on which articles you are exposed to. These sites could have chat rooms associated with each individual article to encourage discussion, a live feed of stories from different news outlets, and a group of people who verify the truthfulness of each article voluntarily. Another solution is to not entertain any anger you see on other social media platforms, but always entertain new opinions or to even avoid political advocacy on the internet to begin with.
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