Mass Media and Politics

 Since 2004, more than 2000 local newspapers have gone out of business. Readership of local papers has plummeted by millions. More than 2000 counties do not have even have a daily paper in circulation . This problem is well documented, but Americans and the media class are still trying to grapple with the powerful loss of local community journalism that we have seen in this century. As the business model has waffled and the papers shut down, Americans have increasingly had to rely upon national publications for their news, or their own curated newsfeeds with content from hundreds of sources that may not adhere to journalistic principles. As a result, everyone has become more disconnected. Americans on either side of important issues no longer understand each other. They see each other as the characterizations that are often presented on cable news, and not as the real people in their communities that may have a nuanced opinion about one of the many defining, complex issues of life ...

 On January 6th, a mob invaded the United States Capitol and spilled blood in the name of a massive lie. Over the last several years, we have seen the meteoric rise of misinformation in the political ecosystem. While it has been with us for some time, it has taken a little longer for us to fully realize how real world events can be shaped by misinformation. For years, scholars watched how misinformation had the capacity to alter the real world. In Russia, misinformation became an essential tool for carrying out the desires of Vladimir Putin. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine, and then flatly denied that they had done what they did. Misinformation in the Donbas region helped to stir up an all out war, and the toll of fake news was in full force.  In the United States, we have watched as fake news has grown in our country and studied the effects it may be having on the real world. But we have clearly failed to anticipate how quickly a fake news conspiracy can materiali...

The internet is a political force. For the last few decades, researchers have been attempting to figure just what kind of force it really is. Is it a democratic force? An authoritarian force? Neither? Both? There are good arguments to be made either way. But researchers have found that, ultimately, the internet is a tool. It can be wielded for many different purposes depending on who is doing the wielding, and it is probably a little naïve to think of the internet as containing inherent political motives. As Clay Shirky put it in Foreign Affairs, "the use of social media tools - text message, e-mail, photo sharing, social networking, and the like - does not have a single preordained outcome." We have seen the internet turn governments upside down through the power of organized protest, and we have seen propaganda and censorship plague the online world to the liking of autocrats. It varies greatly from country to country, but in each case, we can see some clues as to which sid...