By Patrick Robinson

The arrival of the smartphone, followed shortly by blog comment sections, forums, and social media transformed the nature of public discourse and thus impacted politics and even it can be argued the way public policy is shaped. It democratized information flow by lowering the barrier for publishing to zero. Revolutionary.

Previously you needed an architecture of amplification to get a message out such as a printing press, television or radio station or enough money to buy attention.

The arbiters of information, the government, and print or electronic publishers controlled what the public saw and judged what was important based on a few criteria. Would it affect a lot of people? Was it highly unsusual? Was it full of raw emotion? Did it carry strong visuals? Was it dramatic and compelling? Was it confirmed by multiple sources? Those decisions were made by editorial staff that followed the basics of journalistic ethics. The five W’s (who, what, where, when and sometimes why) and whether the story still had currency. 

When the revolution came it meant that the idea of editorial judgement was left up to the consumer. internet filters meant you actually might miss something significant because your selected interests put you in an information silo. It also hugely enlarged the tendency of people to give into confirmation bias and cast information they didn’t like as untrustworthy. 

These factors, along with the end of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980’s, followed by the rise of AM Talk Radio and other conservative media, led to a deepening of divisions in the United States. It’s not as you have been told, that media is inherently liberal. Though bias does tend to a byproduct of a college education in writing followed by exposure to the real world in which people are often treated unfairly. That’s news after all since it’s dramatic. 

Now that everyone’s voice in comment sections, on Facebook posts, and emails has the same weight as a news outlet, and that we tend to believe what we already believe we’ve created an information pool that can only lead to further division and an escalation of mistrust.

Derisive language and insulting name calling has never won an argument but we lack the sources now people will trust enough, to make a case based on facts. The water is so muddied we have little clarity on a way forward. People fall back on their religion, or family for some sort of foundational truth.

The American experiment has always been about compromise. But the nature of compromise means seeing, hearing and understanding an opposing point of view. That’s all predicated on being willing to stay silent long enough to take in the information. Maybe that’s a level of maturity. Maybe it means being able to see our own misconceptions and admit we were wrong. Maybe it means leaving our information and belief silos to look for the common good.