It seems, from reading Twitter at least, that Trump MAGA people who watched the Fox News interview with Kamala Harris thought it was a disaster for her; whereas Harris supporters watched it and thought she performed very credibly with a hostile and interrupting interviewer. (I haven't had time to watch much myself - I have only seen the widely posted segment in which she called them for not showing the full clip of Trump calling his political opposition evil and "the enemy".)
This is not news - but it's a great example of how both social media, and the fragmentation of media into arms which are outright propaganda networks for profit, have allowed for the creation of completely different mental and information worlds in which people now live. It's a great reminder of David Robert's 2017 column on the problem of tribal epistemology - and, you have to say, the mainstream media really still ignores it.
I mean, people don't create their own mental worlds in a vacuum. They form it in a community, and while it has always been possible for people to follow cranks and form a self supporting community around them, billionaires now (for profit and other self interest) use the modern tools of communication to create and sustain such bubble worlds of "alternative" crank takes by creating the community needed to support it.
Really, the mainstream media, and politicians, need to be saying that, day in and day out, instead of just pretending its just the landscape now, there is nothing to be done about it.
She only went on there to show she was strong and tough. She di that in spades.
ReplyDeleteThe same people who thought she was terrible thought TRump's performance at that economic forum was brilliant. Only trouble was it was embarrassing.
Siloism has become endemic in political debates. The media is supposed to rise above that and challenge falsehoods. Last night I saw an interview with Trump where he was asked about fact checking. He dismissed it with the usual the media are corrupt we can't trust the fact checkers.
ReplyDeleteToo many journalists, possibly under pressure from the owners, are now pushing political agendas. Independent outlets are no better and vloggers are just as bad. I wonder if there is any hope for a return to a more rigorous form of journalism.