Just curious, do you think the programming due to echo chambers applies to Democrats as well?
I think it’s pretty obvious one side is operating totally outside of reality where the other is not. Are democrats peddling stolen election lies and denying the existence of COVID?
I’m not saying anything negative Democrats or doing any comparison on idiologies. I feel like echo chambers keeping politics in their own little bubbles is bad for everyone. I just wanted your opinion on echo chambers being applicable to both sides. Don’t know why I can’t ask a question without getting down voted.
It’s because the way you are posing questions is disingenuous. It’s an article about issues with the Republican party and voter base and you turn around and go, “well, yeah, but there are two sides so Democrats must be the same right???” It’s like you can’t even discuss the topic at hand, you have to make it a “both sides” thing.
But sure, I’ll bite. Do Democrats have huge numbers of talk radio stations, shitty news stations, and grifting facebook pages all pushing the same bullshit? Because Republicans do, and they all for some reason talk about the same shit in the same way. You can hem and haw about how MSNBC could be more “neutral,” but it doesn’t hold a candle to the ridiculousness of Fox News. And if it did, don’t worry, we’ve still got OANN to talk about.
Democratic echo chambers amount to “we don’t like you saying racial slurs in our forum,” where Republican echo chambers amount to “don’t you dare post that scientific study or countermand the will of the Great Leader.” They aren’t the same, no matter how desperate you are to equivocate.
What do you feel are the problematic issues stemming from the “dem echo chamber”?
I think anyone can be in an eco chamber regardless of your political beliefs. I think it is less likely for Democrats as their news isn’t just a single channel that has been proven to not be news.
Democrats are just denying that neoliberalism and capitalism are destroying the planet.
The democratic party is a coalition party ranging from the neoliberals all the way to anarchists and everything in between. In general, the people that are nominated are controlled by the party establishment but the people that vote range from a variety of left biases. After all, the Democrats are the only decent conservative party left in this country.
The Democrat’s establishment is what matters in these conversations, and yes they refuse to acknowledge that the root causes of climate change is late stage neoliberal capitalism.
There is a definite difference in magnitude / severity but there is a similarity in partisan thinking.
Many on “the left” still believe Trump coordinated with Russia in his election for example. And that Russia was instrumental in that win.
And I keep seeing"the left" talking punishing people for protected speech, etc.
Pretending one side is “virtuous” and fighting the “pure evil” of the other side is an attribute of both sides.
Partisanship doesn’t like nuance. As indicated by all the down votes I’m about to receive.
Many on “the left” still believe Trump coordinated with Russia in his election for example. And that Russia was instrumental in that win
Anyone who actually read the Mueller report knows this to be true
Many on “the left” still believe Trump coordinated with Russia in his election for example. And that Russia was instrumental in that win.
2020:
The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the final report from its bipartisan investigation into Moscow’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
The committee spent more than three years working on it, investigating Russia’s interference, as you said, in the 2016 election. They reviewed more than a million documents, documents that were provided by U.S. spy agencies as well as documents that were provided by witnesses. They also interviewed witnesses - hundreds of them, including a lot of familiar names - Donald Trump Jr., former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort but also former Obama administration officials.
And all of that digging has gone into this report, and the committee concludes that Russia conducted a sophisticated and aggressive campaign to influence the U.S. election to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton and that folks on Team Trump were more than happy to accept help from the Russians. But what’s really important about that conclusion is that it is a bipartisan one. It is endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans.
This report is, to a large extent, something that reaches the same conclusion that Mueller did on the question of Russia’s interference. And the committee didn’t draw a conclusion on whether the Trump campaign conspired or colluded with Russia. What the committee did instead was lay out the facts that they found and then kind of leave it to the reader to make up their own mind. Some committee Republicans, in an annex to the report, declared that there was no evidence that the Trump campaign colluded. Democratic members, in contrast, called Russia’s actions and the Trump team’s openness to them, quote, “one of the single most grave counterintelligence threats in modern American history.”
(Emphasis mine)
It’s not that far-fetched at all to think that the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia in 2016.
If you go by the results of this investigation, it’s equally as wrong to assert that they didn’t.
The research doesn’t indicate this. Everyone is prone to echo chambers, but left leaning folks tend to have more diversified news sources, which is the balance to negate echo chambers.
The left have more diversified news sources because the country has generally been left-leaning in recent generations. It wasn’t “left” when ABC, CBS, NBC were the only news outlets; it was very much “middle-America”.
Not until Fox News came along did conservatives have a real alternative outlet. Still, most news outlets are left / left-middle to represent most people. If there’s five outlets with similar perspectives, a segment of the population will be divided among them. If there’s only one or two conservative outlets, there isn’t much diversity for conservatives to get their news from.
So, while I agree with you about diversified media, I’d argue the echo chamber is getting much stronger.
Ultimately, these news outlets report to their advertisers and corporate overlords. They control what news is being broadcast now that we have algorithms telling them what people want to watch. Back when the big three were all there were to report the news, they pretty much only had to report to the public trust and their own integrity. Today’s media works in both directions at near-lightspeed.
Regardless of political ideology, is the general population choosing to watch news reports that inform them or that enforce their existing feelings? Are you the kind of person who’s buying groceries because they’re good for you and good for the environment or are you the kind of person who buys cheaper comfort food? Perhaps more importantly, who’s telling you what’s good for you and what’s bad for you?
If only people knew the truth! The issue is: That’s not how information actually works. Despite what you are told, social media and the internet often increase the range of views to which people are exposed. Algorithms are less likely to create a echo chamber for you than living in a neighborhood surrounded by Republicans with limited media.
So what are echo chambers, really? They are epistemic bubbles, where other voices are not heard; in echo chambers, other voices are actively undermined. When they get contrary information that doesn’t match their preconceived beliefs, they dismiss it. It confirms what they already believe—they’re wrong.
While privately owned social media companies can influence us, they’re hardly the only things that do. Our core ideologies and values are determined by everything from where we grew up to whom we love, to the actual impact of politics on our lives. Fixing Facebook wouldn’t solve the problem of many echo chambers—your family’s opinions, your friend’s bigoted talking points—even if it’s a good idea.
In a way, those who worry about echo chambers are too hopeful. Many voters really do want Trump, Brexit, and other things that liberals abhor. A lot of people do not care, deep down, about democracy. Better information might not be a panacea for that, even if it would slow down a conspiracy theory like QAnon.
That is the main difference of the two sides, Liberals get a multifaceted message with various perspectives and they latch onto those messages that most resonate with them. Conservatives on the other hand only get one perspective and thus rarely hear opposing views in context.
Which side you land on largely has to do with your personal environment.
That’s a very well thought out response and I find myself really agreeing with you. It is frustrating that in order for me to ask the question the elicited a response that changed my perspective, my post automatically gets down voted by the community. That alone makes me not want to ask questions thus perpetuating the echo chambers in the community.
Of course it does
The Internet has made people flock to places where people think like them.
Additionally, FaceBook, Google News, and many other sites intentionally show users material that it knows they will interact with to trigger dopamine releases. It’s addictive by design.
