How critical are you of the influence media has on your everyday experience?
One of the main components of becoming a media literate digital citizen is understanding and reflecting upon how we use the media in our daily lives and, in turn, how the media is impacting us on a daily basis.
Using a critical and intraspective lens to examine the impact media is having on us each day — on our emotional well-being, on what we come to view as true or false, on how we view our role in society and our responsibilities towards others — is all part of the process of not letting ourselves get swept away by the currents of media we are swimming in each day.
Bringing this critical lens with you as you navigate your personal media landscape each day is just as important as being conscious of the fact that you are being influenced by it.
To better understand which media you should engage with, which media you should avoid, and how to develop healthy media habits, ask yourself the following questions:
What media makes me happy/productive/thoughtful? What makes me sad/angry/distracted?
What are the boundaries you could put in place to increase positive engagement and decrease negative reactivity?
How can you build simple routines and habits into your day that help you use media in the way you intend to?
As you go about your day, try to take a moment and reflect.
Whether you choose to write your response here or…
Converse with another human
go for a walk
talk to your dog
put it on paper
consider it quietly
draw it out
write a song
put motion to your thoughts
drink some whiskey with a friend.
Take one step towards becoming more aware of the digital forces impacting your life.
How conscious are you of the influence media has on your everyday experience?
One of the main components to becoming a media literate digital citizen is understanding and reflecting on our own use of the media and how it impacts our life.
Reflecting upon our own emotional experience as we consume, use, and create media will help us to better understand our own engagement. What use creates joy or wellness? What use creates despair or frustration? What are the boundaries I need to set for myself?
Being conscious of and understanding the emotions that take over as we navigate our own media landscapes takes us one step closer to becoming media literate digital citizens. So please, take a moment and reflect.
Whether you choose to write your response here or…
Converse with another human
go for a walk
talk to your dog
put it on paper
consider it quietly
draw it out
write a song
put motion to your thoughts
drink some whiskey with a friend.
Take one step towards becoming more aware of the digital forces impacting your life.
While we recognize the limitations of any singular blog post’s ability to answer big questions like the ones we’re asking, our intention is not to tell you everything there is to know about this issue, but rather to open up a space for conversation, reflection, curiosity, and a consideration of all the other questions this one question sets in motion.
question
How do you work through your emotional reactions to media?
Taped to my window is a brightly colored, eight-part chart entitled “Emotion Cards” that was provided to me by the outstanding organization Building Bridges. It includes the typical emotions one might think of when they are asked the seemingly simple question, “How are you feeling?”. The headlines are happy/sad/angry/bad etc., but then it drops down to more specific reactions. Under “anxious” are the terms scared, insecure, defensive, and fearful; below those come even more specific language: helpless, inadequate, excluded, exposed.
I find myself glancing at this chart regularly, my fingers tracing the page, trying to find language for the sensations that arise in my body as I experience a daily barrage of emotional turmoil. I pause the radio following a major headline to review each word choice provided under the broad term angry. I turn off my video during a Zoom call to examine the language surrounding distracted, consciously making an effort to let the emotion wash over my body without judgment, knowing that, for me, this is still a difficult challenge.
This particular moment in history has dredged up so much emotion in our country: Overwhelming loss, ineffective guilt, emboldened vulnerability, and so many more. Taking the time individually to better understand our emotions, how they show up, and to name them in whatever way makes sense is a powerful and necessary means of personal and communal growth. Being able to effectively recognize emotions that bubble to the surface while engaging with media is also an elemental aspect of practicing media literacy.
Often in the United States, we are encouraged to ‘control’ our emotions, to ‘bury’ them, or ‘pull ourselves together’ so we are not ‘overcome’. Yet each of these repressive colloquialisms are indicative of the reality that our emotions live in our bodies, they affect all five of our senses, and they show up in a full spectrum of unique ways. Being curious as to where and why you feel excited or motivated, or taking the time to ask yourself what pride tastes like, or what color signals shame, allows you the space to locate and identify your emotions, and to understand how they are implicitly and explicitly impacting the ‘you’ that shows up in each moment of your life.
We are in the midst of a myriad of holidays, which often entails time spent in the company of, and in conversation with, family, friends and loved ones. How we feel about certain things may not be shared by those who share our DNA. This time of year can be challenging to separate out our emotions and even more challenging to understand how to share our feelings in a way that is accepted or acknowledged. To add to this challenge, many people will be interacting through screens, which can muddle interpretation and context. Those emotions that are so palpable face to face can quickly feel dismissive or hostile.
During the election, I felt like I was trying to untie a massive frozen knot, in the dead of winter, without gloves. I didn’t have the right words to describe all the emotions that were layered in my body. I chose to create a mental image to help me find some tangibility to my feelings. Another friend described her state of being as trying to put soaked and disintegrating puzzle pieces together on a slanted table. Her description helped me better understand her emotional state and made it easier not to judge or try too hard to relate her experience to my own, when that was unnecessary.
This holiday season, we encourage you to uncover your feelings through whatever means makes the most sense to you. Share them with people you trust and in a way that doesn’t project your emotions onto others. The concept of sharing emotions and feelings is not universal, although I wish it was. There is so much we have yet to learn from our emotions, and so much beauty in the difficult process of coming to understand how we feel, why we feel the way we do, how to relate our feelings to those of others through language, and how to accept and reconcile our inability to do so. This is ongoing work. Emotions can change instantly, or they can settle in the crevasses of our engrained selves for extended amounts of time. Please make an effort to stay curious, stay open, and this holiday season, consider being reflective as opposed to reactive.
P.S. Writing this scares me. I feel it in my throat, and I have to remind myself to relax my shoulders, because they are encroaching on my ear space.
actions to take
Begin a meditation or mindfulness routine.
Choose from a wide range of apps (Headspace or Waking Up would be our recommendations) that can help you build this skill into your day. Just as you need to exercise your body to maintain your physical health, so too do you need to exercise your mind to maintain your mental and cognitive health.
Watch your emotions bubble to surface. Accept them. Watch them pass, knowing that everything is impermanent; no feeling will last forever.
questions to consider
What emotions does consuming media evoke within you?
What emotions does using technology evoke within you?
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed by your emotions? Do you feel you are able to effectively cope with difficult or unpleasant feelings?
Do you make space for the emotions of others in your life? Loved ones? Colleagues?
Could you be more empathetic to the people you encounter everyday?
One of the main components to becoming a media literate digital citizen is understanding and reflecting on our own use of the media and how it impacts our life.
One crucial component of this is reflecting upon the purpose of your online voice: How do you use your voice? On whose behalf? Does engaging your voice online add value to your life and the lives of others? Do you feel your online voice accurately represents you and your beliefs?
Connecting your online voice to a deeper sense of purpose through self-reflection is one step towards becoming a media literate digital citizen. So please, take a moment and reflect.
Whether you choose to write your response here or…
Converse with another human
go for a walk
talk to your dog
put it on paper
consider it quietly
draw it out
write a song
put motion to your thoughts
drink some whiskey with a friend.
Take one step towards becoming more aware of the digital forces impacting your life.
While we recognize the limitations of any singular blog post’s ability to answer big questions like the ones we’re asking, our intention is to not to tell you everything there is to know about this issue, but rather to open up a space for conversation, reflection, curiosity, and a consideration of all the other questions this one question sets in motion.
Election day is Tuesday, November 3. At American Canary, we acknowledge the heightened importance of this election and encourage you to engage your voice – by casting your vote.
Across this country, millions of people are having unique experiences trying to cast their ballot and make sure their voice is heard. We have been inspired by the perseverance of US voters in this election as they overcome tremendous obstacles in their effort to exercise this fundamental right.
For the November Monthly Engagement, we wanted to share our own individual voices in response to the following…
question
How would you reflect on your experience as a voter?
It was the first time I was eligible to vote, and I remember how exciting it felt, how mature I felt, how important I felt. It was 2008, and I was filled with the hope of electing our first Black President, something I did not fully understand the impact of as a 19-year-old student. I signed up to call in poll results to the Times Union and spent the night in downtown Albany, NY celebrating with the community over that monumental moment.
2012 rolled out as expected, and I sat back and enjoyed the ride, not understanding that we were losing the momentum of progress that the election of Obama had set in motion as we all sat back and watched, confident that things were heading in the right direction. Then 2016 happened. That election and my experience of it came with a whole range of emotions that I’m still working on processing. I was so overcome with joy that I cried as I voted for the first female Presidential candidate, something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. I remember feeling so certain that progress would continue. I brought my children with me to vote as I have done since their infancy, but this was the first time my daughter, then 5, could understand what was happening. I remember her asking me as I worked to compose myself, “Mommy, why are you crying? I thought voting was a good thing.” I responded, “It’s the best thing. I’m crying because I’m so happy.” I pointed to Hillary Clinton’s name and read it to her as I explained that it was the first time in U.S. history that a woman’s name sat in that box. We were making history voting that day. But as you can imagine that feeling of joy was short lived.
Ironically just as I started my 2016 voting experience crying, I ended the night crying with the rest of the crowd at an Ani DeFranco concert as we watched the poll results flood in across the country. I woke up the next morning hoping it was all a dream. How could we go from what happened in 2008 to this? And although that night still pricks in my mind, I will not hold onto that despair. Instead, I will choose to focus on the hope that filled my community as Obama led the polls. I will focus on the look in my daughter’s eye when she saw that there was a girl on the ballot running to be President of the United States; a girl like her. I will choose to focus on the power I know my vote holds, and I will again exercise my right to vote.
This morning I pulled out the mail from my Colorado PO box, where voters have received an informative voter blue book and a mail-in ballot delivered to them since 2013. The bright orange markings with “Official Ballot Enclosed” jumped out at me from beneath a flimsy coupon booklet, and my heart leapt. I always enjoy the process of voting. I clear off my kitchen table, stack the voting blue book next to my computer, gather a pencil for notes and the most heavy, official pen I can find to cast my ballot.
It always astonishes me how many candidates are up for election, despite the U.S. having such a decisive and divisive two-party system. I can’t help but wonder who these other mysterious people are, whether or not they received the 5,000 signatures required to position themselves on the ballot, or if they just fronted $1000 and hoped for the best. When I vote, I try my best to ignore the visuals that enter my mind as I read through names and policies. I am a visual person and am often tempted to be swayed by catchy marketing and flashy slogans. But, while intrinsically tied to election outcomes, politics are generally the opposite; they are awash in minutia and drudgery of detail. Even the term ‘red tape’ is too artistic for politics; it’s a more beige, general purpose masking tape.
However, the very act of putting pen to paper – of making a qualified decision with the hope of creating a positive impact on a large scale – is really exhilarating. The sensation of pride in fulfilling my civic duty, and the emboldened hope for change and advancement, overpowers the general disquiet I feel for politics most days. Election day is special. I am beyond fortunate that I have always lived in a state that allows me the time and space to ritualize this precious right, to vote in the comfort of my home with resources at hand to make informed choices. Now, more than ever, I recognize the pernicious attempt to undermine American democracy through voter suppression, and I yield my heavy pen with ferocity to cut through that beige tape and engage my voice.
Sitting down to fill out my 2020 ballot, from the comfort of my own home in Denver, CO, I put my headphones in and turned on one of my favorite songs, Leonard Cohen’s ‘Democracy’. I remember first hearing this song when I was living in Scotland, and it was one of those pieces of art that I felt gave me the words to know my own experience, even from afar. This line in particular resonated, and made me miss home:
“It’s coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst. It’s here they’ve got the range and the machinery for change, and it’s here they’ve got the spiritual thirst. It’s here the family’s broken and it’s here the lonely say, that the heart has got to open in a fundamental way. Democracy is coming to the USA.”
It was right around the time of the Scottish Referendum on Independence in 2014, in which Scotland would vote on whether or not to leave the UK and become an independent nation. I remember being inspired by the level of civic engagement on the issue, and by the genuine dialogue and fact-based argumentation each side was putting forth to make their case for whether to stay or leave. Everywhere you went people were canvassing, campaigning, and having civil, respectful conversations with one another about the issues underpinning their decision to vote yes or no. A stunning 98% of the Scottish population voted in the Referendum. It was a thriving democracy.
At the time I remember thinking that despite all of the USA’s problems, our democracy (technically our democratic republic) was making progress. Obama was in office, more young people were voting and participating in civic duties than had in a long time, and to my optimistic 24-year-old self, it seemed that hearts were beginning to open. People cared.
2016 rolled around and I was still in Scotland, watching the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns from afar. I went to great lengths to ensure that I would receive my absentee ballot in time for it to be counted, always taking my civic duty to vote very seriously. I stayed up all night watching the results roll in, heart-broken and devastated as I watched him walk across that stage. On my way to teach the following morning, I remember searching for sources of hope and historical perspective to share with my undergraduate students, trying to find some way to convince myself that this didn’t carry the enormous implications that it appeared to. What I told my students, and myself, was that democracy is like a pendulum, and thus can be easy to take for granted in the lead up to the downwards swing. But sometimes it takes this downwards swing, and a populous confronting the worst of itself, for citizens to be jolted back into action and out of a civic dormancy that, in this case, led to a full blown attack on democratic institutions that many people thought could never happen in this cradle of democracy.
As I submitted my 2020 ballot in person here in Denver, Colorado on a crisp Autumn day, an older man wearing a mask and a tweed hat greeted me at the dropbox. He had been sitting outside all day in the cold to make sure that everyone had signed and dated their ballots – one of the main reasons people’s ballots get discarded. I looked back and saw a line of people, each 6 ft apart, all of whom would be greeted by this same man. I thought of the tens of millions of other people across the country that had made a point to vote early, many of whom had to stand in line for hours to cast their ballot, overcoming obstacles that no healthy democracy should put between its citizens and the ballot box. And I felt a surge of hope. Cumulatively, these seemingly small acts of determination are what tip the scale.
Democracy isn’t a constant. It’s not some abstract concept or set of rules. It’s not an ideal. Rather, it’s a struggle, an ongoing process, brought to life by people who see the value of working together to create the kind of society they want to live in, who may have different ideas about what precisely that looks like. And here in the USA, people seem to have been woken up by the realization that we cannot take it for granted.
actions to take
VOTE.
Reflect on your own experience of voting and encourage this reflection in others.
Share your experience with us! Connect with an AC member for a one on one chat.
If you have friends or family that don’t make a habit of voting, have a conversation with them about why. Remind them of the significance of this civic duty, and of each citizen’s responsibility to bring life to our democracy.
What resources are available to voters in your state to help them make an informed decision?
What can you do to help ensure that the people in your local community have the resources they need to be able to vote? Child care? Transit? Time off work? Think of what you can do to tip the scale.
Whose interest is it in to make it harder for people to vote? Why would those in government want to obstruct the ability of certain people to vote?
Should where you live determine the relative ease or difficulty of your ability to exercise this most fundamental democratic right?
While we recognize the limitations of any singular blog post’s ability to answer big questions like the ones we’re asking, our intention is to not to tell you everything there is to know about this issue, but rather to open up a space for conversation, reflection, curiosity, and a consideration of all the other questions this one question sets in motion.
question
What effect is hyperpartisanship in the media having on our democracy?
In the past six months, I have been called a liberal scumbag, mindless leftist, TWAT, pedophile lover, and my all-time favorite, fascist. Standing up for Black lives and the fight for racial equality online has automatically made users who disagree with my views paint me as a donkey-riding believer carrying my blue flag of righteousness.
These people might be surprised to find out that I do not identify as a Democrat. I am not loyal to any political party. My beliefs and what I am willing to fight for stems from my core values and from my understanding of how I can use my gifts to better humanity. I am a progressive-minded activist who believes small acts of bravery and kindness can make a difference. I believe in equality, justice and freedom of expression for all, across the political spectrum. So why does this make me a “liberal?” Why put me in that box? Why see me as a decontextualized representative of a political party, instead of an individual human being, with complexity, history, a family, and a nuanced story of my own?
The word polarization has been flying around a lot lately. Politics are polarized; the media is polarized. Polarization seems to be seeping into every aspect of our lives, especially in those moments in which we turn our backs to our neighbors, colleagues and family members who are of a different political persuasion. We are so bent on our political side being the right and moral one, that we are willing to sever these essential communal ties. Polarization, or the division into two sharply contrasting groups, sets of options or beliefs is perhaps best illustrated by the moment in which I was called a fascist. By the moments that we speak up for our beliefs and those who oppose us relegate us to an idea. We are no longer a person; rather a dehumanized, virtual representation of a set of beliefs that they had come to equate with fascism. I was no longer the person they went to school with, drank beer with, played soccer with, or raised children with. I was the embodiment of all that they hate. How is it possible that we have gotten to a place where one person’s belief in freedom for all equates to another’s fear of fascism? How has our public debate become this confused? How has critical analysis come to be seen as unpatriotic?
But I am not a one-dimensional person. There is more than one side to my opinions, to my actions, to who I am. I am not just ‘on the left’ – I am a whole person, with whole ideas that I build and challenge every day. And I know there are people ‘on the right’ who do the same thing, and who feel equally frustrated with the oversimplification of who they are into a neat politically-aligned ideological box.
So how did we get here? How did we arrive at calling each other names like toddlers online? How have we become so intractably divided that we see no common ground left to stand on? Are we really as polarized as life seems on Facebook or Twitter?
Exploring these questions can help us to understand how our engagement with one another through online spaces is impacting our offline lives and our democracy at large. It is well known that these platforms create echo chambers through the employment of relevancy-based algorithms. The more I like, the more I see, the more I like… a vicious cycle that is hard for any user to break free from, regardless of political affiliation. These echo chambers amplify legitimate grievances and create a misidentification of what is really happening, placing citizens at odds with one another over something as simple as wearing a mask. The lines between political beliefs and morality have become blurred, making it more and more difficult to see those who hold alternative views as good, decent people.
These digital platforms, in tandem with traditional media outlets, create idolized figureheads who personify the politics that they represent. Figureheads that discourage people to engage empathetically and consciously as if an actual human being was the one they were delivering their Tweet to. And in the new Attention Economy the more extreme the content and the language, the more amplified it becomes, weaponizing a fear of “the other” in a way print-based media never could.
To truly understand the social issues impacting America today, to truly understand racism, sexism, wage-gaps, climate change, and all the rest involves the development of a web of knowledge and the ability to critically analyze the information available for each given issue. It also requires that that information be trustworthy, credible and verified. But think about the primary means by which we receive information: consider how a broadcast news segment, a Facebook post, a Tweet or a meme is created. The end goal for each of those pieces of media is a segment of information designed to capture attention. These pieces of information might lead to a deeper investigation, but at first glance all four of those examples, if taken as is without any further diving, would provide only a de-contextualized, often oversimplified portion of the actual story. And we are happy to eat up these partial segments of information, perfectly packaged for our fast-scrolling digital lives.
The brain craves this simplicity making it easy to place all of the blame for hyperpartisanship on the media and our government. But just as we should be reflecting on these mechanisms of polarization, we should at the same time be looking in a mirror.
We live in a media landscape of our own making. While we can’t control the content that is available to us, or other people’s reactions to it, we can choose what we decide to give our attention to. We can build our own networks and develop our own voices. We can challenge ourselves to find a way to create commonality, to strive for an empathetic understanding of each other and our differences, online and offline.
It can be overwhelming and exhausting to confront all the problems we face in our online ecosystem. It feels that way because it is hard for us to believe that great change can come from the smallest places. But it can. I have felt it in the moments I connected with a student, friend or family member. In those moments when we stop feeling powerless and start feeling the power to create change that is in each and every one of us.
As more and more of our lives become digitized, it is imperative to the success of our democracy that we find a way to build compassion into our interactions with each other online; that we strive to communicate with decency and integrity; that we seek truth and avoid misleading oversimplifications. That we educate ourselves and generations to come on what it means to be a media literate digital citizen, engaging online with one another.
United We Stand. Divided We Fall.
Let’s Unite.
questions to consider
What can we as citizens do in our daily lives to address hyperpartisanship and polarization?
How can our schools and other civic institutions help us develop a way of thinking about the world that positions critical analysis as patriotism?
How can you retain hope, for yourself and others, when there are no easy answers or solutions?
actions to take
Challenge yourself to seek out sources of information that present contrasting viewpoints to your own. Maintain an open mind.
Have a conversation with someone whose views don’t align with your own politically. Ask them questions. Listen to their answers. Avoid the need to correct, argue, or assert your own beliefs.
Pause before entering into a confrontation with someone online. Think about where that form of interaction is likely to lead. Is there a better, less publicly adversarial, way to discuss the issues?
Avoid oversimplifications of issues, others, and the world at large.
resources
EXPLORE
How media reflects polarized politics in this page by Pew Research dedicated to articles analyzing political polarization in the US
Divided Politics: Divided Nation. The United States is caught in a partisan hyper conflict that divides politicians, communities—and even families. Politicians from the president to state and local office-holders play to strongly-held beliefs and sometimes even pour fuel on the resulting inferno. This polarization has become so intense that many people no longer trust anyone from a differing perspective.
America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: It’s working exactly as designed. In this book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us — and how we are polarizing it — with disastrous results.
What are the values that are essential to your life both on and offline?
One of the main components to becoming a media literate digital citizen is understanding and reflecting on our own use of the media and how it impacts our life.
Being a digital citizen is not something to accomplish by completing a series of training videos, but is rather a disposition we strive to be by changing our behaviors and interactions online.
Whether you choose to write your response here or…
Converse with another human
go for a walk
talk to your dog
put it on paper
consider it quietly
draw it out
write a song
put motion to your thoughts
drink some whiskey with a friend.
Take one step towards becoming more aware of the digital forces impacting your life.
While we recognize the limitations of any singular blog post’s ability to answer big questions like the ones we’re asking, our intention is to not to tell you everything there is to know about this issue, but rather to open up a space for conversation, reflection, curiosity, and a consideration of all the other questions this one question sets in motion.
question
How is ‘the media’ shaping our democracy in the United States?
Upon hearing this question I imagine that most people would have an opinion, or at least a reaction. ‘The media’ is seemingly omnipresent, and perhaps best symbolized by the constant temptation of an entire world of information accessible to us at any moment, being carried around in our pockets. And ‘democracy’ is a word that evokes both a way of life, and an expectation of rights, processes, and forms of expression that can be easy to take for granted. These two concepts – democracy and media – exist both in tandem and in conflict with one another, and we invite you to join us in reflecting on the important relationship between the two.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s define ‘the media’ – the plural of ‘medium’ – as a means of mass communication, encompassing broadcasting, the Internet, and publishing. And let’s define ‘democracy’ as a system of government in which citizens vote directly, or elect representatives to form a governing body, to create what is sometimes called ‘rule of the majority.’ What might be the relationship between mechanisms of mass communication and a system of governance that functions based on the rules of the majority?
There are some straightforward answers to this question. Given that democracy relies upon an informed citizenry, the media, as the nexus of mediums by which said citizens receive information about the world around them, might play a significant role in shaping the views and positions of those citizens. This then leads to more questions: Where does this ‘media’ come from? Who produces it? Who owns it? Who vets it? And the bigger, overarching question: who gets to determine what is ‘true’? Especially within a capitalist framework, in which all media outlets – whether news, social media, publishing, research institutions, or otherwise – must turn a significant profit to stay afloat, it is easy to see how the relationship between media and democracy might be corroded by financial interests. As a consequence, the motives governing those individuals and institutions we task with producing and disseminating information about the world around us requires constant scrutiny, examination, and oversight to ensure their integrity.
However, most people don’t have the time, nor the inclination, to ask these questions every time they engage with media. Most people, across the political spectrum, take a lot for granted when it comes to trusting and believing information that’s presented to them, or that they actively seek out and curate for themselves. And then there is the additional issue of information silos, in which we cherry-pick news sources, research, and media that confirm our pre-existing beliefs and notions about the world, with algorithms designed to reinforce the walls of these silos. When you google “information silo” it is defined as “an insular system in which one information system or subsystem is incapable of reciprocal operation with others that are, or should be, related.” That seems to sum it up fairly well. The current media landscape can make contrasting worldviews seem incapable of reciprocal operation with others that are or should be, related.
It is telling that in the United States, it’s fair to say that knowing someone’s position on any one issue can often predict their position on other, seemingly unrelated issues. Why is it that believing in gun regulation should automatically correlate with believing in climate change? Or that being anti-choice should automatically correlate with being anti-big government? Issues have become dogmatic. People are no longer doing their own reasoning; fiercely oppositional and siloing media outlets are doing it for them.
So does all of this point to a society in which the concept of truth and the durability of facts are as fickle as the whims governing what people click on? The risk of having such a convoluted and confusing media landscape across the political spectrum is that it makes the concept of truth and the reliability of facts – essential underpinnings of any functioning society – easy to manipulate or to disregard altogether. Everyone thinks their set of facts and truths are correct, and they can each point to their own media sources to prove it. This makes arriving at any common ground extremely difficult. It leads to a mutual framing of oppositional worldviews as not based in facts, thereby doing serious damage to any collective pursuit of solutions, as this requires agreed-upon problems based in an agreed-upon reality. But perhaps even more harmful is the effect this can have of encouraging the dismissal and dehumanization of people who hold oppositional worldviews, especially if we consider John Dewey’s timely advice on democracy: “A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience.”
If we instead see each other’s differing worldviews as the product of distinct information silos – the sum total of family, educational, media, and other informational exposures – this might open up a willingness to reflect on how we are all at the mercy of these incidental exposures, and therefore open up a space to talk about what is shared, what is common. A kid from Iowa who was raised going to church every Sunday morning, working on a farm everyday, and watching FOX news will likely have a very different view of the world than a kid growing up in NYC, with parents who both work for Amnesty International and read the New Yorker. These seeming cliché experiences are real, and determinative.
In sum, our experiences of the world combined with our curated media landscapes become woven into the fabric of who we are, how we see ourselves as individuals, and ultimately how we relate to each other as citizens of the same country, trying to have our voices heard as participants of the same democracy. We all need to reflect on how we can build bridges for each other, across seemingly insurmountable ideological divides, with compassion, understanding, and respect for how we have come to be so different.
Our democracy depends on it.
questions to consider
What does your media landscape look like? Is it siloed?
How often do you challenge the information put before you? Why?
How quick are you to share information?
What information do you share and why?
actions to take
When consuming media, even from sources you trust, view them through a critical lense and challenge yourself to build a diverse media representation for yourself.
When perpetuating information online, be mindful of your emotive instincts to quickly pass along the information you “like” and reflect upon why it is important for you to share that information. What value does it add to your life or others? Does it reflect your voice accurately? Did you fact check?
resources
EXPLORE
How media reflects polarized politics in this page by Pew Research dedicated to articles analyzing political polarization in the US
