My media consumption has changed a lot in the last 12 months. I couldn’t understand how I had been so disconnected to certain dominate trends in voter feelings. Was I truly out of touch? In a naïve attempt to reconnect with “mainstream America” I changed a few behaviors.
- Consumed news from both distinctly liberal and distinctly conservative outlets
- Put more time into reading and listening to news purveyors who weren’t as flashy as the big outlets
- Questioned the facts and turns of phrase of all of the media I consumed.
- Dropped media publications from my facebook feed.
- Muted friends who prolifically shared either super liberal or super conservative media articles on Facebook
I did this for the most part to preserve my general positive spin on acquaintances, friends, colleagues and especially family. It was sad to stop seeing these people show up in my feed but better than being unreasonably angry or disappointed in them for sharing yet another crappy (to me) news article denouncing the presence of opinions that didn’t EXACTLY reflect their opinion.
These changes helped but still, something still wasn’t ringing true to me even with my efforts of the last year and my initial attempts to figure it out why didn’t fully gel. This changed when I listened to a recent TED Talks Daily episode which finally explained to me a very obvious issue that was occurring exactly 12 months ago in the most simple of terms. If you are interested it is the September 21st episode “a black man goes undercover in the alt-right” by Theo E.J. Wilson.
Algorithms, the root of my problem. Unknowingly by liking some folks, viewing shared articles, sharing things that I liked and even muting or blocking folks ended up feeding the unseen machine. This machine spit out a select algorithm specific to me and then has returned to me things that are, as Mr. Wilson explained, “an echo chamber of my own thoughts”. Just like Trump bolts to his personal clubs for the weekend presumably to take solace in the embrace of likeminded contemporaries, I too had established a club, one that only reinforced my views and encouraged disrespect toward any other view by exacerbating the potential consequences of views that didn’t match my own.
I am such a sucker.
But with enlightenment can bring change. I no longer echo headlines via social media or in conversation but ask more questions. When passionate discussions come up with friends I ask for supporting data or more importantly what can be done with that information. When I see an expressly disturbing headline, I read the article or if it is from an interview, I read the transcript. In real life this can’t be done for every dramatic headline but even the few a week I can fit in has made me realize that the visceral reaction is what current news outlets are looking for, it is an emotional high after all and it can be addictive. For now this deep dive has broken my addiction, but I am still left looking for ways to stay informed without the drama of the left vs right spin machine. What works for you?