Overview: Surveillance Capitalism, Social media and Polarisation (Overview)

Many of our political forebears pined for more polarization... fretted about the incoherence of their identities ... There were liberal Republicans ... opponents of civil rights and big government in the Democratic Party... 1976 ... Richard Nixon... proposed a universal health care ... created the Environmental Protection Agency... tighter i…

in this Special Issue ... explore the twin demons relating to attention... unwanted attention paid to us ... versus our own attention being unwittingly diverted ... living in a Panopticon versus the specter of our personal cognitive resources being fragmented and deleteriously diverted by too many competing digital factions that exploit intimate k…

I put together my own cheat sheet to keep in my back pocket for heated conversations to come

Facebook is wary of being drawn further into a political argument ahead ... divisive presidential election ... ... steer clear of fact-checking political advertisements... keen not to antagonise Mr Trump ... claiming that social media platforms are biased against Republican ... purely a business decision ... ubiquitous... it must always align with…

In less than a year... weekly church-attending white Protestants convinced that Donald Trump was anointed by God to be president grew from 29.6 percent to 49.5 percent... Capitalizing on that devotion is integral to Trump’s re-election ...all-enveloping digital campaign website... campaign app... a self-contained, self-reinforcing arena where Trum…

The rage-engage cycle is a key part of how malign narratives gain traction on social media... into traditional media... disinformation content is designed to be polarizing... exploits the business models of social media... pointing out that something is false and dangerous ... giving more oxygen to the fire... [Trump] tests and revises purposefull…

Despite some evidence that many politically minded people live in partisan echo chambers... strong evidence that encountering information across lines of difference (a) happens and (b) is consequential. split-ticket votes mostly likely by folks who spend some time with news media that reports from a different ideological perspective than their own…

echo chambers and filter bubbles are slightly different... echo chambers could be a result of filtering or ... other processes, but filter bubbles have to be the result of algorithmic filtering...people main source of news roughly equal ... online and television... TV is more likely... people over 45. People under 45 are more likely to get their n…

our racial, cultural, and religious identities ... overlap with our political identities ... polarization operates on a social — and even primal — level... media executives can now create programming and content that really efficiently checks all the boxes...: political, psychological, racial, cultural, and even aesthetic...Path No. 1: We stay in …

It was 2010 and techno-optimism was surging... Pew Research Center ... asking 895 leading technologists, researchers, and critics for predictions of what the internet-connected world of 2020 would look like... 85 percent of respondents agreed that the “social benefits of internet use will far outweigh the negatives over the next decade,”...Flaws e…

journalism primarily do one thing: cover events... The internet has sped up the news cycle. Now we put more emphasis on covering the last event... But ... events in this era have ceased to drive politics...impeachment... Mueller investigation ... “Access Hollywood” tapes... barely leave a trace on the polls...Events don’t seem to be driving politi…

How seeing the other side’s narrative can de-polarize your mind... the heart of polarization is often not a disagreement about the facts of a particular narrative, but about whether that story is somehow representative... in a big, diverse and complicated society, multiple narratives can all be true at once...

the bubble machine creates a politics of purity... I am not telling anyone to be mates with racists or stop being leftwing. I am just asking that we be less comfortably numb. The result of not speaking to those who don’t inhabit our precious bubbles will confront us this week

report reviews and summarises the recent available literature connecting polarisation and the news media...key findings...: little evidence that increased exposure to news featuring like-minded or opposing views leads to the widespread polarisation of attitudes... some studies found both can strengthen attitudes of minority who already hold stron…

copyright organisations ... succeeded in their lobbying ... establish a narrative that those who criticised the Directive were reeled in by hysterical propaganda or puppets of Google... or against cultural creators... intensity of the lobbying stepped up ... Half of Strasbourg was wearing yellow #yes2copyright sashes ... two years of implementat…

every place and thing in the real world—every street, lamppost, building, and room—will have its full-size digital twin in the mirrorworld... the next great digital platform...We will interact with it, manipulate it, and experience it like we do the real world... Eventually we’ll be able to search physical space as we might search a text... hyperl…

our analysis shows that social media use is clearly associated with incidental exposure to additional sources of news ... with more politically diverse news diets... The algorithms, of course, continually change... More sources does not necessarily mean more diverse... the majority in most countries and in most groups do not use sources from a…

Fighting people with facts only makes them cling to their beliefs more strongly, further polarising our damaged societies. Different tactics are needed, and they start closer to home than you think.

"We live in two universes. One universe is a lie... Everything run, dominated, and controlled by the left here and around the world is a lie. The other universe is where we are... seldom do these two universes ever overlap" This is not just run-of-the-mill ranting. It expresses something profound about the worldview of conservative media and its …

On fully eight of the nine measures, “polarization increases more for the old than the young.” If Facebook is the problem, then how come the problem is worst among those who don’t use Facebook? ... polarization is accelerating fastest among those using the internet the least... social media is important. It’s just not the whole picture... two mai…

A couple of months ago I included augmented and virtual reality in Top3ics, my occasional newsletter, adding “Consider these as first notes towards a future post.” I then forgot about it. Thanks, Newt Gingrich!

The Clinton-Sanders race wasn’t just about two candidates; instead, it underscored a series of deep and growing fissures among Democrats, along a wide range of complex fault lines—from age and race to gender and ideology. And these disagreements won’t fade... we turned to 23 leading historians, political scientists, pollsters, artists, and activis…

Study shows political discussions are ruining Facebook and friendships... users who try to talk about politics on Facebook are often surprised by the political opinions of their acquaintances... a diverse set of opinions among a user's friends makes everyone want to speak up less...Facebook has a low threshold for “friending” ... can bridge togeth…

Democrats and Republicans sometimes seem to be living in two different Americas. We analyzed the past seven debates on each side to show which topics are most discussed within each party (nice, simple data visualisation here)

"... the surveillance society or the transparent society, the rise of camera surveillance seems unstoppable. The parallel I’d like to draw is to the rise of equality, as observed by Alexis de Tocqueville in his 1835 classic Democracy in America. " Really excellent, useful post. - The surveillance society is a step forward. But one that harkens b…