Last week was a telling time in America. In Minneapolis, tearful Black eyewitnesses, some as younger as 9, described George Floyd’s final moments earlier than police killed him. In Georgia, Republican state lawmakers handed a regulation limiting entry to the polls that’s anticipated to disproportionately affect Black voters. Efforts to limit voter participation are additionally underway in 42 other states.
Meanwhile, in a seemingly completely different world, a debate over polarization in American society got here to a head. After years of researchers, journalists, policymakers, and pundits blaming polarization for most of the nation’s ills, and pointing to Facebook as a key supply, the corporate’s Vice President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg, responded. In an essay published on Medium, the manager denied Facebook’s duty for polarization, and argued extra broadly for the ways in which particular person preferences and actions form the workings of algorithms. Not surprisingly, the essay provoked in depth criticism, particularly for its arguments that Facebook performs little position in polarization.
This back-and-forth between Facebook and its critics over the position of algorithms captured a lot consideration on Twitter amongst researchers, tech journalists, and reformers, however it exemplified precisely what our nationwide debate is often missing. In a world of George Floyd’s homicide and restrictions on Black voting rights, polarization ought to hardly be our foremost concern—and it shouldn’t be Facebook’s both. The time and a focus of Facebook’s executives and critics can be higher spent addressing rising anti-democratic and extremist threats, particularly from elites on the political proper, in response to outstanding actions for racial justice and political equality.
After the 2016 election, polarization shortly emerged as a central concern for a lot of researchers in search of to grasp points in up to date American politics. In the weeks surrounding the January 6 attempted coup, it reached a fever pitch. Polarization means many alternative issues in a sprawling analysis literature, however broadly it issues how far aside individuals are from each other alongside quite a lot of completely different dimensions—together with their coverage and ethical views and emotions towards members of the opposite social gathering and social teams.
At the core of this analysis is a priority with the fraying of social cohesion or solidarity, which researchers consider has the capability to undermine the steadiness of the American political system. Over the previous decade, ‘affective polarization’—or elevated detrimental emotions in the direction of members of the opposing social gathering—specifically has emerged as a central concern for its capability to undermine social relationships, distort financial processes, and probably result in the erosion of political accountability and democracy itself.
The causes of affective and different types of polarization are the topic of considerable debate. While many media accounts and reform efforts give attention to social media because the supply of this nationwide animosity, Clegg is appropriate that the proof that factors to Facebook or different platforms is combined at finest. Scholars akin to Liliana Mason have traced the roots of polarization to human psychology and adjustments within the two political events through the post-civil rights interval, particularly their ‘sorting’ alongside the strains of issues akin to race, faith, geography, and sophistication. This implies that individuals more and more have fewer ties with these within the opposing social gathering. And, paradoxically, the events have turn out to be socially very completely different whilst Americans maintain related coverage views on a spread of points. Other students have argued for the role of political elites in creating polarization for political acquire, partisan and identity appeals by campaigns, and high choice media environments that supply higher entry to partisan media.
This is to not say that social media is totally off the hook. In a new book, Chris Bail, the director of Duke University’s Polarization Lab, reveals how human psychology intersects with the design of social media to steer individuals to carry out their identities in excessive methods. As a end result, social media customers usually have skewed perceptions of the political panorama and consider there are extra extremists round them than there truly are.
We share most of the issues about polarization—however it’s not the first downside on this nation. Rather, it’s white supremacy and its attendant deep racial inequalities in policing and voting rights, in addition to well being, wealth, and schooling, that ought to obtain extra consideration within the tech reform, policymaking, and broader public discourse, as a substitute of reactively blaming expertise for democratic issues. As the Republican Party has aptly demonstrated, lots of its leaders are dedicated to using more and more excessive and anti-democratic techniques to proceed to signify their primarily white and Christian voters—from propagating false claims of election fraud and forging ties with paramilitary groups to embracing disinformation and conspiracy as a political tactic, stoking white backlash to Black Lives Matter, and pursing policies and rhetoric against transgender rights.
