Hard disagree. Far more than anything else, this is about audience capture and the failure of Burke’s “fourth estate.” What it shows is the efficacy of segregated information ecosystems that have near total audience capture. None of this would be even remotely possible if all Americans lived and swam in the same information ecosystem.
But we don’t, and we are seeing what this means for the health of democracy and the rule of law.
Conservatives, having the luxury of an unquestioning audience that’s fully captured by an information ecosystem that’s fully on-board with anything they say, are not constrained in any way by the truth.
The Press, with a capital P, no longer serves as a check against conservative lies because, due to the nearly complete segregation of information ecosystems, any facts that run count er to the conservative agenda can simply be ignored or twisted, and will accordingly never be seen by a conservative audience at all.
All of which is just to say that while our justice system is imperfect, the real problem is the corruption of Burke’s fourth estate which was always conceived of as necessarily existing in opposition to, or at least as a check against, governmental and private commercial power.
But we don’t, and we are seeing what this means for the health of democracy and the rule of law.
If you’re going to blame multiple news sources/commentators (that all Americans do not swim in the same information ecosystem), wouldn’t it then become a matter of whether or not democracy itself is a viable system?
As in, if the only way a democracy can remain healthy is if all citizen “lived and swam in the same information ecosystem.”, Then how would it be possible to have a democracy? Like, how do we have a free healthy democracy, and enforce the existence of a singular “information ecosystem” at the same time? That sounds impossible.
Hard disagree. Far more than anything else, this is about audience capture and the failure of Burke’s “fourth estate.” What it shows is the efficacy of segregated information ecosystems that have near total audience capture. None of this would be even remotely possible if all Americans lived and swam in the same information ecosystem.
But we don’t, and we are seeing what this means for the health of democracy and the rule of law.
Conservatives, having the luxury of an unquestioning audience that’s fully captured by an information ecosystem that’s fully on-board with anything they say, are not constrained in any way by the truth.
The Press, with a capital P, no longer serves as a check against conservative lies because, due to the nearly complete segregation of information ecosystems, any facts that run count er to the conservative agenda can simply be ignored or twisted, and will accordingly never be seen by a conservative audience at all.
All of which is just to say that while our justice system is imperfect, the real problem is the corruption of Burke’s fourth estate which was always conceived of as necessarily existing in opposition to, or at least as a check against, governmental and private commercial power.
If you’re going to blame multiple news sources/commentators (that all Americans do not swim in the same information ecosystem), wouldn’t it then become a matter of whether or not democracy itself is a viable system?
As in, if the only way a democracy can remain healthy is if all citizen “lived and swam in the same information ecosystem.”, Then how would it be possible to have a democracy? Like, how do we have a free healthy democracy, and enforce the existence of a singular “information ecosystem” at the same time? That sounds impossible.