This topic is key to the current state of society. Lately, friends have told me, the United States has been divided into two political parties. In Mexico, this is not different. Social Media has polarized Mexico between those who support the president and those who think he is doing more damage to Mexico than good. This topic is important to Gen Z, the generation that uses social media more than others.
The political spectrum has become vaster thanks to social media platforms like Twitter, leading to a distortion of news, and altering opinions. On these platforms, we see more extremist persons making most of the posts, leading to a false representation of political views from any political party.
One of the main ideas of this podcast is the echo chamber. The echo chamber is when we cannot understand each other because we fail to see that there are two sides to every story. The broadcaster tested it at Duke. They paid many Twitter users to follow a bot that would expose them to other political perspectives. What happened? They become more entrenched in their pre-existing views.
Right now, few people would consider themselves moderate. For a healthy functioning democracy, we need people with differing views.
In social media, we see a small group of people with extremist ideals posting endlessly, trying to gain status. The majority-moderate group goes invisible on social media.
This podcast goes back to the idea of status often. For example, the broadcaster describes someone polite in person, even shy, but in isolation, he is someone different online. This behavior change is related to the idea of status.
The broadcaster states that face-to-face deliberation could help people understand opposing political views. I agree with the last statement because close contact would make it easier to deliberate while having a civil behavior. One way to improve the behavior of social media users is through a change in the algorithm of the apps. The apps would need to show influent content from different perspectives, optimizing democracy.
As I have said before, I am becoming more interested in democracy and starting to advocate for my beliefs. I found this podcast tremendously helpful to avoid falling into a category where I only see content from one perspective, creating a distorted view of the other’s beliefs. It is by putting oneself in the place of the other that democracy is optimized
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