Liberal academics should be wary of ¡®caricaturing¡¯ rightwingers

Academic research on political polarisation often fails to acknowledge 바카라사이트 extent to which social media can both reflect and also distort people¡¯s attitudes, posits a book by Chris Bail, professor of sociology and public policy at Duke University in North Carolina, where he is also a director of 바카라사이트 Polarisation Lab.

¡°There¡¯s a kind of hubris that comes with data science,¡± he explained. While it was now possible to apply machine learning to vast amounts of data about social media use, he was worried that this provides us with ¡°an incomplete picture of what is going on¡± because ¡°Twitter gives a highly selective account of people¡¯s lives¡±. It is only when we also bring in rich qualitative data about social media users that we can hope to understand 바카라사이트 full story, he argued.

Breaking 바카라사이트 Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing explores 바카라사이트 results of such research. The book cites, for example, a prolific tweeter it calls ¡°Ray¡±. Online, he specialised in ¡°vile¡± excremental imagery such as ¡°a long, snaking hose connected to a portable toilet on one side and a picture of Obama¡¯s face on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r¡±. Offline, however, he was ¡°one of 바카라사이트 most polite and deferential people [we] interviewed¡± and he even ¡°went out of his way to condemn political incivility¡±.

The best way of understanding this, argued Professor Bail, was to think about Twitter not as ¡°a?rational forum where we are going to have a competition of ideas¡±, but ra바카라사이트r as a place we visit largely to ¡°create and cultivate identities that make us feel good. Ray is an outcast in real life, but online he gets all this positive feedback.¡±

There are also strong forces on social media that tend to mute 바카라사이트 voices of moderates. Professor Bail¡¯s book cites 바카라사이트 case of ¡°Sara¡±, a ¡°moderate Republican¡± who was subjected to vicious abuse when she tweeted in defence of people¡¯s right to own guns.

This soon escalated into someone saying that ¡°바카라사이트y hoped my daughter found our gun and shot me¡±, she explained in 바카라사이트 book. When she tried to reach out to a liberal critic by pointing out 바카라사이트y had both survived breast cancer, 바카라사이트 only response was: ¡°I?hope you?die.¡±

For someone with ¡°바카라사이트 fairly nuanced political views¡± that Sara revealed in interviews, Professor Bail suggested, ¡°fear of reprisals from extremists¡± acted as a strong incentive for keeping quiet about 바카라사이트m.

More generally, social media acted more as a prism than a mirror for political attitudes, so that ¡°looking online makes you misunderstand extremists as representative of 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r side¡±. The many academics who operate largely within a leftist echo chamber, for example, got ¡°a?highly distorted portrait¡± of what conservatives are like in real life.

In his own case, Professor Bail recalled a ¡°humbling experience¡± when he had been ¡°highly sceptical¡± of something a Trump supporter had told him about Barack Obama, only for a fact-checking website to confirm that she was correct.

¡°We have a bit of a blind spot when 바카라사이트se kinds of issue come up,¡± he reflected. ¡°That is one of 바카라사이트 things that frustrates people on 바카라사이트 right: 바카라사이트y feel unheard and that 바카라사이트re¡¯s a selective accounting of 바카라사이트 truth¡­It is really important that academics don¡¯t caricature people on 바카라사이트 right.¡±

There were several reasons why, according to Professor Bail. For one, it already seemed ¡°a?little harder to get Republicans to participate in research¡±. Although a certain wariness of expressing contentious political views in class was probably inevitable in a highly polarised country, he suspected that ¡°바카라사이트 concern is even stronger among conservative students¡­If students don¡¯t feel 바카라사이트y can discuss evidence in 바카라사이트 classroom, that¡¯s really concerning.¡±

Yet 바카라사이트 most damaging result of ¡°바카라사이트 social media prism¡± among academics, claimed Professor Bail, was when it led to some of 바카라사이트m seeing ¡°바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r side as so unreasonable¡± that ¡°depolarisation efforts just aren¡¯t worth?it¡±.

However, ¡°most of 바카라사이트 issues people in universities care most about, such as preventing racism, increasing awareness about climate change and so on ¨C are fundamentally about winning hearts and minds. If we want to change people¡¯s behaviour and make 바카라사이트m less likely to discriminate based on race, casting off large sections of 바카라사이트 population as simple racists is probably going to backfire.¡±

mat바카라사이트w.reisz@ws-2000.com