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This explanation would also indicate why we had less of this issue in the pre-Internet era of broadcast media. Broadcast is centralizing the conversation, and
by shadowgovt 4y ago
This explanation would also indicate why we had less of this issue in the pre-Internet era of broadcast media.
Broadcast is centralizing the conversation, and to maximize viewership / listenership they are encouraged to talk about a broad variety of things... But they're the ones doing the talking.
Apart from choosing to tune into specialized shows, there's less self-sorting possible when the channels and content are finite. You can't easily just tune into the stories you want to hear on the six o'clock news; someone else is deciding relevance and the topics chosen to be relevant are seen by everyone.
But either introduce bidirectional communication or the modern cable dynamic of a thousand channels, and that homogenization goes away.
- admax88qqq 4y agoDid we have less problems in the pre internet era? We had WW1 and 2, Vietnam. Civil wars, internment camps, genocide. Lots of these were approved and even celebrated by the majority of the population when all they had was broadcast media telling them what to think about. I think it's wild how much people romanticize "traditional media." Broadcast and print media is and always has been awful.
- shadowgovt 4y agoI'm not talking about fewer issues in general, I'm talking about less of this issue: the issue that people are self-radicalizing by sorting into echo chambers where their priors are re-enforced instead of being compelled to hear someone else's worldview or a broadcaster-controlled consensus worldview. Broadcaster-controlled consensus worldviews can be faulty. But we have not replaced those faults with the self-sorting of the listener, because listener worldviews are also faulty.