You are missing something. He is positing that it is current strain of "liberalism" itself that works in conjunction with social media usage that creates the problem. The article is very clear about this, including citing research to this effect, although he ultimately disagrees with the conclusions that the researchers reach. But the da…
You are missing something. He is positing that it is current strain of "liberalism" itself that works in conjunction with social media usage that creates the problem. The article is very clear about this, including citing research to this effect, although he ultimately disagrees with the conclusions that the researchers reach. But the data itself is instructive. In a nutshell, the belief in the attainability of a utopian society is the problem. That's a poor representation of the totality of his argument, so I urge you to re-read the piece and see if you can pick up on this thread. Also, The Coddling of the American Mind is an indispensable book length exploration of this phenomenon, if you want a lengthier and ultimately more fully argued explanation. Cheers.
And read the notes at the end of the book. The clear implication is that the current iteration of "liberalism" (not that it's liberal in any literal sense) was partly birthed by social media. You can't separate them. Much of 60s/post-60s liberalism -- different from the New Deal/WWII liberalism of the cinema/radio era, and 19th-century classical liberalism of the book/print/non-graphical era -- is unthinkable without the media of that era -- high-end magazines, influential national newspapers, television. That's the era that came to an end in the early 2000s with the collapse of mass broadcast advertising and the type of media it supported. A remnant of it persists, but heavily dependent on a narrow, well-to-do, bicoastal class of readers, non-profit foundations, etc. And it dances to the tune of social media, not vice versa.
Even media on the right has been affected by this new model; viz., Fox News, which aggressively panders to a narrow but intense and engaged/enraged minority of its viewers. Only a few old-fashioned hold-outs remain, like the WSJ and National Review.
You are missing something. He is positing that it is current strain of "liberalism" itself that works in conjunction with social media usage that creates the problem. The article is very clear about this, including citing research to this effect, although he ultimately disagrees with the conclusions that the researchers reach. But the data itself is instructive. In a nutshell, the belief in the attainability of a utopian society is the problem. That's a poor representation of the totality of his argument, so I urge you to re-read the piece and see if you can pick up on this thread. Also, The Coddling of the American Mind is an indispensable book length exploration of this phenomenon, if you want a lengthier and ultimately more fully argued explanation. Cheers.
And read the notes at the end of the book. The clear implication is that the current iteration of "liberalism" (not that it's liberal in any literal sense) was partly birthed by social media. You can't separate them. Much of 60s/post-60s liberalism -- different from the New Deal/WWII liberalism of the cinema/radio era, and 19th-century classical liberalism of the book/print/non-graphical era -- is unthinkable without the media of that era -- high-end magazines, influential national newspapers, television. That's the era that came to an end in the early 2000s with the collapse of mass broadcast advertising and the type of media it supported. A remnant of it persists, but heavily dependent on a narrow, well-to-do, bicoastal class of readers, non-profit foundations, etc. And it dances to the tune of social media, not vice versa.
Even media on the right has been affected by this new model; viz., Fox News, which aggressively panders to a narrow but intense and engaged/enraged minority of its viewers. Only a few old-fashioned hold-outs remain, like the WSJ and National Review.