Social Media: Dashboard for Self-Governance

A couple of things prompt this article that is a discussion about the impact of today's media and technology channels and the way that citizens address politics and government.

First, a friend and confidant raised an issue about how we attribute things that are purportedly said by Donald Trump without actually having direct quotes, location, day, and time. Further, he observes that "tweets" attributed to coming from the Trump channel may be written and prepared by agents on his behalf. Therefore, there is a notion that Trump may not have actually "said" the things to which he is attributed.

As an independent journalist and analyst, the criticism about the necessity for direct quotations is fair. Not always being in the presence of a politician, analyst journalists must rely on sources from the politician and other reports.  In all instances, it is important to note the specifics about the quotation.

As for things attributed to a candidate, candidates "approve" messages from their campaign-controlled sources and therefore it is as if they are saying the content that is published by them. Those messages are direct quotations.

As an author, my mission is to improve the process on behalf of citizens by focusing on the information about candidates and incumbents that are most relevant to performing the work of their prospective jobs.

The trouble that I see today is that citizens are ill-equipped to sort the facts, fiction, and folklore coming from candidates and their campaigns. Political parties are failing to nurture properly and to vet candidates as a service to their constituents. The standards governing the American political system are deficient and underdeveloped.

“The web poisoned our politics: Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and America’s digital divide 

Global forces have left Americans anxious, angry and disempowered. Social media only exacerbates their alienation 

NEAL GABLER, BILLMOYERS.COM 

While the internet and social media have fueled polarization, the more accurate description might be “segmentation.” Oddly enough, segmentation was a long-standing media dream: that various pockets of America once forced to find commonality in the media could instead find niches. That dream was partly realized on radio, which was niche-programmed (top 40, easy listening, all-news), and then on cable TV, which began as a community “antenna” in underserved communities and quickly evolved into a series of niches — a food channel for foodies, a history channel for history buffs, sports channels for sports fans, etc. 

It’s no accident that this occurred at a time when America had what historians have called the ‘American consensus’ — a sense of generally shared values.
It is no accident either that the consensus began cracking at the very time right-wing talk radio and then cable news arrived — a crack to which the end of the Fairness Doctrine, requiring equal time for opposing views, certainly contributed. There were, of course, deep divisions before their arrival: geographical, racial, economic, even ideological, though I don’t remember the last ever being terribly pronounced, in part because we didn’t feel they were insurmountable. Republicans and Democrats saw things differently, sure. But they weren’t enemies in pitched battle. They were something else: opponents, as in the “loyal opposition.” 

Salon 

Jim George reporting