Niche Media Platforms and Fracturing of Public Discourse

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Erik Fogg: / erikfogg
Moderated by Semmie Kim: / semmie
Event Description
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Public political discourse in the United States has been slowly breaking down for decades. One of the ways we can measure this is through social media: more and more, Americans both unintentionally and intentionally isolate their conversations and sources of information to people and outlets that already agree with them. On platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, this isolation is inadvertently encouraged through simple mechanisms such as Liking, and the resulting engagement algorithms doing their work.
As social media companies came under fire for being platforms for misinformation and conspiracy theory, they began using techniques such as fact-checking and selective censorship to attempt to limit the spread of fake news and other disinformation. This became the last straw for some: the rise of Parler and other similar platforms show that Americans are more committed than ever to ensuring that their news and political discourse remain firmly entrenched in their own bubbles. This further fragmentation will only heighten political polarization and antipathy in the US electorate; the path out is unclear.
Join us and Erik Fogg, (MIT '09 MA in PoliSci) to discuss the future of public discourse in this era of the fragmented media landscape.