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9 - Erasing the Coast of Bohemia in the Era of Social Media

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2018

Jaime E. Settle
Affiliation:
College of William and Mary, Virginia
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Summary

The END Framework of social media communication, in the context of twenty-first century American politics, suggests distortion of the political realities that we do not personally experience. Social media technology did not create the processes that lead to psychological polarization. Rather, it is the way people use technology that has amplified the cognitive and affective biases to which we already are predisposed. The positive effects on political behavior we attribute to social media—exposing people to more political information and expanding the opportunities people have for political engagement—are the very things that the END Framework suggests contribute directly to the polarizing effects of social media communication. What can be done to counteract this pernicious outcome of social media use on our attitudes toward our fellow citizens? Certain realities are unlikely to change and other factors are those, as a society, we should not want to change. But there is a path forward, examining changes to the affordances that could incentivize different communication patterns, which optimistically might disrupt the accompanying flow of recognition, inference, and judgment of our political out-group. This concluding chapter assesses the tradeoffs in altering the course on which we find ourselves.
Type
Chapter
Information
Frenemies
How Social Media Polarizes America
, pp. 235 - 256
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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