A Media Built on Division
By: Jack Reilly
A common saying is that if you have a friend with whom you want to remain friends, never talk about politics or religion. This saying, in many cases, is very true advice. Politics are an extremely divisive issue in American society, and we are reaching the age where we are starting to form opinions on complex issues. This, however, has been taken advantage of by many media outlets that report on political events. Creating division amongst the people and targeting youth, in particular, is extremely profitable for companies, and it can have terrible effects on the populace.
In order to understand why this division is so profitable, it is important to first understand the social anthropological principle of out-group homogeneity bias. While that sounds really complicated, its actually a fairly simple concept. Out-group homogeneity bias is basically when we humans believe that people from a different group than us are similar to each other while our own groups are more diverse. One very basic example of this would be “nerds” vs “jocks”. From the former’s point of view, all athletes would be essentially the same. However, an athlete would likely see this as much more complicated. Some athletes might play basketball and hate football while it might be the exact opposite for other ones. To an outsider, these divisions would be nonexistent as they are all members of a larger collective, but someone within that group would know better.
Even if we know for a fact that an out-group is not that simple, our lack of experience in that group can still very easily lead us to subconsciously feeling as if that is the case. This is where the media and our newly formed political opinions come in. Nowadays, many news outlets are having trouble remaining relevant in a quickly changing world. This is why many news articles, YouTube videos, and other forms of media will find a relatively small but extreme and misinformed group of people from a certain side of the political spectrum and show you something terrible that this group is doing. They will find as many upsetting stories as they can in an attempt to rile you up so you will watch more of their content, giving them more revenue. It makes it easier to believe that people with beliefs similar to those of these smaller groups might see these more extreme actions as acceptable, when in reality, they probably don’t. These outlets may even say something outrageous themselves, as who you’re mad at doesn’t really matter to them. All that matters to them is if they can make money from it.
It’s not just younger audiences who are manipulated in this way. Many adults are as well. The further you are pushed to an end of the political spectrum, the less you will be able to hear out ideas that may not coincide with your party’s beliefs. Even ideas that you may have previously agreed with will now seem against you. I say all this as someone who was also a victim of it for a while. So how do we fix this? The most important thing that you can do is to know all of this is going on. From there, you can work at genuinely considering ideas that don’t quite agree with yours. Be open-minded and find pros and cons from beliefs different to yours. Division leaves us in a negative place, but a realization of our unity can fix all of that. We all have more things in common than we have differences, and it would be a shame to create rifts between us and our peers over such trivial issues.
By: Jack Reilly
A common saying is that if you have a friend with whom you want to remain friends, never talk about politics or religion. This saying, in many cases, is very true advice. Politics are an extremely divisive issue in American society, and we are reaching the age where we are starting to form opinions on complex issues. This, however, has been taken advantage of by many media outlets that report on political events. Creating division amongst the people and targeting youth, in particular, is extremely profitable for companies, and it can have terrible effects on the populace.
In order to understand why this division is so profitable, it is important to first understand the social anthropological principle of out-group homogeneity bias. While that sounds really complicated, its actually a fairly simple concept. Out-group homogeneity bias is basically when we humans believe that people from a different group than us are similar to each other while our own groups are more diverse. One very basic example of this would be “nerds” vs “jocks”. From the former’s point of view, all athletes would be essentially the same. However, an athlete would likely see this as much more complicated. Some athletes might play basketball and hate football while it might be the exact opposite for other ones. To an outsider, these divisions would be nonexistent as they are all members of a larger collective, but someone within that group would know better.
Even if we know for a fact that an out-group is not that simple, our lack of experience in that group can still very easily lead us to subconsciously feeling as if that is the case. This is where the media and our newly formed political opinions come in. Nowadays, many news outlets are having trouble remaining relevant in a quickly changing world. This is why many news articles, YouTube videos, and other forms of media will find a relatively small but extreme and misinformed group of people from a certain side of the political spectrum and show you something terrible that this group is doing. They will find as many upsetting stories as they can in an attempt to rile you up so you will watch more of their content, giving them more revenue. It makes it easier to believe that people with beliefs similar to those of these smaller groups might see these more extreme actions as acceptable, when in reality, they probably don’t. These outlets may even say something outrageous themselves, as who you’re mad at doesn’t really matter to them. All that matters to them is if they can make money from it.
It’s not just younger audiences who are manipulated in this way. Many adults are as well. The further you are pushed to an end of the political spectrum, the less you will be able to hear out ideas that may not coincide with your party’s beliefs. Even ideas that you may have previously agreed with will now seem against you. I say all this as someone who was also a victim of it for a while. So how do we fix this? The most important thing that you can do is to know all of this is going on. From there, you can work at genuinely considering ideas that don’t quite agree with yours. Be open-minded and find pros and cons from beliefs different to yours. Division leaves us in a negative place, but a realization of our unity can fix all of that. We all have more things in common than we have differences, and it would be a shame to create rifts between us and our peers over such trivial issues.