The Post Truth Bubble

BarcaDen

One of the most remarkable developments of the last ten years has been the demise of traditional print journalism and the rise of online news. Because of the algorithim facebook deploys, you tend to see news and stories you already agree with on your feed. This leads to a feeling that one half of the population knows absolutely nothing about the other - witness the shock of London cosmopolitans as they woke up realising that they didn't recognise the rest of the country that voted for Brexit!

This new division, not necessarily based on class, gender or social views, but rather the politics you exhibit in your online life, is creating a strange new environment where nobody seems to know whats going on.

I never watch TV any more. I download tv shows that I actively seek out on the internet. From my circles, I get the impression that this is now the norm for people under 45. I am massively influenced by my left leaning social network both in real life and on the internet. Its only because of my working class family that I have any concept of the divergence between my interests and the people of my area... I feel like we live in a post truth bubble. We don't have a respectable bastion of fact, instead we have alternate versions of the same reality, both treated as fundamentally legitimate. The media reports on the same events with two radically different interpretations depending on what you read and watch.

The trend is less apparant in Ireland, (which mercifully has the Irish Times and a relatively reliable and trusted RTE) but it is clear in the UK, US, France and Spain (where I currently live) In the UK they have the BBC, which at least has the appearance of impartiality but then also feels the need to mirror two opposing sides in an argument in the interests of fairness... ie, 99 out of 100 economists agree Brexit is bad for the economy, so lets make the 1% dissenting voice is all over the airwaves. In the US they have Donald Trump, enough said. In France there is widespread distrust of the media, and rightly so (There is a well documented incestuous relationship between journalists and the political class) and in Spain you have an alternate reality on the internet if you're into Podemos which gives the impression that Podemos has 80% of the population behind them... Many of my Spanish friends were amazed at how badly they did in the last election. There isn't really a tabloid culture here, but the mainstream newspapers with the exception of El País are dull and not widely read. I've lived in all 4 of the above countries so I only feel qualified to speak about them, of course the situation may well be different elsewhere.

Is this dangerous?

L1011

We have our amplification chambers here - reading The Journal and associated sites you would assume that we were going to get an SF majority government; there are other sites where you would assume the PBP/AAA would get at least 20.