1y ago

young voters say social media to blame for divisions in the u.s

thehill.com Young voters blame social media for divisions in US: Survey

A plurality of young voters say they hold social media responsible for divisions among Americans, according to a survey released Monday. A Quinnipiac University poll asked U.S. registered voters to…

A Quinnipiac University poll asked U.S. registered voters to select one of four options to blame for the divisions in the country. Overall, 35 percent blamed social media, 32 percent blamed political leaders, 28 percent blamed cable news channels and only 1 percent blamed other countries.

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Dunno man, seems like it might be the fascists.
- There's some research to back it up. Social media has made it extremely easy for bad actors to run effective disinformation campaigns with very little effort on their part.
  
  That and platforms that passively protect them while actively suppressing anyone calling them out, which is to say, all of them.
  
  So it's fascist infighting then.
  
  This shit’s been going on since the civil war. There was no Facebook in the 60s but somehow JFK, RFK, MLK were all assassinated. This is nothing new. Social media just brings it into the daylight.
  
  What does any of that have to do with disinformation campaigns being easier with social media?
  
  I think they might had meant that people had been divided since before social media. To me it just seems they were keeping to the main topic of the post. So maybe they were debating that statement.
  
  The headline says that young people blame social media for divisions in the US. I am pointing out that these divisions have always been here since before social media and that the “young people” point of view (which I doubt is an accurate portrayal) is naive. Phyllis Schlafely used to send out southern strategy-centered newsletters in the 70s for example.
  
  The country is far more polarized than it has been since the 1850s and 60s. This is an objective fact.
  
  I kinda guessed that was what you were saying.
  
  I agree with you, but there is a greater subtext here that social media has made it easier than ever to make money by driving a wedge harder than ever into that split. Same split, but this makes the old tactics look pretty quaint. IMHO.
  
  Ah, yeah, that's probably right.
- Seems like one side wants to feed and educate kids on tax payer dollars while the other one wants to install a dictatorship.
  
  Hasn't child poverty skyrocketed under this child friendly side? As well as child labour?
- Who use social media to spread influence.
- Maybe. Although the hill is a center leaning news site ranked by allsidesm not necessarily right leaning, although it wouldn't hurt to look into the leanings of the university that did the actual survey.
  It seems that some of the choices offered were pretty limited, seemed government was limited to it as government at a whole not specific sides of the government. That may had confused them even more and made them to beleive it was social media more than the government, and possibly why less people picked that choice. That or they liked what the government is currently doing and didn't want to pick that choice because of how simplified the choice was.
- ...who own the media. Like Rupert Murdoch and David Zaslav.
  
  dispite common believe, you still have choices for news. however you can't just sort them by the names outright anymore but by either who owns them, or which corperation owns them.
  
  I wasn't insinuating otherwise, I was mostly just joking because they said "seems like it might be the fascists" and I was simply pointing out, yes, yes it is. The fascists who own news media companies, which thankfully isn't all of the media. Quite a lot of it though, sadly.
  
  ah, makes sense now. I must had misunderstood the context. I do hear people all the time complaining about who owns the media and etc. So I was responding how I did by instinct. Yes we do need other voices in the news besides just them.
  
  Haha, that's fair, a lot of media critique is.... not very thoughtful.
- unfortunately too many people use that label for anyone that doesn't agree with their opinions. it's unfortunate because fascism is a real concern so we should not dillute the term.
  
  Part of the problem is a lot of people are indirectly supporting it by being single issue voters and "putting up with" the stuff they don't like in order to support the one cause they care about.
  
  the one cause they care about
  You mean, themselves?
  
  Yep. But they don't see it that way, which is what makes it dangerous
- Liberals would rather blame anything than take responsibility for their part in legitimizing and platforming fascist rhetoric.

45 comments