THE LACK OF DEMOCRACY CHALLENGE, PART II

 

Citing the work of Jonathan Rodden,[1]the last posting begins sharing what that political scientist reports on the undemocratic nature of American governance.  Using the standard, “one man/woman, one vote,” the US Constitution provides certain provisions that defy that standard.  For example, the fact that each state has equal representation in the US Senate illustrates these counter democratic provisions.  In that body, the 600,000 citizens of Wyoming with the 40 million citizens of California have equal voice.[2]

          Now, the aim in that posting was not to share anything new with civics teachers.  They already know about these inequities.  In addition, any news-watching citizen surely has heard from time to time references to this and other undemocratic aspects of the American governmental arrangement.  That posting’s aim is to set the stage for what is to follow. 

This posting, for example, focuses on another provision which adds to this less than ideal democratic processes; that is, how the system draws representative districts and the utilization of gerrymandering.  But as one investigates gerrymandering, one finds that that provision is not so central in denying democratic equality.  While gerrymandering does have an effect, when one compares the US system to others, one sees that another quality plays a more determinate role in creating the undemocratic results. 

Rodden claims that there are various practices that nonurban forces (mostly rural, conservative area factions) use to deprive urban areas equal representation and further indicates that the role of location is central to this overall condition.  This can get a bit complex and the best way to appreciate these less than democratic practices is to compare the US system to that of European systems.

There the common approach in choosing representatives is for the representative districts to be large and to have multiple representatives be elected for each district.  That means, the system is not a winner-take-all approach.  Also, the various parties are represented in such a way that their numbers reflect their share of the vote within each district. 

The way that system arranges representation, therefore, guarantees that a party will be given that number of seats reflecting how well it did on election day.  And to keep the number of representatives to a reasonable number, the districts are much larger than most districts in the United States, especially those in US states with sizable urban areas.

          Here, in the US, there is a “majoritarian” system in which districts are smaller and a single winner wins a single seat.  If one party has most of its voters concentrated – “bunched” – geographically, such as Democrats do in mostly urban areas, many of those votes are “wasted.”  They are wasted even if the districts are not gerrymandered.  As soon as the system has a winner-take-all set up in small geographic districts, a party that has its supports so bunched will be underrepresented compared to its opponent.

To understand this system and how it has become so undemocratic, one needs to look historically at its development.  Given Rodden’s analysis, there seems to have been a qualitative shift (reflected in quantitative election results) with the advent of the New Deal under the Franklin Roosevelt administration.  For example, Woodrow Wilson’s victory in 1916 showed no difference between urban and rural support that Wilson was able to garner.  Yet, by 1960, Kennedy’s victory was strongly aligned with urban vote totals.  That bias reached extreme levels with Hillary Clinton’s vote and her support in urban counties vs. rural counties in 2016.

This well-entrenched urban bias is noted not just in vibrant, new information-based economic centers (e.g., Seattle), but in both postindustrial cities (e.g., Detroit) and medium-sized cities (e.g., Reading, PA).  Of importance here is that while some cities are losing populations (such as in postindustrial cities), across the board, cities are gaining population which is further intensifying the underrepresentation of these peoples’ political views.

So, these disparities have become an integral aspect of the polarized political landscape.  In terms of having legitimate political sentiments being adequately represented in policy-making bodies, this underrepresentation of urban interests promises to further destabilize the politics of this nation.  As things stand, as a glaring consequence from Republicans’ overrepresentation, it gives shape to the volatile urban-rural sectionalism, a growing aspect of contemporary politics.

But when one compares the US system to other democracies, this gerrymandering attribute is limited to the American system.  But that is not to say that an urban-rural divide only characterizes the US.  Countries derived of British colonization and Britain itself all have single-representative systems.  That is, they have winner-take-all districts. 

The other “Anglo” nations also have marked underrepresentation of urban areas as compared to their rural counterparts.  In addition, one can find that labor or progressive parties are associated with urban interests and as in the US, their elections pit more cosmopolitan and postindustrial city interests against traditional rural sentiments.  And even without gerrymandering practices, their vote results and resulting representative allocations resemble that of the US.

To support this, Rodden points out that British parliamentary elections since 1950 show that the Conservative Party (the right of center party) received 41% of the vote while the Labour Party (the left of center party) received nearly 40%; one can judge this as fairly close results.  Yet, Conservative rule garnered 63% of the representative seats during that time (1950-2017). 

In the more recent years, due to the way its support is geographically distributed, it, the Conservative Party, has been in the position to form governments while only accruing 37% of the vote.  And given the relative power that parliamentary systems give the controlling party – they do not have the level of dispersed powers that federal systems have – one can see how undemocratic that stretch has been.  Similar results are found in other Anglo nations such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

None of these Anglo systems have gerrymandered districts.  Again, as in the US, Rodden attributes these results to geographic factors.  As with Democrats in America, the leftist parties abroad, while putting together policy positions that appeal to urban voters, find it difficult to package those messages that appeal to either suburban or rural voters. 

Consequently, they win big within city limits, but fall woefully short in the other areas of their respective nations.  As with the US, left of center parties find it excessively challenging to become sufficiently unified – remember, this blog has argued that the Democratic Party in the US is much more diverse than the Republican Party.  And that diverseness expresses itself here in the US and in other Anglo nations as suffering from ongoing tensions over various issues in which urban voices tend to be ideological and suburban voices are more pragmatic.[3]

These divides can and are becoming quite complex.  For example, there is a growing tension between rising “global” cities and declining postindustrial cities.  This latter strain is further fueled in multiparty systems in the other Anglo nations where the left of center factions find themselves drifting further apart. 

In that sense, polarization in the US might be precluding that from happening here due to the “Schattschneider” effect, previously explained in this blog.  That is, Democrats can’t afford to split on this or any issue of substance and still be competitive with the right of center party.[4]  But this could be an “incubating” problem that might explode if the current polarized arena is resolved.

That is, Democrats, in a more normal political environment, might find themselves openly fighting over policy:  summarily, should it assist the furtherance of global economic activity or should it revert to representing the more traditional manufacturing workers?  Pragmatist control the former; ideologues control the latter. 

Currently, this is no small issue since many “blue collar,” unemployed workers have been drifting to the Republican ranks as that party has opted to issue identity-based messaging described in previous postings.  In other Anglo countries, this divide might be preceding the splitting of Labour type parties and the emergence of newer, further leftist, ideological parties.

So, in short, this underrepresentation of left of center coalitions seems to be a feature of winner-take-all set ups whether they have gerrymandering practices or not.  This summary judgement is made by looking not only at the American scene but at all such systems that coincide with the “British” derived governmental arrangements.  And that underrepresentation mostly falls to the detriment of advancing urban interests, be they interests reflecting the new information-based economy or the older manufacturing economy. 

Obviously, the question begged in all of this is:  should these Anglo systems adopt the multi-representation district system employed in European democracies?  And if they do, will they become more truly democratic?  A lot of that analysis depends on definitions and how one sees one’s interests.  It seems to this writer that one needs be on guard against simplistic views to attain democratic solutions to the above concerns.  This blog will continue this review in the next posting.

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[1] Jonathan Rodden, Why Cities Lose:  The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (New York, NY:  Basic Books, 2019).

[2] Stated another way, just in regard to this factor, a Wyoming voter has seventy times the representative strength than a California voter.

[3] The urban ideological disposition tends to be more affected by critical theory, a current form of Marxian thought.  The suburban voice tends to be more open to global, information economic forces and lean toward practical solutions that are conducive to global developments.

[4] Leading into the 2020 national election, the Democrats are exhibiting this condition in that the spectrum of its varied political positioning has been set aside in a fairly unified support for the party’s presidential candidate, the moderate Joe Biden.

THE LACK OF DEMOCRACY CHALLENGE, PART I

 

The last posting points out that voting statistics reflect how the electorate has been polarized for some time.  For example, it cited that in 1992, 63% of all registered white voters did not have college degrees, and that that percentage fell to 45% by the time of the 2016 election.  So, while the overall percentage of male vs. female voters voting for one party or the other stayed the same over the years (at least since the 1980s), the more substantial factors affecting why those voters vote as they do have changed.

And those changes have fed the polarization that is characterizing the current national political landscape.  Have the political parties been unaffected bystanders to these shifts?  Hardly.  And here a very important structural attribute of the system comes into play.  While the US claims to be a democracy, its lack of democracy has become a contributing factor to the advantage that one side of the grand divide enjoys and consequently adds to the underlying animosities.

An expert on American political processes, particularly voting, Jonathan Rodden, a Stanford political scientist, reports on the unique or nearly unique characterizations of the American system.[1]  He points out that in most democracies one wins office by garnering the most votes.  Even in America, social clubs, corporation elections for board members, union hall elections, collegiate Greek house elections, and so on, the party or person who receives the most votes, wins.  But not so for offices of the American government, at least in terms of the political parties involved and, in the case of the presidency, the person seeking the office.

Of course, the last presidential election demonstrated the case in the election of Trump.  Hillary Clinton did receive a majority of the popular vote, but the Electoral College decided otherwise.  Yes, in the individual other elections, the candidate with the most votes, wins, but if one reviews the results over geographic areas, one sees the group seeking one approach to policy being stymied systematically even though it has received more votes in those areas. 

And this is the case both at the national level and at the state level as well.  It seems to reflect an inherent problem with America’s version of its federal structure.  There, in case after case, the party receiving the fewer number of votes win time after time, at least in terms of the candidates of one party as opposed to the other.  

For example, Democrats in the various House of Representatives’ elections in 2012 received 1.4 million more votes nationwide than their opponents, the Republicans.  Yet, Democrats were awarded only 45% of the seats of that body.  This happens repeatedly.  It happened all the way back to ’02.  As a matter of fact, the Dems, to win control of the House in 1996, had to receive an overwhelming electoral victory as in 2006 and 2018 – so overwhelmingly, these elections are called “wave elections.”

How about at the state level?  It turns out that the undemocratic quality seems more pronounced at that level, particularly when one considers state legislatures.  One state often cited in this regard is Michigan.  Usually, the Democratic Party wins the overall vote.  In 2012, for example, its candidates convinced 54% of the electorate to vote for them in the elections for both houses of that legislature.  That equated to winning only 46% of the seats in the lower house and 42% in the upper house.

Similarly, the states of Virginia, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are cited by Rodden as other examples of this undemocratic result.  Of particular note is the Pennsylvania Senate.  Republicans there have held control for forty straight years even though they have lost the popular vote in about half the elections in those years.  Almost as noteworthy is the case of the Ohio Senate.

But back to the federal level:  In terms of the US Senate, since 1990, the Democratic Party outperformed the Republican Party in receiving votes in eleven of the fifteen races but held the majority only six times.  And here one falls upon one of the most undemocratic structural attributes of the national constitutional arrangement, i.e., the equal representation provision in the US Senate – each state, no matter how populated it is, has equal representation with two seats.

Now consider that.  While this provision guarantees that the big states can’t run roughshod over the smaller states and forces policy considerations to include the lesser populated areas of the country, it often prohibits that same government from addressing the more populated, usually more urban, areas of the country.  Stated another way, California with nearly 40 million people has the same voice as Wyoming with fewer than 600,000 people in 2020. 

Given, as mentioned earlier in this blog, how the urban-rural divide contributes to polarization, one can see how this underrepresentation of urban areas (a demographic feature of the more populated states) adds to the divisions since meeting the needs of the urban, more populated areas tends to be ignored by the national government.

While at the same time, the US House of Representatives’ districts and the districts determining representation in both the lower and upper house districts of state legislatures are drawn to have more or less equal populations, one wonders why Democrats can’t do better in securing their majority votes in those chambers.  Not only do they receive more votes, the party has more registered voters and that is substantiated by polls indicating the numbers of those claiming affiliation with that party. 

Yes, it does claim victories in state elections where the pure majority wins – such as in gubernatorial elections – but still cannot secure legislative seats comparable with its number of votes in those elections.  Why?  A simple and telling answer is gerrymandering.  That is the drawing of district borders to advantage one party over the other and those drawings occur every ten years, based on the preceding census count (which, in turn, happens in years ending in zero, e.g., 2020).

The strategy by which favorable election occur consists of those drawing the lines, that being the party controlling the various state legislatures, bunching up as many opposing registered voters into as few districts as possible.  And this usually assists Republicans by the fact that a high proportion of Democrats live in cities and are therefore already bunched up geographically.  But even with that assistance, gerrymandered districts turn out to have bizarre shapes to be able to accomplish the aims of this strategy.

This practice has been around so long, the name was a journalistic creation based on the name of James Madison’s vice president, Eldridge Gerry, that it has more or less become a science.  There is even special software to facilitate the process.  That process calls on sophisticated map drawings and manipulations and of the two parties, the Republicans enjoy far more experience in the practice. 

As a matter of fact, the effects of these undemocratic features have had profound effects and this blog will continue this overview in the next posting.  For most civics teachers, this posting does not instruct them about anything new, but it is offered as way of reviewing contextual information for what will follow as this blog aims to share more of Rodden’s findings.

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[1] Jonathan Rodden, Why Cities Lose:  The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide (New York, NY:  Basic Books, 2019).

SOME DEMOGRAPHICS IN ELECTION YEARS

 

As the nation approaches the election, it is a good time to review the makeup of the electorate.  In the time leading up to the last presidential election, The Pew Research Center published information that indicated how the electorate was changing from the 1990s.[1]  The assumption here is that those changes between 1992 and 2016 have indicated certain patterns and the patterns are still in place.  If so, the 2016 information provides contextual background for the polarization this blog is currently addressing and will affect the upcoming national elections.

          For example, one telling figure informs one of how the non-Hispanic whites’ share of registered voters dropped from 84% in 1992 to 70% in 2016.  The Hispanic share just about doubled, but was still a single percentage figure, 9% (up from 5% in ’92).  During that time, the black percent increased from 10% to 12% and the mixed-race percent went up from 1% to 5%.  Altogether, non-white percent has shot up from 16% to 26% during those twenty-four years. Today, an estimate has it that the white population share is at 60.7% and there is a projection that that percent will fall below 50% by 2045.

          These kinds of shifts and projected changes have and will have political repercussions.  This blog, in its review of the growing polarization issue, has pointed out some of these.  In short, political analysis needs to recognize the makeup of both major parties and how it is changing.  Overall, the changes are more heavily pronounced on the Democratic biased side.[2]

That side in 1992 was 76% white, 17% black, and only 6% Hispanic.  In 2016, the percentages were 57% white, 21% black, 12% Hispanic, 3% Asian, and 5% “other.”  These numbers further support the descriptive generalization this blog has made – the Democratic Party is, relative to the Republicans, the diverse party.  Compare these numbers with the Republican/Republican leaning makeup:  in 1992, 93% white, 3% Hispanic, 2% black; and in 2016, 86% white, 6% Hispanic, and 2% black.

          Another shift of note in the electorate has to do with age.  Due to an aging Baby Boomer generation and the increased longevity among them, the median age of registered voters increased from 46 to 50 between ’92 and ’16.[3]   Adding to this shift is the added effect of the decreased birth rates in the subsequent generations since the Baby Boomer generation’s procreating years. 

Of special note is that the Republican/Republican leaning voters were relatively younger than the Democratic side back in ’92 but in ’16 they were a good deal older.  According to the Pew Center report, the GOP side was, in ’92, 61% under 50 (38% were 50 and older), but in ’16, 41% under 50 (58% were 50 and over).  For the Democratic/Democratic leaning side:  in 1992, 57% were under 50; and in 2016, only 42% were 50 and over.

How about in education?  In a time when Americans have generally become better educated (in 1992, 50% of voters did not have any college exposure, in 2016 that figure dropped to 33%), the percentage of four-year college degreed Americans increased from 23% in ’92 to 33% in ’16.  Added to that shift has been the relative proportion of how educated each side of the political divide has become. 

Republicans were the better educated electorate in 1992, but that changed significantly by 2016.  The numbers are:  28% of Republican voters had college degrees in ’92 compared to 31% in ’16 (with some college exposure, the percentage increase was 28% to 35%); 21% of Democratic voters had degrees in ’92 compared to 37% in ’16.  Or stated another way, the portion of Democratic voters that had no college experience dropped significantly from 55% in 1992 to 32% in 2016.

What has been the change among non-whites in terms of college education?  The change between ’92 and ’16 for this demographic can be viewed from different perspectives.  As indicated above, non-whites account for a larger portion of the voting population.  There are two categories of note:  non-whites with college degrees and non-whites without degrees.  Non-whites with college degrees went up (3% to 8%) and the category non-whites without degrees also went up (13% to 21%).

Further context:  in 1992, 63% of registered voters were non college degree holding whites.  That percentage fell to 45% in 2016.  But in terms of the share of all voters who were white and had gotten degrees that only edged up four percentage points (21% to 25%) between those two years.

Another demographic category experiencing a shift is religious membership.  Here, those who do not identify with any religion have increased in their percent from 8% in 1992 to 21% in 2016.  And that increase is found more often on the Democratic side.  That, in effect, widens the gap in terms of religion.  That side, the Democratic side, was noted for having 29% classifying themselves as atheist, agnostic, or non-affiliated in 2016.  It was only 10% in 1992.

As for Democrats or Democratic leaning respondents, in 2016, 11% were white mainline Protestants, 10% white Catholics, and 8% white evangelicals.  Together, these three groups had fewer percentages in 2016 than in 1992.  In terms of black Protestants, they constitute 15% of all Democratic voters.  Hispanic Catholic make up 6%.  These last two groups have not changed in terms of percentages since 1992.

On the Republican side, change has been very small.  To no surprise, they are more likely to be affiliated with a religion, and that likelihood is increasing.  There, 2016, the numbers were:  35% of Republican voters were white evangelical Protestants, 18% were white Catholics, 17% were white mainline Protestants, and 12% were religiously unaffiliated.  This last rate rose six points in the years between 1992 and 2016.

The Pew report states, “There has been little change in the share of all GOP voters who are white evangelical Protestants or white Catholics over the past two decades, but the share who are white mainline Protestants has declined 12 points.”[4]  This last bit of information further heightens what this blog is reporting, i.e., demographic factors seem to be feeding the polarization forces one finds among the electorate.

Surely, after the upcoming election has taken place and groups such as the Pew Center do their analyses of the results or any surveying they do, one can see if the assumption cited earlier bear out, i.e., that the trends the 2016 analysis discovered have continued if not increased in the subsequent years. 

If a civics teacher chooses to address these or similar numbers, students can probably add to any ensuing discussion by relating anecdotal information as to whether their home or neighborhood life resembles or stands in counter distinction to the trends the above statistics point out.

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[1] “1.  The Changing Composition of the Political Parties,”  The Pew Research Center (September 13, 2016), accessed August 31, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/09/13/1-the-changing-composition-of-the-political-parties/ .

[2] By Democratic biased side, the reference is to those voters who either vote Democratic or tend to vote Democratic.

[3] Readers should note these percentages refer to registered voters and not the population, as a whole.  According to one site, the current median age is 38.3.  See “United States Population,” Worldometer (n.d.) accessed August 31, 2020, https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/#:~:text=The%20median%20age%20in%20the%20United%20States%20is%2038.3%20years.

[4] Ibid.

PARTISAN INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM, PART III

 

The last two postings reviewed the elements of the right-wing information ecosystem that features Fox News, Breitbart News, and such pundits as radio host Rush Limbaugh.  Some commentators include The Wall Street Journal in that list, but this writer does not.[1]  Those postings heavily relied on a Pew Research Center report, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation,” and that report overviews its findings as follows:

The leading media on the right and left are rooted in different traditions and journalistic practices.  On the conservative side, more attention was paid to pro-Trump, highly partisan media outlets.  On the left side, by contrast, the center of gravity was made up largely of long-standing media organizations steeped in the traditions of practices of objective journalism.[2]

It is this chasm that serves as the topic of this posting.

          Specifically, it focuses on the liberal or left side of this divide.  But before describing that media link, a contextual point should be made.  When one considers the left, one should recall the structural difference between it and the conservative side.  The right with its political party, the Republicans, and the left, with its political party, the Democrats, are based on two distinct structural arrangements.  And that distinction centers on how concentrated or diverse each of the parties’ structures of support is.

          As previously pointed out in this blog, the right, as compared to the left, has a more unified set of interests.  They consist of business interests (large corporation officials and small business owners), agricultural related groups, religious groups (especially members of fundamentalist denominations), and nationalist/populist groups.  Of late, many blue-collar workers, who have fallen victim to foreign labor competition and have lost their jobs, have also joined the right. 

It is the shifting of this last group that seems to have tilted the scale in 2016 within various toss-up states, such as Pennsylvania, that secured the Electoral College vote in Trump’s favor.  Of course, those following the politics of today asks:  can the right maintain those political vectors and replicate their victory in 2020?

          Given the central policy thrust of the right – a probusiness agenda – and that some of their groups’ interests do not coincide with that agenda, the party has had to hit upon other messaging to capture the allegiance of these other, particularly labor, groups.  They have seemed to hit upon identity issues or stated another way, issues surrounding “Us vs. Them” conflicts, to gain their support.  Hence, Trump’s anti-immigrant language seemed to appeal to voters that should have voted Democratic if the elections were purely based on economic issues.

Other manifestations of this trend beyond immigration has included drudging up ongoing points of contention such as those related to gun or race inspired violence.  The last two postings review the right-of-center side; this one attempts to address the left.  On that alternate side, one has a different structural makeup.  In short, that side is a more diverse collection of interests. 

Groups on the liberal side include more traditional labor workers particularly those who belong to unions, immigrant groups, members of other minorities such as people who belong to the less populated religious groups (e.g., Jews who comprise less than 3% of the US population), and higher educated groups especially those of academia or the technological industries.  That is not to say people in those groups are all in with the Democrats, but their numbers tend to support the party of FDR and JFK.

          And since this other side is more diverse, more compromising needs to occur so that the party can generate a sense of unity that is essential to consider it a political party in the first place.  In part, that includes it having an information ecosystem – common symbols, terminology, and other forms of messaging – that allows for that party to formulate the necessary positions on the vibrant issues of the day. 

That demand in a more varied landscape, in effect, helps the party avoid more messaging – and accompanying proposals – that its more extreme members might want.  And associated with that concern, this avoidance also demands that their information sources, the sources they cite in formulating their arguments and accounts of what is happening, also avoid extreme or ideological positioning. 

Central to those endeavors is for those sources to be objective, and, in turn, they need to avoid biased methodologies in gathering and reporting their information.  Ezra Klein writes about this score,

On any given question, liberals trust in sources that pull them left and sources that pull them toward the center.  In sources oriented toward escalation and sources oriented toward moderation.  In sources that root their identity in a political movement and sources that carefully tend a reputation for being antagonistic toward political movements.[3]

In other words, they seek varied sources and aim to acquire a balance so that the resulting utilization of information can facilitate the anticipated need to compromise.  And, in turn, that encourages a news industry to develop in such a way that it can take pride in avoiding any affiliation with what one might consider a “liberal ideology.” 

The various entities, for example The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS News, etc., do not want to be known as the “liberal” or left-wing press.  They just want to be known as THE PRESS.  They self-identify themselves as the unattached arbiters of the truth.  They work on developing their protocols – openly published – that are designed to come as close as possible to being unbiased in their processes by which they acquire their information and in the substance of their reporting.[4] 

This is further supported by journalist programs in the institutions of higher learning and by national review entities dedicated to overseeing the press, i.e., evaluating them, and publishing their findings.  And yet another layer of institutional factors guaranteeing an objective press is how journalists seek and attain their professional rewards. 

That system is organized so that advancement of individual journalists is attained by securing positions in those entities that are most respected for their standards of objectivity.  That would be positions in newspapers such as The New York Times or The Washington Post or on one of the national news networks.

So, in sum, the right relies on a narrower array of information sources; the left relies on diverse sources.  This does not prohibit either side of accusing the other of promoting FAKE NEWS.  Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins write, “Although each party’s elites, activists, and voters now depend on different sources … the source of this information polarization is the American conservative movement’s decades-long battle against institutions that it has deemed irredeemable liberal.”[5]  Yet, despite this accusation, bias seems to be a central attribute of the right.

The reader might question the above, but this posting certainly points out an area of concern for which civics instruction needs to address.  Students will continue to rely on readily available sources of information.  With the Internet, that variety has mushroomed.  Beyond what this and the last two postings point out, a lot of informational sources fall way short of what any reasonable criteria would deem responsible. 

Given what Andrew Marantz reports concerning social media,[6] that should give one pause as to the degree of irresponsible messaging students can read and view through their handheld devises.  And, therefore, this concern should be one that teachers should consider acceptable for classroom study and that effort should include the function relatively unbiased news reporting has in maintaining a healthy polity and in promoting good citizenship.

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[1] While the Wall Street Journal has had a traditional conservative, pro-business editorial bent, it has maintained high journalistic standards.  This is true for numerous conservative papers around the country.  The point of concern over the Wall Street Journal has emanated from the fact that the Murdoch family bought it some years ago.  While that enterprise, under the leadership of Rupert Murdoch, owns Fox News (which is definitely part of the right-wing information ecosystem), it seems to have honored, to date, the operating standards of WSJ which its audience has grown to expect.

[2] Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Library (n.d.), accessed August 19, 2020, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/76a9/3eb0bed8ff032c44186678c5279f20cc5ff8.pdf?_ga=2.230250332.1151241653.1597869609-1463880478.1597869609 . 

[3] Ezra Klein, Why We’re Polarized (New York, NY:  Avid Reader Press, 2020), 236.

[4] To this writer this claim of objectivity is not entirely accurate although he recognizes the main actors see themselves in this light.  What this writer believes is that that industry is like any other, is biased toward making a profit.  As such, its practitioners choose story lines or issues that glean the largest audience possible to the neglect of issues that more centrally and more extensively affect the common good.  The writer further feels that as in education, a value free approach is not possible since choices need to be made over what to and what not to cover.

[5] Matt Grossmann, and Daniel A. Hopkins, “How Information Become Ideological,” Inside Higher Education, October 11, 2016, accessed August 27, 2020, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/10/11/how-conservative-movement-has-undermined-trust-academe-essay .

[6] Andrew Marantz, Anti-social:  Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation (New York, NY:  Penguin Random House, 2019).

PARTISAN INFORMATION ECOSYSTEM, PART II

 

The last posting introduced the reader to what a team of Pew Research Center researchers found concerning the 2016 election.[1]  Specifically, they discovered that two dynamics were very instrumental in the results of that election.  The first being the result of a book, Clinton Cash.  That book made a series of claims about how Hillary and Bill Clinton, through donations to their foundation and speaker fees, garnered extensive payments augmenting their wealth to $130 million.

          Through certain timings, the implications, without proof, was that Mrs. Clinton was guilty of favoritism and even acceptance of bribes for favorable decisions for moneyed interests while she was secretary of state.  The overall aim was to establish a public agenda that undid Clinton’s campaign to win the White House.  What was of note, this effort began before Trump became the Republican candidate – he simply benefited – and introduced the American public to the right-wing information ecosystem that spread the anti-Clinton message.

          The second dynamic centers on the disinformation the right-wing ecosystem spread through their propaganda.  That effort zeroed in on misleading political messaging with the intent to affect the attitudes and beliefs of targeted segments of the electorate.  Further, as part of that messaging, these operatives seemed to discourage critical reflection over the policies and political choices confronting their interests.  And here their tactics had become quite sophisticated.

Using psychological elements of memory and belief structures with the utilization of online, interlinked sites, the designers were able to have their viewers accept a version of the truth.   That is, by applying repetition and familiarity techniques, that affect what people remember and hold as true, these propagandists met with significant success as they directed and implied renditions of political claims beneficial to their political goals.     

Their strategy, more specifically, was to develop a presentation of their “facts” to an array of media outlets.  Through these efforts and the use of memes (cultural messaging that usually use humor or other attention-grabbing techniques that play on cultural symbols), the designers produced a series of mutually reinforcing images that portrayed Clinton in certain lights. 

For example, she was seen as friendly with Arabs by citing specific incidents within highlighted countries irrespective of the substance of such examples.  In one case she was seen mingling with Moroccans, a people that the US has a very positive relationship but of which Americans in general have little knowledge.  The image portrayed is she is friendly with Muslims, a group, common lore identifies as problematic to American interests.

From these images, the designers concocted stories that evolved into folklore which reinforced in-group/out-group tensions among those who viewed the messaging.  And this messaging did not end with the election of Trump but intensified afterward.  The aim then was not so much to garner votes but to ward off ill effects of the various scandals that have surrounded the President through the years of his term in office.

How should these efforts be addressed?

The challenge in combating this second dynamic, too, is that there are no easy fixes. If indeed Russia played a significant role in waging a propaganda war, certainly efforts to identify these interventions and expose them in real time are important. To the extent that political clickbait can be shown to have had a measurable influence on beliefs, countermeasures by the leading platforms, Facebook and Google, may help. But if the fundamental challenge comes from inside the political system and consists of political communication within a major wing of the American political system, the solution is far from obvious.[2]

          Again, as with the first dynamic, any efforts to reign in (through regulations) these practices – assuming one thinks they should be – meet with the rights guarantees of the First Amendment.  Yet in the eyes of many, especially if one can establish a role by a foreign – and in this case hostile – government, people can define this dynamic as a genuine threat to the nation’s democratic standing in its government and politics.

          The Pew researchers suggest that solutions need to originate from within the nation’s political system.  And here, ironically, American conservatives – those put off by what has happened to the Republican Party under Trump – play a pivotal role albeit a difficult one.  That role is to communicate a counter message in conservative speak to questioning conservatives.  The current campaign season has seen that strategy through the messaging of the Lincoln Project.

          Another necessary type of player is news people.  Journalists that ply their trade in venues that are seen and listened to by “crossover” voters – those not committed to one party but venture back and forth – can provide accurate information that can dispel misleading information or information that is not true.  In addition, these reporters need to be on guard against purposeful information meant to mislead them which has happened on various occasions.

          But fundamentally, one needs to find a workable solution in the very politics of the nation.  That is, if this sort of extreme messaging continues to be effective, i.e., they win elections and provide monetary rewards to the networks that give it space, these practices will continue.  And here, the Pew report states, “While the ecosystem around Breitbart and other right-wing outlets constitutes a tightly insulated echo chamber, this isolated conversation proved immensely powerful in setting the broader agenda of the 2016 president campaign.”[3]  The Pew researchers cast this insight as a paradox.

          That is, it is a paradox in that this echo chamber permits an ongoing re-circulation of ideas and those ideas continue to work their way into the broader media outlets.  They go way beyond Breitbart consumers.  It was this spread that led, among other causes, to the election of Trump.  Without it, Trump would not have won the electoral college vote.  This spread of the Breitbart message, beyond right-wing circles, set the anti-Clinton image broadly and repeatedly across the media landscape.  Her scandals became item one in what was mentioned and over what was commented in mainstream media outlets.

          And so, a meaningful address of this “problem” of misinformation needs to be centered on the employed strategies of those who practice it.  What are they; how do they gain traction; and how can one effectively counter their effects?  This needs to be a holistic view of the media world in all its complex aspects.

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[1] Robert Faris, Hal Roberts, Bruce Etling, Nikki Bourassa, Ethan Zuckerman, and Yochai Benkler, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Library (n.d.), accessed August 19, 2020, https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/76a9/3eb0bed8ff032c44186678c5279f20cc5ff8.pdf?_ga=2.230250332.1151241653.1597869609-1463880478.1597869609 .

[2] Ibid., 130-131.

[3] Ibid., 132.