Dune and The Matrix 4 will stream the same day they release in theaters. Same for Wonder Woman 1984. Derek Thompson writes at The Atlantic of “America’s declining social engagement” that sociologist Robert Putnam wrote of 20 years ago in “Bowling Alone.”
The explosion of entertainment sources combined with social isolation imposed by a global pandemic has accelerated niche partitioning, a term from ecology describing how “competing species become hyper-specialized in an attempt to co-exist in an environment with scarce resources.” What it means in the infotainment universe:
One might assume that polarization is what happens to people cut off from information. But the truth is closer to the opposite: More information means more polarization. Research shows that access to broadband internet in the U.S. has in many cases increased various measures of polarization, as the web introduces voters to a bigger menu of partisan news from which voters select the sites that match their political tastes.
We’ve seen this phenomenon accelerate in 2020. Four years ago, most people would have said there were three major cable news networks: the center-left one (CNN), the liberal alternative (MSNBC), and the conservative juggernaut (Fox News). But in the past few months, the conservative-news monolith has shattered. Since the election, Newsmax TV and the One America News Network have stepped up to backfill President Donald Trump’s election-fraud lies with programming from an alternate reality. And behold, niche partitioning works: Last week, Newsmax rode the election-conspiracy story to its first-ever ratings win over Fox. Because Trump devotees are going to buy tickets to whatever media universe offers the best narrative, networks are competing to tell the Trumpiest tale.
Thompson is ecstatic about the prospects of returning to social interactions again in 2021, but suspects “an eerie undertow of isolation and anxiety” may persist. There is no going back to a time when Americans shared as much of their lives with others as they did once, he believes. But he forgets how much live sporting events still fill that space once filled by church-going and blockbuster movie openings.
Susan D. Hyde and Elizabeth N. Saunders, political scientists at UC-Berkeley and Georgetown respectively, survey the damage the Trump years have done to the republic. While we may have survived, they wonder how fundamentally weakened it is. What we will look like going forward?
Right now, there’s no way to know if the damage will be permanent. But we do know that democracies are better able to recover from such assaults because they allow for routine, peaceful replacement of leaders or parties. Dictators are more likely to be replaced through rebellion, military coup or civil war than through constitutional processes like elections and impeachment.
This is what democracy optimists get right. Mr. Trump’s abuse of foreign policy got him impeached. His spectacular failure to govern during a pandemic got him voted out of office.
But eventually, if stretched too far, democratic institutions will reach a limit. There may not be a dramatic break, like a coup, but democracy will be twisted and warped and cannot return to its original shape.
They argue that “a healthy, resilient democracy also requires sufficient citizen support for democracy across the political spectrum.” A tall order, they observe, given recent rejection of democracy by a significant portion of the Republican base. And rejection of fact-based reality by even more.
“The definition of community is ‘where you keep showing up,’” someone once told Thompson. For a small portion of the polity, at least, watching Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s online gaming fills some of the community void created by social distancing and quarantine. More than 400,000 tuned in to watch her play “Among Us” back in October. (I did as well.)
It’s like tailgating without the barbecue, hot dogs and beer, I guess. But it still feels like watching Ready Player One. It’s neither immersive nor truly communal. Humans need personal interaction to thrive. So does the country. Maybe sometime in 2021.
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