Turn Ideas Into InsightsWrite like a pro, even if you're not. AI magic at your fingertips.

The reason why news media is so polarizing...

Dec 14, 2021 · 3 mins read

0

Share

The attention economy

Political news used to be packaged alongside everything else: sports, entertainment, etc. If you watched TV or read a newspaper, it was hard to avoid. Then something interesting happened…

Save

Share

A new era of choice meant that you could take a deep dive into your favorite topics and ignore everything else. This divided the media landscape into the interested and the uninterested.

Save

Share

As the competition for people’s attention spans intensified, the internet got better at understanding what we like and giving us more of it.

Save

Share

Being interested in politics essentially means taking sides, as the ideological differences between parties are so great that they’re often defined as polar opposites (left vs. right).

Save

Share

So if you were interested in politics, you started seeing online content with the same underlying message: “This is why your side is right.”

Save

Share

Outrage, it turns out, attracts lots of clicks – and virality is the name of the game when it comes to news media.

Save

Share

Social media platforms allow us to curate a public-facing image: an avatar of what we believe in and stand for.

Save

Share

Since sharing something online is like making a statement about what group we belong to (and don’t belong to), there’s little appetite for timid stories. Attention-grabbing stuff is what wins out.

Save

Share

As a result, the internet’s “economy of attention” began to reproduce basic social dynamics online: it’s easier to make a new friend when you’re united against a common enemy.

Save

Share

But there’s also a glaring downside to this: the more connected we are to an identity or group, the harder it is to reconsider our position. We start shutting out the possibility of being wrong.

Save

Share

1/2

0

0 saves0 comments
Like
Comments
Share