Media, Politics, and Fagmentation

I have taken a vow. I will NOT express my personal political views on social media. I have views. I am willing to discuss them FtF. But the social media echo chamber turns nasty too quickly. I will not engage.

But I am interested in discussing communication phenomena that are occurring in the current political climate. Two stories struck me today. The first, in the Washington Post, profiled Obama and introduced several interesting communication topics.

The article chronicles an extended e-mail "conversation" between a Chicago doctor and Obama. The doctor asked Obama to use "fair-minded words" when discussing abortion -- one of the more divisive topics in the political landscape. It seems Obama tried to heed that advice, but struggled for balance in a world where "right to choose" and "right to life" are both heavily laden with moral outrage and the "right to be right."

@GregJaffe, who wrote the WP story, suggests that the country has become more divided in the past eight years and that: "The reasons for the country's divisions are long and complicated and include a fragmented media, economic uncertainty, and rapid social change."

I find the media part of that equation interesting. While they are hard to stomach, I waded into the user comments on this article. By reading the comments, one can almost guess the commenter's media habits. Some insist that Obama is a Muslim, some take a lecturing public television approach to describing the article as a "puff" piece. Most troubling are the attempts at "dialogue" in which commenters are clearly operating from a completely different set of "facts."

When we use value-laden terms to describe decisions that are both intimate and immense and we draw our "facts" from different sources, how can we be "one nation?"

Which takes me to the second article. It is in the New York Times and provides insight on my academic discipline both broadly (media) and specifically (advertising). I learned things I didn't know about ad rates and Super Pacs. But I also learned that, as I suspected, a lot of campaign money is no longer going to television advertising. There are many reasons. But fundamentally campaigns are getting more targeted.

Like him or not, Obama started us down this pathway. Social media IS an echo chamber. But it is also targeted and it is cheap. Why spend millions on television advertising to reach an audience that has already largely decided how to vote? Social media offer enticing new ways for politicians to find and grow their base of support.

But does all of this micro targeting create more macro fragmenting? Can a house so fragmented stand?