Building Dialogue

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. – Abraham Lincoln

The phone is a narrow aperture that draws our gaze from the world around us to the curated world that flows through its screen.  That world is often aggressively pushing disinformation at us.  This sheer volume of information can overwhelm us, threatening our ability to make wise decisions and discouraging our efforts to engage.  

“In 2010, we spent 3% of our waking hours on our phones.  In 2021, that number was 33%. More than half of that time  is spent on social media . . .” (Adrift, by Scott Galloway, p. 116). The sheer amount of time we spend on social media makes it a particularly potent threat to democracy because what grabs our attention most is not serious, fact-based analysis but rather content that enrages or amuses and that we can easily scroll through.

Vice President Henry Wallace, writing in 1944 in the New York Times about the dangers of American fascism, warned that “The American Fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a Fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public . . .”  Social media is an information channel that is easy to poison.  Historian Heather Cox Richardson, writing in 2024 described the political disinformation that courses through our phones as follows:  “The firehose of lies is designed to make it impossible for voters to figure out the truth. The technique is designed so that eventually voters give up trying to engage, conclude everyone is lying, throw up their hands, and stop voting. Holding on to facts combats the effects of the storm of lies.”  (Letters From An American, Oct 4 2024).

So what can you do to ground yourself, discern “the real facts”, and stay engaged? 

• Find the time to separate from the internet.  Schedule time to think about what you are seeing and hearing and what questions you have. As Scott Galloway observed, “To move forward, we need to build new ways of sifting through the waves of information pushed at us.”  Think about what you value and where we might go if we work together. 
• Test your sources so you aren’t inadvertently caught in an information bubble.  Seek out different sources of information and test the ones you rely on.  There are various tools out there to help you identify outright lies.  Some tools to explore include newsguardtech.com,  newslit.org; https://www.snopes.com/, https://www.debunkbot.com/ and https://www.politifact.com/
• Listen for language that is designed to inflame and manipulate.  This includes dehumanizing language, simplistic “us v. them” framing, violent and exaggerated imagery, deflection, inconsistency and incoherence.  Try rephrasing messages that upset you in your own language and measure it against your real life experience. 
• Ask questions, especially about definitions.  A term like “freedom” can be defined in many different ways. Is it being used in a way that is aligned with what you value? If so, what other questions might you generate? And for any position that is being pushed at you, ask Why? Why is this being pushed at me (and who will benefit if I accept it?).  Why do I feel this way? Why does it matter to me?  You might also ask What? What is being pushed at me? What information supports that? What is being left out? What don’t I know and need to learn more about?

Thomas Jefferson warned that citizens would need to be the ultimate guardians of their own liberty.  Do your best to stay calm and stay curious when faced with rhetoric and memes designed to inflame and manipulate. As Tom Nichols, writing for The Atlantic, observed,  ”. . . remaining engaged in civic life calmly and without stooping to such tactics and rhetoric, is the superpower of every citizen in a democracy.”   Use that superpower whenever you can.   

Resources.  

A Lot of People Are Saying  by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenbaum

Antisocial  by Andrew Marantz

On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder