The encapsulation of minds
The problem today is not political radicalization or ideological tribalism. These are the consequences. The problem is the encapsulation of most people's minds in a totally impermeable and boomy pattern and vision. Whether the underlying cause is the growing economic inequality brought about by contemporary capitalism, as progressives say, or the healthy immune response to lethal virus attack on the founding values of the Western community, as conservatives and increasingly influential religious groups say, or effects of technology on public life, as techno-skeptics claim, it is not known. The incapacity of the traditional ruling classes to deal effectively with this new dimension of the public sphere in post-industrial societies has exacerbated this phenomenon which has always existed under the radar, but never in this dimension. The fact is, however, that the encapsulation of minds is a huge force in action and a dangerously disruptive force, because it acts like the virus in "The Walking Dead": the only instinct is to bite.
In 2015, an internal Facebook study group published the results of a six-month survey that investigated the behavior of 10 million Facebook news feed users who had explicitly declared themselves liberal or conservative. The purpose of this investigation was to understand which means could be effective in combating the eco-chamber phenomenon which spurred the spread of fake news and incitement to hatred. How could an openly partisan reader be stimulated to confront a different point of view or an alternative version of the facts? Could Facebook do something as many sectors of public opinion demanded?
The study showed that 30% of the content in these users' news feeds consisted of posts that contained an opinion contrary to their own, which the study called "cross cutting articles." The filtering system of the algorithm, which Eli Pariser had called "The Bubble Filter" selected a large number of these articles, contrary to what had been written by observers such as Pariser or Cass. R. Sunstein. The survey, however, also showed that the "cross cutting articles" were often ignored by readers who tended to obtain and share the opinions or the fact told in the post that they felt closest to their feelings. There was rather thin traffic on the alternative posts, which remained backgroundless alleyways on the busiest avenue in the world.
In fact, it turned out that in the Facebook news feed only 6% of liberal users clicked on posts with the opposite opinion, against 17% of those with a conservative opinion who seemed more willing to make a comparison. Liberals also connected with friends who were less likely than conservatives to share opposing posts. Only Washington Post posts receive, shall we say, bypartisan consensus. Other indicators showed that it was precisely liberal opinion that was most prone to the echo-chamber phenomenon. Liberals had holed up in an echo chamber much louder than conservatives. Perhaps also because of this closure they did not see and understand the deep roots of Trumpism.
News Feed, one-way feed
In any case, users tended to feed heavily on opinions similar to their own, and they mostly shared those opinions with friends. The facts that were above all considered, shared and inserted into the viral mechanisms of social media were those organic to one's vision, i.e. those which confirmed the validity of one's opinion.
The internal investigation therefore came to the conclusion that the eco-chamber phenomenon was operational, but less extensive than previously thought and that Facebook's ability to influence the diversity of its users' information diet was minimal. It was individual choices (and those of friends) that weighed much more than filtering algorithms. People tended to spontaneously screen themselves from content they didn't share. Conclusion: social media could do very little to implement political dialogue on its pages and it might as well have kept the filtering mechanism set on purely quantitative criteria of relevance.
But Facebook is not as innocent or powerless as this study would have us believe because its filtering algorithms tend to favor the eco-chamber phenomenon rather than fight it. The same way in which the information in the news feed is organized and structured, i.e. around the interests of people profiled by the analysis and filtering algorithms on the basis of individual relevance, does not help dialogue and the broadening of the knowledge horizons of the community of users, but definitively borders his field of vision, just as the enclosures fenced off the common spaces and removed them from general use. The result, writes Eli Pariser in his "The Filter Bubble", is that everyone lives his own life in a world made to measure and in undisturbed solitude in the company of absolute counterparts inside the cage of filters. A limited number club like Plato's Academy was, which didn't admit those who didn't know geometry.
Thus, in the most important place of information, the public sphere is deprived of its nature as a place for discussion and supply of ideas. Here's what social media filtering can do if not fixed by a task force of editors. As Andrew Marantz writes in the New Yorker, the Internet has sent the old guardians of content to the park to replace them with new, even more selective gatekeepers, the invisible and inexorably efficient filters. Pariser explains this phenomenon very well in his TED talk available on YouTube (subtitled in Italian), which lasts only 9 minutes.
Hard to find a more refined encapsulator of minds than Steve Bannon. His information site, Breitbart News, which he sees as the platform of the alt-right, has made mental encapsulation a real science, taking to the extreme consequences on the network what Roger Ailes started on television with Fox News . Yet Bannon's mind is far from encapsulated.
Indeed, as Gillian Tett writes in the Financial Times, Steve Bannon, now out of the White House, has a lot to teach his liberal opponents. The editor of the American edition of the Financial Times visited Bannon at the White House who welcomed her into his war room. Despite the fact that he considers her a dangerous globalist and her paper an ideological adversary on a par with CNN, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Randi-inspired Republicans, he has had extensive conversations with Tett and presented his ideas to her. . Tett came out undoubtedly impressed, proving that real confrontation with different opinions enriches and contributes to the improvement of relationships.
Here is Tett's account in the financial newspaper and the reasons why she says she is convinced that opponents have something to learn from this man, whom the Economist, whose correspondent in Washington has, in turn, visited to Bannon, calls America's most influential. The article bears the significant title “What the left can learn from Bannon”.
Don't expect Fox News
Earlier this year I had the opportunity to have a conversation with Steve Bannon, chief strategist in the Trump administration until last week. I met him in, as he calls it, the war room at the White House and like many other visitors I was struck by the battle plans scattered throughout his bunker: posters annotated with his objectives, listed by priority and with a tick on the ones that hit the mark.
But I was more interested in what was being broadcast on the TV screens lined up in her room. Some White House figures, such as Vice President Mike Pence, work in a room with a single television that is invariably tuned to Fox News, since that channel is closest to the presidency and the Republican Party. Other figures have more than one TV. Jared Kushner, Trump's brother-in-law and senior adviser to the President, for example, has four equally sized screen televisions that balance left and right channels, given his desire to juggle different groups of interest.
For Bannon it is different: he has four small TVs that broadcast a wide range of news and a fifth in the center of the room that is not tuned to Fox, but to CNN, a channel that Trump has repeatedly pointed to as a "Fake News" factory. The reason for this is that Bannon wishes to "watch the enemy" rather than remain within the comfortable sounding board of his own people.
Bannon's future
It's quite an intellectual challenge, even for the Republican party not to mention the rest of the world, trying to figure out what Bannon will do after he leaves the White House. In my XNUMX years as a journalist I have covered many political and business figures from around the world, but Bannon is one of the most fascinating figures I have ever met.
Aside from the fact that he is extremely intelligent with some good reading, what strikes me about him is that he seems to have a quasi-anthropological understanding of the power of symbols and the ways of defining identity that he can manipulate to bring forward own goals. I dislike his economic nationalism and horrify the alt-right movement and its racist ideology. When he was still the president of Breibart, the right-wing news site, Bannon told a reporter for the progressive weekly Mother Jones that Breitbart was the platform for the alt-rights. This is the antithesis of my worldview. But the consistency of his principles is undoubtedly high, particularly if we consider that many politicians lack principles and passion. And I admire his clear sense of strategy and his desire to consider and analyze the entire political and news ecosystem even if that includes CNN which represents everything he abhors.
So it's little wonder that Bannon decides to talk to the progressive magazine American Prospect forgetting, seemingly accidentally, that he could have published his words (it is the interview that led to his firing). Nor was I surprised when he said that he loves reading the Financial Times (there are many photos of him with the newspaper under his arm). It is easily predictable that he will be determined to use Breitbart as the platform to continue promoting his revolution. And it is not yet clear what threat this may pose to the White House. Opinions differ over how Bannon can control Trump's electoral base and how much financial support he may still receive from the Mercer family, the secretive Republican financier who invested in Breibart. But one thing is clear. Bannon will not sit idly by. On the contrary, he is telling friends that he now feels stronger and more free than before in running his own campaign, if only for his knowledge of how the White House works and how Trump can be manipulated.
Bannon's lesson
Of course, that terrifies many Republicans. While much of the mainstream establishment is rubbing its hands in glee, it should instead be asking what useful lessons it can learn from Bannon's lesson. I'm not saying for one moment that she has to embrace his ideas, but Bannon's decision to monitor the entire media ecosystem should be maintained. As I have written many times in the columns of the newspaper, today the American media tends to be tribal. Liberal news consumers, for example, are trapped in an intellectual echo chamber that barely gave way to understanding the impact of the alt-rights before footage of the neo-Nazi demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia was shown.
If Bannon's critics want to fight back they need to break out of their own cocoon and start clicking on Breibart, watching Fox, reading Reddit message groups and starting listening to the radio when there are right-wing guests like Glenn Beck. If that's already too much for them, they might start by checking out the conservative comments on mindingthecampus.com, a website that explores the culture conflicts happening at universities. Obviously this step will not be easy for many. But if we don't like what is happening today, we must at least understand it. As Bannon knows, this can't happen by sourcing from one source, be it CNN or any other.
