Greg Hodgin - American Monoculture & Media Fragmentation

Is media fragmentation eroding our shared cultural identity? Dr. Greg Hodgin discusses the trends driving echo chambers, fake news & biased reporting in the mainstream media landscape. Dr. Greg Hodgin is the Executive Director and Founder of Peacebuilding Solutions and the ZC Institute. He graduated from Emory University with a Bachelor’s in Chemistry and from Georgia State University with a Bachelor’s in History, a Master’s in Political Science and a Ph.D. in Political Science. Can Monoculture Survive The Algorithm? https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/12/17/21024439/monoculture-algorithm-netflix-spotify Back in 2019, Vox published, "Can monoculture survive the algorithm?", and they talked about streaming services fragmenting the media landscape, but this is something that's been underway over 50 years, right? We went from 3 channels in the 50's to dozens in the 80's, and with cable TV it put us into the hundreds. The internet is simply building on an existing trend. So in terms of big events, monoculture still exists to some degree. Everyone watched Sept 11th happen, because it was on every channel and news website. The big stuff is still available, but one difference is that it's filtered through different perspectives. Another aspect of monoculture that's really important is togetherness: this is something the Vox article highlighted. When everyone has the same information, it reinforces community and shared values, and helps communication because everybody's starting in the same place. We all have different communities, but there's something we all share, and that's the Brady Bunch. In in the news space, it seems like fragmentation really started with Fox News, being influenced by Rush Limbaugh and the "Republican Revolution" in the 90's. You had new channels like MSNBC appearing, lots more competition, and news channels started to carve out an audience niche. Along with echo chambers, I also want to talk about "soundbite journalism" and sensationalism. Increased market competition for audience attention led to sensationalism in the media and aggravated the trend of using soundbytes by using the most emotional ones, often out of context, for viewership. This is really what Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" was about back in 1994, right? Sensationalizing the news to stay relevant in a highly competitive media landscape to the point where it skews perspective and ultimately loses any measure of journalistic objectivity. In "Natural Born Killers", the journalist dies at the end, but with the rise of Fake News in the 2000's, we don't have that problem, since the stories never happened in the first place. You don't need a reporter on the scene at the World Trade Center if your headline reads "Space Aliens Attack New York". I don't want to get partisan, but I do talk about the effects of this in politics. Echo chambers, shallow soundbytes, and fake news have been weaponized to influence voting habits - and much of it is seems completely out of control of the political parties themselves.