this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
533 points (93.9% liked)
Political Memes
5494 readers
1937 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It’s a good question. However, I think it’s been answered before by about 30 or 40 years.
The answer is that media consumption and propaganda are often exactly the same thing and we don’t limit, police, suspect, or explain media consumption at all. That’s usually considered to be a good thing, but I think we see in the age of TikTok that it’s gone way too far, and we need to have basic media literacy as an elementary school-level learning.
That’s something that none of trumps supporters have had. I think what’s working in that situation (the right wing blogosphere, etc.) is some bastardized and weaponized version of “media literacy” that is strictly focused on not believing standard authority, and only believing the “new” authority.
Which is itself a very old ploy.
I think the problem is much deeper than media literacy. It’s social stratification and bubbles. There are so many people who will say that almost all of their friends and family are in one party. Heck there are even people who don’t even know people of races other than their own.
It’s also an issue of education and brain drain. Suppose you’re born in a rural community in the Deep South and you decide to go to medical school. You get accepted to a school in another state and move away to study. After graduation you go into residence in a hospital and eventually you become a fully licensed doctor, ready to start practicing.
Where do you go? It’s possible for you to go back home to your rural community but in all likelihood there’s no room for you there (not enough patients) and besides all that you likely don’t relate very well to everyone else. So you leave. You move away to the big city in another state.
This is happening on a massive scale in the US. Brain drain from red states and rural areas to blue states and big cities. It’s hard to have critical thinking and media literacy in an area if all the educated people are leaving!