American Politics

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Mass polarization throughout media is a reality. Nowadays with the technology development’s we can choose exactly what articles to read in the newspaper and which ones not; which political blogs we should check and which ones really do not match our credentials. In spite of this fact in order to build strong arguments to support our believes, we need to read and understand the credentials of the contrary side. We have to think globally and subtract conclusions out of the total of the speech, not only a part of it. Otherwise we will fall into polarization.

Everything that flows in the network is not always accurate and if we are not able to verify other sources and try to think critically our own assumption of reality can play a trick on us. Therefore media and mass information can also deceive us. Thus, Some Russian media websites, like RT and Sputnik, are known to have spread some fake or false news reports during the election.

For example, Sputnik published an article that said the Podesta email dump included certain incriminating comments about the Benghazi scandal, an allegation that turned out to be incorrect. As we start bringing out to the light all the occurrences that have taken place during the 2016 elections we can see how the role that media plays clearly influences society. “When an opinion is represented by a society, it necessarily assumes a more exact and explicit form. It numbers its partisans, and compromises their welfare in its cause.”[8] Therefore, the society built an opinion out of information, without corroborating its truthfulness. Even if, eventually, the information happened to be false, just because it was spread out through the media and internet the individuals believed it, and those presumptions clearly influenced the electoral behavior.

To conclude the roles that both media and journalist play in the democratic process are substantial for keeping safe the right of speech. It is a need to keep alive the fire that links us with our society as a whole and that strengths the chains between us as individuals. In spite of this, as professor Cass Sunstein exposes, the idea of free speech itself has an affirmative side. “It imposes constraints on what government may do, but requires a certain kind of culture as well.”[9]

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