Talking to Ourselves

This post is not my usual brand of sociology of information. It's true that the topics I'm including under that title DO veer off in the direction of media and journalism and related public discourse realms, but since there are already well established and well defined fields that study that stuff, I've felt there's no reason for the sociology of information to be intellectually imperialist in its aspirations.

But just the same....

My local radio station is fund-raising this week. During one of the pledge breaks the hosts were talking about a lefty show that had an episode on voter suppression (meaning republicans are trying to prevent folks from voting democratic). They bantered back and forth to the effect of "We know there was lots of voter suppression in the 2004 election and it's still going on, you know...." My politics being more or less the same as theirs, my main reaction was a simple "yup" between spoonfuls of cereal. The next thing they said was that there would be a local show about the presidential debate next week. Both sort of tripped over words trying to express something like "because we're different [from the national crowd] here in the (San Francisco) Bay Area."

First, I'm sure that if I played with my radio dial or sat down at my computer I could really fast find a right wing radio show that was all up in arms about "voter fraud" (meaning some people who shouldn't be allowed to vote voted democratic). So what? Seems so symptomatic of the state of our public discourse : preaching to the choir on both sides; demonization and fear mongering. "Our" side is probably right, but I just found myself wondering what we hope to accomplish with this kind of "journalism." Does it fan the flames of my indignation? Burn in more deeply my conviction? Or does it just make it less and less likely that we'll ever manage to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with us and less likely that either will budge if we did?

For the second thing, back to the radio hosts' comment about the Bay Area being different. Again, I suspect there are lots of radio hosts around the country saying more or less the same thing this morning. And each of them is comparing local sensibilities to an idealized version of some "outsider" them. We Texans are a might bit different from those New Yorkers! We Floridians are not like the rest of the south. We south Floridians are not like the rest of Florida. And on and on. If we (whoever we are) really want to win this election, you'd think one of the most important things would be to listen to people who are not like us, listen good, and learn how to talk with them too.

It is interesting that we could live in an "information age" and yet maybe have lost the ability to talk.

Perhaps of Interest

Diana C. Mutz Hearing the Other Side. Cambridge University Press