Thread: Considering reading Chris Bail's, Breaking the Social Media Prism, (Princeton, 2021). He starts with the problem of social and political polarization and asks how social media contributes to it. amzn.to/2SaJX77 1/7
The common thesis is that algorithms keep us in ‘echo chambers’ where we hear only our own side. Research shows that-on the contrary, daily exposure to the other political/cultural side (and not just to the nasty caustic versions of it) only made people stronger in their view 2/7
...or even more extreme. Why? Further research revealed that for a significant number-especially for those who do the most posting (rather than just reading) social media has become a place where people increasingly disembedded from face to face community curate an identity. 3/7
We are irreducibly relational and get our identity mainly from what people see in us and say of us. We need outside validation. Bail argues that social media has become the place those of us with fragile selves or ‘spoiled identities’ (Goffman) go to for a few things: 4/7
(1) to get far more control over the presentation of our selves [you don’t have to live face to face with them] (2) to get feedback about the presentation with unprecedented scale and speed (3) & then to constantly calibrate and curate our identities in order to get affirmation
with our chosen (and as large as possible) community for social status and a sense of belonging. Chris Bail shows that Social Media is not primarily a place of public discussion—it is a means of forging individual identity, status-seeking, & social bonding in a culture that 6/7
has eroded older ways of doing so. I recommend his book. amzn.to/2SaJX77 7/7
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