Are voters getting overwhelmed by Propaganda?
Voters in India and the US are exposed to hyper-partisan propaganda
Partisanship has been rampant in our societies for centuries with spurts of hyper-partisanship but the current levels of hyper-partisanship affect two countries the most — India and United States.
In both countries, there is a complete loss of objectivity amongst the most engaged voters. In fact, let me say this, amongst the most engaged voters, levels of awareness are so abysmal that it is impossible they are capable of rational decisions anymore. Now, this sounds illogical. How can the most engaged voters be the least aware?
Here is how — The most engaged voters today are not the ones who are trying to make their communities better. Community work takes up a lot of time on the ground meeting and talking to people face to face. Instead, the most engaged voters are the ones who respond very strongly to one or two issues and want to belong to a ‘team’ that will do something about the issue. In the US those issues would be Abortion or Gun Control and in India, those would be Hindutva/Islamic Radicalism.
Until 10 years ago, you kind of acted solo because you were unlikely to find voters who were as passionate on issues as you were. That has changed after Social Media. Now you can easily connect with people like you and large audiences willing to at least hear you at the click of a button. As a consequence, most of these engaged ‘voters’ actively push any propaganda that shows their team in a better light and actively filter out any information that shows ‘their team’ in poor light.
A few weeks ago, I asked people if they actually ever bothered to check how the region they lived in performed economically. I mean, sure, you have some sense when you look around but that is never enough. Just 7% claimed they actually checked any data. In other words, most voters are guessing how the Government was performing. Now you can argue that it is the job of the opposition to tell us if the Govt was not performing well. But if the media vehicles and viewership is also fragmented according to partisan lines, no amount of counterview will make it through.
If you are constantly receiving information that says your team is good at everything and others are useless, it is fairly clear you are a victim of propaganda. My personal opinion is that hyper-partisanship is dangerous for democracy. It pushes politicians to increasingly take extremist positions that connect with you at an emotional level instead of doing some real work. Can we do something about it? Unlikely! We humans learn only through journeys of destruction.
