Lockdown has given me the opportunity to read and view a wide range of media and publications.
Some of those sources are based on great journalism and commentary where debate is measured, researched and lucid. Those publications generally offer equally well written alternative views on the same issues. The reader is left to weigh up the arguments and arrive at a conclusion.
Then there is the other. Those publications where arguments are cloaked in sophistry, inchoate accusations are made, inappropriate imagery is used and vitriol abounds. And thats the publications. Once the readers and viewers are given a voice in the comments sections or on social media it actually gets worse.
When the views, on a vaccine for example, of a cousin who failed S.C Science are believed to be more authoritative than those of people who have actually studied viruses and vaccines as part of their life work then I think we do have a problem.
Social media and the echo chambers that, that encourages is of course not helping and the ability to attack and diminish anonymously most definitely exacerbates the potential for wild and dangerous ideas to be disseminated.
"Discourse that was once self- attenuating has become self reinforcing".