United States of Distraction Continues
Letting News Media Set The 2022 Outrage Agenda Is Undermining Democracy
We are nearly halfway through yet another year where media consistently distract an unfocused public from one outrage to another. When 2022 began, people were still gripped by concerns about potential school closures, mask mandates, and new variants from COVID-19. Quickly, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine became the next outrage leading people to post their support for Ukraine on their social media profiles and in some cases even their homes and vehicles got the obligatory virtue-signalling blue and gold treatment. In addition, Russian names were removed from popular products such as the Moscow Mule as we hit Freedom Fries level insanity of the post-9/11 era.
The tragedy in Buffalo, New York this past weekend is poised to become the next outrage to dominate the culture’s discourse. Back to systemic racism, mass shooter manifestos, and gun violence. News cycle outrage, recycle, spin, repeat. The only thing shorter than the average American’s fuse is the news media cycle.
The digital age has enabled media users to ponder just about everything and do mostly nothing all at once. Indeed, research reveals that although humans think they are great at multi-tasking, they are terrible at it. The common act of checking an email—which people do an average of 150 times a day—reduces users’ ability to focus and refocus our attention on the task or topic at hand. Researchers have noted that capitalism necessitates a market of attention, where governments and industries utilize media to capture the audience’s attention to market products, practices, and policies. Indeed, the economic viability of digital platforms such as Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Meta (formerly Facebook) utilize tricks from the gambling industry to capture users’ attention by keeping them addicted to their screens. It seems to be working.
This is particularly problematic in a democracy when it is up to the citizenry to set and achieve well-defined goals. As we noted in our 2019 book, United States of Distraction, our new media exacerbates this problem by utilizing sensationalistic frames of news stories to consistently draw people’s attention to the next outrage. Since Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016, the public has been jolted from one outrage to another: sexual assault preserved by the “Me Too” movement; white supremacist rallies and attacks such as those in Charlottesville (now Buffalo); school shooting victims such as those in Parkland, Florida; the Russians for supposed electoral meddling and fake news; harassment, abuse, the police violence exemplified by George Floyd’s murder, and then the “Stop the Steal” so-called “insurrection” of January 6th. Although these issues are critically important to understand, rather than make progress on any one of them, we simply move along to the next outrage, ever riding the next shallow wave of fury. After all, we are an outrage culture, and we are indeed outraged.
The design of digital platforms is partially to blame. The slick advertising of Big Tech gives users the delusion that their posts are making a difference when in fact the parameters of their posts and who sees them are all dictated by the platform, not the users. As a result, the majority of users are led to believe that they are quickly addressing each atrocity and outrage with swift activism when in fact they are virtue-signalling online to a vocal minority. This occurs outside of social media. Numerous academics have reduced their activism to writing and signing passionate emails about each new media outrage with signature lines of resistance. Although this communicates one’s position it does little to dismantle inequitable structures or hold the powerful accountable in the light of such outrage-inducing current events.
Whether it be social media or email, digital virtue signalling on every new outrage speaks to the nation’s lack of awareness about activism and its role in a democracy. The U.S. grants Constitutional rights for freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, a free press, and to redress grievances, that is to say, agitate for change so the people can hold the powerful accountable. This was lost on social critic Bill Maher who recently asked what protesting was going to do during a discussion about the recent activism outside Supreme Court Justices’ homes. Similarly, lawmakers condemned activists for trying to engage Senator Kyrsten Sinema in dialogue in a bathroom. If we had an intrepid free press that sought out such public figures and demanded they respond to queries in the public interest, perhaps we would not need citizens amassing at public officials’ homes or cornering elected officials in a bathroom.
That said, these tactics would not be lost on those in the civil rights movement who historically agitated and annoyed the white majority to codify basic human rights into law. Further, they never got distracted by competing injustices. Take Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK). It is true that he was involved in class struggles and the anti-war movement, but he never seemed to lose sight of his goal of civil rights for people of colour. Similarly, the great anarchist Emma Goldman dedicated her life to issues of feminism and free speech but never lost sight of her passion for the labour movement.
None of this is to say that we need to ignore injustices, but we need to be realistic about how much our brains can handle. It takes an incredible amount of hubris and narcissism to assume that we can all be experts when addressing Russia, Ukraine, Afghanistan, white supremacy, the patriarchy, climate crisis, and mass shootings. Like other great activists, MLK and Goldman are remembered for the progress they made on the issues they centred their attention upon, not the issues they failed to address. We would be wise to note the example they set: they defined and worked toward achievable social justice goals, rather than virtue signalling about many social justice matters only to end up with a junk bin of deleted emails from the cause.
 | A guest post by
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 | A guest post by
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