THE economics commentator Cormac Lucey has been reflecting recently on the polarisation of society. Peoples’ views are becoming more extreme; there is less middle ground anymore; we are either for one rigidly fixed idea or the other.
Mr Lucey identifies one particular cause for this development of polarised thinking. This he refers to as narrowcasting, which he sees as the opposite of broadcasting as we once knew it. In the past, TV and radio news channels were limited in number and catered for a wide general audience. Large sections of the community watched the same news bulletins covering the same events in the same objective way. After that, it was up to the listener or viewer to make up her or his own mind, based on the information provided.
But all that has changed. Social media is now the lens through which today’s generation views the world, and the target of social media is to maximise its audience even if that means promoting a one-sided view of what is happening. The product is tailored to meet the expectations of the recipient.
When, for example, Fox News and NBC cover the same story, they often appear to be reporting on different events, such is the imperative for each to play to its own audience. Rather than cultivating a broad-based, questioning audience capable of judging for itself, social media rather promotes an echo-chamber mentality, where the like-minded take their cue from the like-minded.
And it is an accepted feature of discourse that where like-minded people discuss an issue, they tend to become more extreme, restating the group’s core beliefs in ever stronger terms, and denouncing those who see things otherwise.
Twenty years ago, the controversial English journalist David Goodhart warned of the polarising dangers of what might come with a diverse society. This was long before immigration became an issue, and it was a stance for which he was roundly villified. In a tract called ‘Too Diverse’, he opined that for citizens to willingly hand over some of their cash to others, via taxes, they need to feel a basic level of affinity with the recipients in question. In former days, this was not a problem since citizens instinctively felt a mutual obligation to help their fellow man. But, he said, this would change, and people would become reluctant to subscribe to the housing, education and welfare benefits of those whose roots in society were more shallow.
“To put it bluntly, most of us prefer our own kind,” he said.
His views proved prescient, with immigration emerging as the central plank in the Brexit referendum. Since then, he has developed his theories, dividing British society into ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’. These he labels ‘value tribes’. The somewheres are people who are firmly rooted in a specific community or locality, and make up about half the population; the anywheres are footloose, well educated, socially liberal, city living, happy to live and work anywhere, with no attachments, and they make up a quarter of the population.
The problem is that the anywheres are more influential; they set the agenda. They have access to the civil service, to government, to the universities, to the BBC, to the media. They have no affinity with the somewheres’ values of neighbourliness, trust, a shared sense of community, a sense of place. The anywheres are not burdened by such nostalgia, seeing only an outward looking, progressive, liberal society.
And while the battle continues to be fought, sometimes the words of Theresa May come floating back. “If you believe you are a citizen of the world, maybe you are a citizen of nowhere.”
COLUMN: The ‘somewheres’ and the ‘anywheres’
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04.04.2024
THE economics commentator Cormac Lucey has been reflecting recently on the polarisation of society. Peoples’ views are becoming more extreme; there is less middle ground anymore; we are either for one rigidly fixed idea or the other.
Mr Lucey identifies one particular cause for this development of polarised thinking. This he refers to as narrowcasting, which he sees as the opposite of broadcasting as we once knew it. In the past, TV and radio news channels were limited in number and catered for a wide general audience. Large sections of the community watched the same news bulletins covering the same events in the same objective way. After that, it was up to the listener or viewer to make up her or his own mind, based on the information provided.
But all that has changed. Social media is now the lens through which today’s generation views the world, and the target of social media is to maximise........
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