Don’t blame social media for the state of our politics

The conventional wisdom that we live in echo chambers always seemed too convenient an explanation of political polarisation to be true. Believers could convince themselves that their causes lost, not because they were faulty or fantastical or outright wicked, but because their opponents had brainwashed a majority of the electorate to reject them.

For all the credence given to it, echo-chamber theory is little more than an update of Noam Chomsky’s ‘propaganda model’  in which the media allegedly manipulates the populace into agreeing with agendas that are against its interest. This is the perfect excuse for failure: Scooby-Doo sociology that allows the defeated to cry, ‘and I would have gotten away with it if wasn’t for you meddling brainwashers.’

Certainly, on Facebook you can confine your friendships to the like-minded, if you wish. But it is technological determinism of the most vulgar kind to assume that the economic crisis of the early 21st century and the pressures of mass migration could not have transformed politics without the assistance of the web.