democracy

5Sep

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Americans Think They Know A Lot About Politics – And It’s Bad For Democracy That They’re So Often Wrong In Their Confidence

As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election. This decision-making process is fraught with difficulties, especially for inexperienced voters. Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil. But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what Americans know – and, less obviously, what they think they know – about politics. In recent research, I studied how Americans’ perceptions of their own political knowledge shape their political attit...

Kamala Harris Fights For Democracy At Home And Abroad

15Mar

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Kamala Harris Fights For Democracy At Home And Abroad

Vice President Kamala Harris started her week in Selma, Alabama, marking the 57th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a seminal battle of the civil rights movement and the catalyst for the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Days later, Harris made stops in Poland and Romania in a show of American support for Ukraine as the Eastern European country continues to defend itself against attacks from Russia. It was a week book-ended by threats to democracy, both at home and abroad. Standing at that intersection is Harris, who entered the vice presidency with little foreign policy experience but has taken on the role of diplomat and spokesperson for the United States in multiple high-profile situations. She opened her speech Sunday on the Edmund Pettus Bridge with a link between the fights for...

26Jan

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Can U.S. Democracy Still Be Saved?

This is the way democracy ends: with a whimper. The day after President Biden’s fiery Jan. 12 speech in favor of eliminating or reforming the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema let it be known that they were a big “no” vote on that. Without their votes, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act are dead in the water, because no Republican is going to support expanding the franchise. On Jan. 19, Sen. Chuck Schumer forced a vote on amending the filibuster, but it was purely performative. No reasonable observer expected any other outcome. And that means the Democrats’ already uphill fight toward the November midterm elections just got a lot steeper. To be honest, this ignoble outcome has been growing in like...

Other Less Visible Biases Threaten Democracy — Not The Political Bias In The Media

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE, VIDEO REELS

Other Less Visible Biases Threaten Democracy — Not The Political Bias In The Media

Charges of media bias – that “the media” are trying to brainwash Americans by feeding the public only one side of every issue – have become as common as the hope that the presidential race will end safely … and soon. As a political scientist who has examined media coverage of the Trump presidency and campaigns, I can say that this is what social science research tells us about media bias. First, media bias is in the eye of the beholder. Communications scholars have found that if you ask people in any community, using scientific polling methods, whether their local media are biased, you’ll find that about half say yes. But of that half, typically a little more than a quarter say that their local media are biased against Republicans, and a little less than a quarter say the same local med...

Angry Americans: How political rage helps campaigns but hurts democracy

2Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

Angry Americans: How political rage helps campaigns but hurts democracy

As the 2020 presidential election draws near, one thing is clear: America is an angry nation. From protests over persistent racial injustice to white nationalist-linked counterprotests, anger is on display across the country. The national ire relates to inequality, the government’s coronavirus response, economic concerns, race and policing. It’s also due, in large part, to deliberate and strategic choices made by American politicians to stoke voter anger for their own electoral advantage. Donald Trump’s attempts to enrage his base are so plentiful that progressive magazine The Nation called him a “merchant of anger.” Meanwhile, his opponent, Joe Biden, elicits anger toward the president, calling Trump a “toxic presence” who has “cloaked America in darkness.” Anger-filled political rheto...

Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL MEDIA

Twitter hack exposes broader threat to democracy and society

In case 2020 wasn’t dystopian enough, hackers on July 15 hijacked the Twitter accounts of former President Barack Obama, presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Kim Kardashian and Apple, among others. Each hijacked account posted a similar fake message. The high-profile individual or company wanted to philanthropically give back to the community during COVID-19 and would double any donations made to a bitcoin wallet, identical messages said. The donations followed. The hack on the surface may appear to be a run-of-the-mill financial scam. But the breach has chilling implications for democracy. Serious political implications As a scholar of internet governance and infrastructure, I see the underlying cybercrimes of this incident, such as hacking accounts and financial fraud,...

7Feb

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SOCIAL JUSTICE

The Plutocracy We Have vs. the Democracy Most Americans Want

We will have true democracy when economic power and political voice reside with we the people, all the people. This is part two of a two-part series. See part one here. Economic power is—and always has been—the foundation of political power. Those who control the peoples’ means of living rule. In a democracy, however, each person must have a voice in the control and management of the means of their living. That requires more than a vote expressing a preference for which establishment-vetted candidate will be in power for the next few years. My previous column, “Confronting the Great American Myth,” distinguished true democracy from government by the wealthy, a plutocracy. Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. Constitution was written by representatives of the new nat...

15Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

The Biggest Winner This Year: Democracy

Voters targeted corruption in government in both red and blue states. In Michigan, it began with an MBA student’s Facebook post seeking a solution to gerrymandering shortly after Donald Trump’s election. In North Dakota, a coffee group of grandmas decided they’d had enough of corporate government rule. They and others are now seeing their efforts pay off. Cities and states across the U.S. passed 15 anti-corruption measures Nov. 6 that were made possible by grassroots movements, according to RepresentUs, an activist organization that supports local efforts to improve voters’ and candidates’ access to the political system. The measures cover areas as diverse as automatic voter registration, anti-gerrymandering and the elimination of dark money in local elections. Those strid...