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Last October, students Sarah Candler was discussing the presidential election in her seventh-grade English class in rural Tennessee, repeating each other’s feelings for Trump. One student dared to ask, “Who’s a Democrat, anyway?”
A lone girl raised her hand. “I saw the awesome looks of the other kids,” Candler recalls. Then Candler also raised his hand.
The completed interview closed Candler. He began searching the net for resources beyond his main sources, for example The New York Times, to help them understand the policies of others. He found it AllSides, A site created by former Netscape director John Gable that showcases the same stories from outlets that look left, center, and right.
Candler is a small but growing number of Americans trying to extract information from silos. They are looking for sites like AllSides; du Flip Side, which summarizes daily conservative and liberal news on a political issue; and News Below, shows how the shops that look to the left, middle and right cover different stories. For video, TheirTube shows simulated YouTube sources for conservatives, liberals, theoretical conspirators and climate deniers.
“We’re in a country where people are polarized or apathetic,” says Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at NYU. Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that seeks to promote diversity of perspective, especially on university campuses. Adds Gable AllSides founder: “We need to get people out of the information bubbles, but also out of their relationship bubbles.”
Most US adults say so one-sided information it’s the main problem on social media, although many can only say information that is against their beliefs.
Those who visit sites like AllSides oppose their opinions; they discuss political differences rather than the transient satisfaction of tribal conflicts on Facebook. Some are concerned about how their friends ’circles and social media followers are reflecting their beliefs. Some, such as Candler, want to understand friends or acquaintances with different political attitudes.
Alan Staney, a graphic designer who hasn’t worked in Tallahassee, Florida, has twice voted for Obama and then twice for Trump. “Being politically heterodox seems to make me an enemy,” he says. “I’ve always felt politically homeless.” This feeling can be extended to his family, where he navigates the tensions between his liberal wife, Biden’s supporter and his conservative parents.
He has visited Flip Side and Ground News newspapers. “The more I studied things like Flip Side, the better I could understand my parents’ arguments, ”he says. When he jokes about politics, half the room is set against him, depending on the side he teases. They hold on to the advice to see sites like Flip Side.
When 18-year-old Saira Blair was elected to the House of Representatives in West Virginia as a Republican, she became the youngest U.S. candidate elected to state office at the time. After leaving office in 2018, he tried to read six newspapers and magazines every morning to gain a wide range of perspectives. But finding the time was a struggle — now his work didn’t focus on current affairs — and subscription fees were added. He was frustrated with the biases of what he read.
“I started on my way,” he says, looking for Flip Side and AllSides. He was “in love” Divided We Fall, another site that aims to bridge the political gap. These resources helped him form what seemed to be the real stories behind the important events.
Today, Blair believes his attitudes are more nuanced. He appreciated it recently Article on Divided We Fall about the benefits of transgender women playing sports with cis gender women to ban their participation before learning about West Virginia law. If he were still in office, “I would have done things differently, having read that article,” he says. Overall, “the platform would be more balanced and educated. Those sites weren’t there when I first ran, and I wish I could.”
He checks regularly The blind spectator, A tool provided by Ground News that categorizes a user’s Twitter actions skewed left or right, based on a person’s tweets, retweets, and other interactions with liberal or conservative news sources. Blair wants to achieve a kind of gymnastic balance: 50 percent interact with left-wing sources and 50 percent right-wing interactions.
“What’s needed is a way to pick and find the best thinking from the left and right,” says Haidt, who created an online network. library for this with videos, books and essays. To better understand the views of the left, for example, the library provides sources such as Edmund Fawcett’s essay. “Restoring liberalism“Choose the right library door, and Yuval Levin.”Conservative Government ApproachHaidt also reads Flip Side and AllSides every day.
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