Digital Wasteland
Cleaning a poisoned media ecosystem calls for ideas that are as networked as all the garbage.
Conspiracy theories, confusion, fear and hatred — these work like pollutants that contaminate and destroy our information ecosystems. But can we clean the dump simply with more reform of the digital infrastructure and regulation of social media platforms? Not according to our guest on this episode. She says we have to address the roots of the problem with a more holistic vision for social change in the real world, not just the virtual one.
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The toxic waste that seeps into rivers taints everything downstream, spoiling lakes and oceans, killing flora and fauna, altering the air we breathe and raining back down. Information works the same way, media scholar Whitney Phillips says. Fueled by human passions, falsehoods permeate the mainstream media, undermine trust and hurt vulnerable people most. To untangle this trash, she argues, we need to think ecologically, too: looking not only to coders but faith leaders, teachers, even healthcare workers.
This is why Phillips makes a plea on the show this week for shifting the focus of the debate away from negative freedoms and simplistic notions of free speech to a celebration of positive freedoms that foster healthy digital spaces. And besides tweaking media systems themselves, she tells Will and Siva, we need a real-world shift toward a culture of care rather than distrust.
