For too many of us, it's become safer to retreat into our own bubbles, whether in our neighborhoods or on college campuses, or places of worship or especially our social media feeds, surrounded by people who look like us and share the same political outlook and never challenge our assumptions. And increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we start accepting only information, whether it's true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that is out there.
Part of what's changed in politics is social media and how people are receiving information.
Non-Islamic, non-foreign-motivated terrorist actions have killed at least as many Americans on American soil as those who were promoted by jihadists. But what we have also seen is ISIL evolve, because of the sophistication of their social media, to a point where they may be inspiring more attacks - even if they're self-initiated, even if they don't involve complex planning - than we would have seen some time ago.
You have social media and the Internet and immigration and so, suddenly, cultures are clashing and people feel as if they're less familiar with the people around them. That causes social anxieties.
American politics is always somewhat fluid. In this age of social media, it means that voters can swing back and forth.
It's easier to make negative attacks and simplistic slogans [in social media] than it is to communicate complex policies.
If we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not. And particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.
When people see opportunity, when they have a sense of control of their own destiny, then they're less vulnerable to the propaganda and twisted ideologies that have been attracting young people - particularly being turbocharged through social media.
Globalization combined with technology, combined with social media and constant information, have disrupted people's lives sometimes in very concrete ways; a manufacturing plant closes and suddenly an entire town no longer has what was the primary source of employment.
Nobody's madder than me about the website not working as well as it should, which means it's going to get fixed.
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