Literature
Political scientists, communication scholars, journalists, and others have spent considerable ink enumerating the shortfalls of citizens…
- selective attention
- distaste for politics
- limited political knowledge, uniformed
The proliferation of information sources and channels has amplified the challenges
- information filter bubbles/echo chambers
- information overload
- distrust of media and uncertainty about new sources
- uninformed, misinformed, disinformed
This is bad
- declining attention exacerbates political (and thus economic and social) inequalities…
- leaders (already) attend primarily to the preferences of the affluent and elite…
- unequal information will make this so much worse…
Another way?
There must be a better way
- to engage political news,
- to monitor the activities and attentions of government from a relatively high level,
- to encourage the consumption of information from multiple and varied sources
- to lower the barriers to attentive citizenship