As I write this, I don’t know what the outcome of the election will be. But I do know there’s never been a U.S. presidential election campaign quite like this one. If you were scripting
a Netflix series, you couldn’t have made up a timeline like this (and this is only a sampling):
Jan. 26 – A jury ordered Donald Trump to pay E. Jean Carroll $83
million in additional emotional, reputation-related, and punitive damages. The original award was $5 million.
April 15 – Trial of New York vs Donald Trump begins. Trump was
charged with 34 counts of felony.
May 30 - Trump is found guilty on all 34 counts in his New York trial, making him the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony
June 27 - Biden and Trump hold their first campaign debate hosted by CNN. Biden’s performance is so bad, it’s met with calls for him to suspend his campaign
July 1 - The U.S. Supreme Court delivers a 6–3 decision in Trump v. United States, ruling that Trump had absolute immunity for acts he committed as president within his
core constitutional purview. This effectively puts further legal action against Trump on hold until after the election
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July 13 - Trump is shot in the ear in an assassination
attempt at a campaign rally held in Butler, Pennsylvania. One bystander and the shooter are killed and two others are injured.
July 21 - Biden announces his withdrawal from
the race, necessitating the start of an "emergency transition process" for the Democratic nomination. On the same day, Kamala Harris announces her candidacy for president.
Sept. 6 -
Former vice president Dick Cheney and former Congresswoman Liz Cheney announce their endorsements for Harris. That’s the former Republican Vice President and the
former chair of the House Republican Conference, endorsing a Democrat.
Sept. 15: A shooting takes place at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm
Beach, Florida, while Donald Trump is golfing. Trump was unharmed in the incident and was evacuated by Secret Service personnel.
With all of that, it’s rather amazing that -- according
to a recent PEW Research Centre report -- Americans don’t seem to be any more interested in the campaign than in previous election years. Numbers of people closely following election news are
running about the same as in 2020 and are behind what they were in 2016.
I also find it interesting to see where they’re turning for their election coverage. For those 50 plus, it is
overwhelmingly television. News websites and apps come in a distant second.
But for those under 50, social media is the preferred source, with news websites and television tied in second
place. This is particularly true for those under 30, where half turn to social media. The 30 to 49 cohort is the most media-diverse, with their sources pretty much evenly split between TV, websites
and social media.
But we also have to remember that all younger people, Republican or Democrat, are more apt to rely on social media to learn about the election. And there we have a
problem.
Recently, George Washington University political scientist Dave Karpf was interviewed on CBC Radio about how Big Tech is influencing this election. He noted that social media is
now just as polarized as our society. X has become a cesspool of right-leaning misinformation, led by Trump supporter Elon Musk, and Facebook has tried to depoliticize its content after coming under
repeated fire for influencing previous campaigns.
So, the two platforms that Karpf said were the most stabilized in past elections have effectively lost their status as common ground for
messaging to the right and the left. Karpf explains, “Part of what we’re seeing with this election cycle is a gap where nothing has really filled into those voids and left campaigns
wondering what they can do. They’re trying things out on TikTok, they’re trying things out wherever they can, but we lack that stability. It is, in a sense, the first post social media
election.”
This creates a troubling gap. If those under the age of 30 turn first to social media to be informed, what are they finding there? Not much, according to Karpf. And what they
are finding is terribly biased, to the point of lacking any real objectivity.
In 2017, the Washington Post added this line under its masthead: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
in this polarized mediascape, I think it’s more accurate to say “Democracy Dies in the Middle.” There’s a right-wing reality and a left- wing reality. The truth is somewhere in
the middle. But it’s getting pretty hard to find it.