On the need for pattern recognition in political messaging

One of the first examples of pattern recognition in human life begins when we learn shapes. "Learning our shapes" is a process of developing the ability to categorize physical objects we encounter in our environment.



This is a working draft of the first part of a chapter from my upcoming book Democracy's Death by Fascism which I hope to finish and have available in the Kindle store by January of 2023.

    Communications theorist Marshall frequently spoke of the need for "pattern recognition" as a means of navigating the digital environment. In his book Understanding Media, McLuhan said: "...in the electronic age, data classification yields to pattern recognition...When data move instantly, classification is too fragmentary. In order to cope with data at electric speed in typical situations of "information overload" [people] resort to the study of configurations..." The problem with studying the configuration of political messaging in an environment of information warfare is that it may easily be mistaken as a judgement of values, and therefore such methods will readily become the subject of partisan political attacks. In this essay, we'll take a brief moment to examine the nature of social media, and how the social media environment has an immediate impact on the nature of political communication. In order to effectively evaluate social media, we must first identify the ways in which the social media environment impacts our response to political messages. This piece is an attempt at initiating that conversation. The full version of this chapter will appear in my upcoming book, as part of a chapter which then proceeds to discuss the problem of "mob mentality" and the issue of the political agitator versus the political reformer. 
    Although "fact-checkers" have become a common means of trying to parse the validity of political messaging on the internet, fact-checking alone is inadequate for moderating our information environment. Fact-checking is an obvious form of classification. Statements are categorized as either true or false. Waiting for every statement made by a politician to be evaluated by some fact-checking body that has the sanction of commercial name recognition is inadequate for dealing with media environments that move at electronic speed. Propagandists can easily overwhelm the fact-checkers by "flooding the zone with shit", so the fact-checkers cannot possibly keep up. Additionally, donning the label of "fact-checker" is also a means for right-wing organizations to try to move the Overton window of political speech by setting up their own self-proclaimed fact-checking sites that impugn the credibility of other fact-checkers who may be honestly attempting to avoid political bias. Fact-checking on the internet has become a Sysiphean effort, and applying the practice to trivial issues is a waste of time. In order for fact-checking to be effective, fact-checking bodies must focus on root issues from which other arguments emerge, so their efforts end up having some "stickiness" in the political dialogue - the act of vetting a particular statement ends up being equally pertinent to future arguments, and avoid the temptation to get caught up in political tangents and minutiae. 
    We must move to an understanding of social media as a unique medium whose nature impacts users' modes of thought and expression. Philosophers have begun to address this concept with discussion of Plato's Cave. The concept of Plato's cave is that individuals confined to a cave and facing a wall on to which shadows are projected, will structure their understanding of reality based upon the shadows they see upon that wall. Someone who was freed from the cave would struggle to understand a world with three dimensions and colors. This is another way of saying that "the medium is the message". All forms of media have certain innate traits that impact the nature of human perception. 
   Perhaps the most important aspect of social media that needs to be analyzed is the illusory nature of participation. Although all social media is able to derive profits from "network effects" that make the advertising venture profitable, it is noteworthy that the two most readily recognized social media outlets in 2022, Facebook and Twitter, both constrain communication in a way that largely precludes reflection and rewards the promotion of a "mob mentality". On Facebook this phenomena is a by-product of the "user feed". A frequent user of the site may log in on any given day to find dozens of items in their feed. Fear of missing out on communications drives them to examine every item, but the volume of material precludes deep thought, and rewards communications that appeal to "low effort thought", i.e.. the repetition of common phrases, appeals to existing biases, and simplistic "memes" that are themselves simply opportunistic graphic presentations intended to reinforce existing political biases. 
    Twitter limits user participation through the use of an abbreviated messaging platform which, for most users, precludes any argument too complex to represent in 240 characters. Although it is possible to create "threads"; a series of messages intended to lay out a more complex argument, participation is limited by one's writing ability. Generally speaking, the only individuals who are capable of successfully composing a thread that effectively conveys a complex idea are those individuals who are effective wordsmiths. A recent study by Pew found that the most active 25% of all Twitter users are responsible for 97% of all tweets, and around 80% of all tweets are retweets. Based on this author's experience using Twitter, it appears that the majority of original content on Twitter comes from those already employed as think tank propagandists, journalists and university professors, along with a group of aspiring authors of varying ability, ranging from irate individuals who put out an endless stream of right-wing invective, to a handful of very talented bloggers whose work is of a quality that they occasionally catch the attention and earn praise of established journalists and academics. 
    Ultimately, what these arguments suggest is that the first argument we must confront is that the internet, rather than being the "public forum" that social media promoters like to advertise, is actually a means of creating a form of "virtual mob", and using low effort thought to reinforce the political biases of that mob. This approach helps to explain the extreme degree of radicalization that led to the attack on the US Capitol on January 6th of 2021. In his book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, Gustave le Bon argued that "The memorable events of history are the visible effects of the invisible changes of human thought." A key step towards successfully navigating our current social environment, and preserving the "Great Experiment" in American Democracy, is accepting that the venues that are rapidly becoming our society's primary means of political communication are not tools for expanding human thought and perception, but tools for limiting it. 



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