Escaping the Election Cocoon

A good opinion piece on how censoring others who don't subscribe to our own ideologies / thoughts & don't confirm our pre-existing biases adversely affect our own ability to make intelligent decisions.

Lots of people around the world are wondering for the past year or so how such bigoted people like Donald Trump in US elections 2016 or even a self-professed criminal like Rodrigo Duterte, latest President of Philippines & who was nicknamed, "The Donald Trump of Philippines," can win over millions of people.

A major reason for how these kinds of people win over the hearts & minds of millions is because those millions of voters are living in a bubble / cocoon of their own. Anyone who is not a mindless "yes-man" to their ideas / opinions / thoughts are banished from their little worlds. They feel intelligent & safe in knowing that they are surrounded by people who think like them. In the end, there are millions who are mindlessly following anyone, like a herd of sheep, to do anything to appease their human god.

So why are we seeing more mind-numbing stupidity in this gilded age of data & information, which are all around us & easily accessible, too? We are seeing this happening far more frequently in this information age, because the information providers, the social media giants (Facebook, Twitter etc.), are helping the populations become mindless zombies. The social media is actively altering the perception & truth around us by feeding us info which confirm our bias & echo our thoughts, instead of helping us see the other side of the debate.

On a personal level, I've felt this happening all too often. I've been unfriended & unfollowed by friends because of my thoughts & opinions; just because I am not mindlessly saying what they wanted to hear from their "friends". I thought a true friend who is supposed to push back on your ideas which are wrong, but, apparently, in this "modern" day & age, a true friend is one who mindlessly agrees with you with whatever crap you are spewing out of your mouth.

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http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/escaping-the-election-cocoon/

More & more, we are living in our own tailor-made media cocoons, carefully constructed shells that surround us with voices & ideas that support our own beliefs. Conversely, they also shelter us from anything that might challenge our perspective. This distorts our view of the world, makes us less able to understand others, & less likely to embrace new ideas.

My parents & my grandparents before them had 3 sources of news: the local paper, the radio, & the 6 o’clock television news. On a typical day, I get my news from 2 or 3 newspapers, the radio, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, a couple of news sites & maybe LinkedIn. And I’m probably below average. A recent survey by Ipsos Reid examined 16 different types of media commonly used by Canadians for their news. Another poll by the Media Technology Monitor in 2014 found that the number of Canadians who are using the Internet as their main source of news has increased by 20% over the previous 2 years.

The options to filter that news are also increasing. The most common online news aggregators & social media platforms, such as Facebook & Twitter, allow us to customize what we see. Are stories about the global refugee crisis getting you down? Click. 60 million people just disappeared. Is a particular journalist saying something unpleasant about your political party? Click. As far as you’re concerned, her mouth has been forever covered by especially durable duct tape.

When we tune out that journalist because we feel she isn’t being “objective,” what we really mean is that her views do not support our pre-existing beliefs. In fact, truly objective news is impossible. Every adjective & headline shifts the story in one direction or another. Even if you reduced a story to just numbers & facts, much would depend on which figures & in which order.

Unfortunately, our habit of tuning out ideas & voices we don’t like is part of our biological programming. “Confirmation bias,” the tendency to search for information that confirms our beliefs & to remember it longer, is a well-documented & inescapable element of our behaviour. As a result, we instinctively tailor our universe to limit the emotionally upsetting views that contradict us. Until recently, the shortage of media choices made this hard to do. Left or right, we all watched the same suppertime newscast. Now, it’s finally possible to be bound in a nutshell, & count ourselves kings of infinite space, because we can avoid any bad dreams.

This has been very apparent in the refugee debate. A significant number of Canadians are opposed to allowing in more Syrians, due to the possibility that they would include Islamic State supporters, or that they would spread Islam or because we should be helping our own poor first. If you listen to a specific set of radio stations, read certain blogs & interact with people similar to yourself on Facebook, these ideas aren’t only defensible, they are overwhelmingly obvious.

Likewise, another group of Canadians who subscribe to different newspapers, listen to the CBC & read the Huffington Post are equally convinced of the self-evident fact that there is a clear need for Canada to do more, & accepting far more refugees would neither strain our economy nor our social fabric. In reality, both sides are filtering out important pieces of information, making it impossible to see the full picture. Which is why neither group can grasp how anyone could possibly be so asinine as to dispute what is so clearly self-evident.

This is bad, & not just because it prevents us from having civil conversations about Canada’s refugee & immigration policies. It creates a lack of empathy that leads us to denigrate & dismiss the opinions of others. The leaders of all political parties, who are equally unable to acknowledge they do not have a monopoly on the truth, demonstrate this attitude repeatedly.

Our self-made cocoons also impair our ability to make intelligent decisions. In ... elections, most voters will not watch a single debate, read any of the party platforms or attend any campaign events. They don’t need to. They already know for whom they’re going to vote, &, coincidentally, everyone else in his or her cocoon is voting the same way.

And for those we ultimately elect? Their own filters will make their governing decisions less effective. Ruling parties of all stripes tend only to listen to academics who support their agenda, only attend rallies that contain true believers, only read newspapers that endorse their policies & only engage constituents who already voted for them. ...

There are ways to cut through these cocoons, however. Just by being aware that you are constantly self-censoring the information that reaches you helps. You can also consciously resist the urge to mute the outspoken critic on Twitter, or unfollow the Facebook friend who shares articles in support of that politician you loathe. One step further would be to actually read some of those articles, or pick up a newspaper you wouldn’t normally read, no matter how much of a rag you think it is.
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US media criticized for Baltimore coverage

A great small article highlighting the fact that how mainstream news media selects what to show on their channels, & how their anchors choose words to frame a certain section of population & their activities as illegal or dangerous. But when that same section of population tries to achieve their goals through peaceful & non-violent means, those news media are nowhere to be found.

Everyone is ready to quote Gandhi & gave examples of his non-violent struggles (if you read the uncensored history of freedom of Indian subcontinent from Britain, you'd realize that it was not non-violent & it involved a lot more people than just Gandhi) but forget that non-violence achieved nothing & won't achieve anything even more now, since the corporate news media is all about ratings & the general populace has been desensitized to the point that they won't focus on a news until chaos & anarchy is being televised.

Did the non-violent struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King achieved his dream of equality & justice for all, regardless of their skin colour? Did Nelson Mandela's non-violent struggles of freeing South Africa & building an equal & just society in South Africa has come to fruition? What about Dalai Lama's non-violent struggles or Aung San Suu-Kyi's for Myanmar? None of them achieved their dream to the full extent.

They / their population were / are still struggling for those rights; be it African-Americans, or Black South Africans, or Buddhists of Tibet, or full & transparent democracy in Myanmar (that military junta only opened the country & accepted a semblance of democracy so foreign investors pour money in the country & the military elite further increase their wealth).

Problem is that the root problems of all these struggles are not hard to find & they are pretty openly laid out by campaigners, activists, & community & political organizations, but the political & corporate elites don't want to resolve those issues. Unlike other minorities in US, African-Americans have been living in US for more than a couple centuries, but they are still considered second-class citizens & they are discriminated against, heavily. Sometimes, it feels like that my ethnic minority, South Asian, are relatively treated better than African-Americans.

These protests all over US are not the result of one person's death. These protests are the result of decades of frustration & anger towards the discrimination African-Americans face on a daily basis.

P.S., a great documentary to see how corporate world controls the American media is, "Shadows of Liberty."

Disclaimer: Of course, I am not condoning such acts of destruction or violence for someone to get their point across, but it is completely understandable why it is happening, & until & unless, the governments, at all levels, engage with the population, instead of merely deploying the police force, & work with the communities to eradicate injustice & inequality, these acts of destruction & violent protests will become more prevalent in the American society.
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http://rt.com/usa/254349-media-coverage-baltimore-questions/

The mainstream US media are facing criticism over their coverage of unrest in Baltimore. Activists & residents claim the media ignored peaceful marches, focused on labels & violence, & ignored the chronic issues of poverty & police misconduct.
 
Protesters shouted down Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera, who arrived in Baltimore shortly before the curfew on Tuesday. They blocked his camera and accused Fox News of lying & “false coverage.”

Fox & other networks were accused of ignoring the peaceful marches & gatherings that were previously protesting the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray in police custody.

“When we were out here protesting all last week for 6 days straight peacefully, there were no news cameras, there were no helicopters, there was no riot gear, & nobody heard us,” protester Danielle Williams told MSNBC's Thomas Roberts on Tuesday. “So now that we've burned down buildings & set businesses on fire & looted buildings, now all of the sudden everybody wants to hear us.”

Fox News host Shepard Smith, speaking on “The Five,” also pointed out that the media has ignored Baltimore’s chronic issues, including the Gray affair.

“We’ve got a major American city that has decades – decades – of turmoil within this neighborhood,” Smith said. “One quarter of the youth locked up. Clearly there is a big problem. Then all of a sudden, an African-American man is taken into a vehicle, & he comes out of it and dies – & you get nothing from authorities except a suspension. And those who would do harm take an opportunity to do harm. And here we are.”

City Councilman Carl Stokes was exasperated by CNN host Erin Burnett’s use of the word.

“No, it’s not the right word to call our children ‘thugs,’” Stokes said. “These are children who have been set aside, marginalized, who have not been engaged by us.”

Comedy host Jon Stewart also took issue with the media coverage of Baltimore unrest, singling out CNN’s Wolf Blitzer’s statement that Monday’s imagery was “hard to believe.”
 
“Elvis leading a herd of orthodox Jewish unicorns through a city street – that would be hard to believe,” Stewart chided Blitzer in Tuesday’s edition of The Daily Show. “Ferguson was just a few months ago, & you were talking about it.”
 
“Maybe a more nuanced alert system could allow for more productive intervention beyond, ‘You have 10 seconds to disperse,’” Stewart argued. “Or we could agree to keep ignoring the roots of how systemically, historically disenfranchised many African-American communities still are, only paying attention to them when their periodic fiery ball of anger threatens to enter our airspace like some kind of Alex Haley’s comet. And once again breathing a blissful sigh of forgetful relief when it’s another near-miss.”

Candidates with Anglophone names get hired

This is a picture of a Canadian Business article from its January 2015 issue. I had to post its pic here, since it's not available on its website. 1st pic is of the whole article & the 2nd one is of the last paragraph in the article, which I want to highlight. Most profound sentence in that para:
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"One of the biggest barriers to getting employed for a recent immigrant is the hiring process & the reliance on the resume." For example, a 2011 University of Toronto study showed that applicants with Anglophone names were more likely to pass the resume-screening process, regardless of experience or education.
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Although, the managing director of software company, Fitzii, emphasizes that it only happens to "recent immigrants." Using simple logic, one can question that why this cannot happen or already happening to experienced individuals, too? Since, resume-screening software isn't even looking at the experience or education, & eliminating job candidates based on their names, it can happen to any individual, regardless of that individual having 1 month of Canadian relevant work experience or 10 years.

 Anyway, since, almost every company, at least all the large ones, have these resume-screening softwares, job candidates with non-Anglophone names will never know when they are eliminated based on their name only, except receiving a standard email, "Sorry ....".

That's why, we hear names like Alex Arifuzzaman (most likely Bengali) or Sydney Zaidi (Pakistani) or Manny (from Maninder) or Sunny (from Sunil) (both Indians) or all those Anglophone names of Asians.

So, essentially, you are pretty much screwed as a candidate, if your name is not Matthew, John, Eric, Jane, Patricia, or Cindy. Maybe, I should change my name to Moe.

 

Jewish newspaper removes women from Paris march

Imagine the outrage in media & the world, if this would've been done by an orthodox Islamic newspaper & expect a minor mention in BBC, this is not reported in North American or European media

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/30798061

 

Media bias promoting Islamophobia