Here’s a round-up of some recent pieces addressing political and other forms of ideological polarization.
An article in The Atlantic looked at attacks on liberal democracy by conservative religious voices.
Survey: Most white evangelicals blame journalists for fake news
Psychologists and anti-science beliefs
Facebook created our culture of echo chambers—and it killed the one thing that could fix it
First Monday has a couple of articles relevant to the intersection of ideological polarization and technology
Review of The Church of Us vs. Them
Moral leadership for a divided age
A study found U.S. journalism to be much less impartial than that in other parts of the world
Bridging the political divide in the context of higher education
Prof Cass Sunstein on how social change happens, and why it’s so often abrupt & unpredictable
Fears about safety of vaccines are spreading
The Distance Between Us: Why we act badly when we don’t speak face-to-face
Terry Pratchett’s prophetic vision of online Nazism
The Christian Century on the problems with Facebook
Life and religion are not zero-sum games
The church of the excluded middle
From Seth Price’s podcast with Brandan Robertson:
Clean and Unclean. Worthy and unworthy. Accepted and unaccepted. Our churches have had a habit of all to quickly throwing everyone and anyone into one binary or the next. But this is not the gospel of Jesus.
Sometimes draconian laws that move to one extreme may lead groups that were at loggerheads to see the need to make common cause with one another around things they have in common, but which they may not have seen as clearly when they thought of themselves as the only two camps.
Framing: How the media shape the news
Truth and the concept of the public good
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/05/28/research-presented-at-vatican-shows-that-anti-atheist-stereotypes-are-inaccurate/
Echo chambers and anti-science beliefs
“Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason” with Justin Smith
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/18/heres-a-timeline-of-how-anti-vaccination-propaganda-permeated-the-culture/
Is ‘Quillette’ an island of sanity — or reactionary conservatism for the Ph.D. set?
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/05/20/a-methodist-pastor-is-brilliantly-calling-out-the-pro-life-crowds-hypocrisy/
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/10/heres-your-reminder-that-the-christian-right-blocked-the-equal-rights-amendment/
Doublethink Is Stronger Than Orwell Imagined: What 1984 means today
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/20/one-wealthy-new-york-couple-donates-millions-to-anti-vax-groups/
A poll found people think fake news is a bigger concern than terrorism
Is knowledge itself an outdated concept?
Europe’s future depends on insights from its past
Facebook, Google, and the 2016 election
Racist speech on Twitter and real-life hate crimes
The Sisyphean Challenges of Skepticism or, Start by Disbelieving
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/24/the-christian-right-is-going-all-out-to-make-sure-donald-trump-gets-re-elected/
Steve Black offered a “non-manifesto manifesto” for the excluded middle, or rather the “both/and.”
Thoughts from a church whose Black Lives Matter sign keeps getting stolen.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/06/22/science-journal-retracts-paper-that-said-gay-conversion-therapy-works/
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