Exploring divisions

This piece first appeared in the RSA Journal’s summer 2018 issue

Is it really true that we’ve never been more divided as a society? And if it is, how did it happen and what can be done?

Those are the big questions being investigated on Polarised, the new podcast from the RSA exploring the political and cultural forces driving us further apart. It’s presented by the RSA’s Matthew Taylor and the author of books about curiosity and lying, Ian Leslie.

The first six-part series examines some of the main political fault lines and asks whether and how they contributed to the Trump and Brexit votes. Some people blame the filter bubble and big tech, and the ways nefarious actors are using them to manipulate us. Others say it’s all about economic anxiety and inequality. Or perhaps there’s something deeper going on – something psychological – that’s bringing about a return to tribalism, wall-building and the politics of anger.

Matthew and Ian start by asking sociologist Paula Surridge whether we’re now divided into two main tribes – liberals and authoritarians – finding that both sides are becoming more entrenched. Authoritarianism may be taking hold in some parts of the US and Europe, but equally defenders of liberalism are more becoming more staunch in their views.

By now, lots of us have heard at least part of the story of the Facebook election scandal. Cambridge Analytica, the company in the eye of the storm, has closed its doors and is under investigation. But how effective were its methods? Can ‘psychographic microtargeting’ – new methods used to create personalised ads which play upon our deepest, darkest fears – really swing elections and referendums? We hear about experiments in deploying these methods in the UK, and cast the whole conspiracy theory in considerable doubt.

Online campaigning tactics might not be the primary cause of division – but has the internet poisoned our politics in other ways? Is it inevitable that the internet and social media drive us to the extremes, or do they just hold up a mirror to an already divided culture? Ian and Matthew explore the dark side of the internet – trolls, racist memes, hate-filled comment sections and increasingly virulent culture wars – and ask whether it hijacked the White House. Their guide is Whitney Phillips, author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture.

Perhaps the real key to understanding polarised societies is the issue that’s defined economic life in Britain since the late seventies: rising inequality. Meanwhile, in the US, some people put ‘economic anxiety’ at the root of the Trump votes. But what does that phrase really mean, and is it masking racial undercurrents? Ian and Matthew speak to Faiza Shaheen, director of the Centre for Labour and Social Studies (CLASS). And we hear from the Emmy-winning director and photographer Lauren Greenfield, whose new documentary Generation Wealth tells the story of how the American Dream came to be corrupted.

The final two parts of the series deal with the way we construct our realities and talk about politics. Silvia Majo-Vazquez from Oxford’s Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism busts some myths about echo chambers, filter bubbles and fake news. And Claire Fox from the Academy of Ideas makes the case for the politics of anger and passionate debate.

The first series of Polarised is available for free on Google Podcasts and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts

Polarised: Inequality and Generation Wealth

This week on the RSA’s podcast Polarised, two great interviews on whether rising inequality and economic anxiety is to blame for everything else that’s broken in our politics.

First up, Faiza Shaheen from the think tank CLASS. Last year I produced (with Huw Jordan) a three-part miniseries for CLASS, presented by Faiza. When you edit one of these things, you end up listening to every interview over and over again, sometimes to the point you find yourself quoting guests verbatim in other conversations. CLASS on Class had that effect on me and shifted the way I thought about my own class identity.

And by coincidence I saw a preview of photographer Lauren Greenfield’s new film Generation Wealth at Sundance London the same week I was booking this episode. The film tells the story of Greenfield’s 25-year career documenting the most extreme excesses of wealth (and our obsession with it), starting in her hometown of LA but eventually taking her to China, Russia, and post-crash Iceland. It was a long-shot but I liked the idea of pairing an interview about the economics of inequality with something about how our culture has changed since the 90s – in Greenfield’s words, how “keeping up with the Joneses has literally become keeping up with the Kardashians”. I saw the film on Saturday, emailed the publicist on Tuesday, and by Friday Matthew Taylor was interviewing Lauren.

Polarised

I’m producing a new podcast for the RSA – Polarised – the first of several that’ll run in pilot seasons over the next 6 weeks or so.

Here’s the blurb:

Polarisation is the buzzword of the moment. The overriding story we keep hearing about our politics and our society is that we’ve never been more divided. The RSA’s Matthew Taylor and the author of ‘Born Liars’ and 'Curious’, Ian Leslie, investigate the forces driving us further apart – and what can be done about them.

In the first episode we’re asking: have we become a nation divided into two tribes, liberals and authoritarians?

The Charity Business – Live

The RSA’s Matthew Taylor has been presenting a Radio 4 series over the past few weeks investigating the whole business of running charities in the UK, produced by Giles Edwards.

Matthew was keen to get a bit of debate going after the series aired – often these things go out, potentially to millions of listeners, and then you’re left wondering what everyone thought.

So at the RSA we ran a Facebook Live discussion right after the announcer read the credits for the final part of the series on Radio 4, taking questions from listeners on the big story that had unfolded while Matthew was making the programme, and asking: do we trust charities less following recent scandals?

Gary Younge on ‘Middletown, America’

As the Guardian’s US correspondent, Gary Younge documented America’s social and economic challenges, the role of race in the country’s politics, and the deadly consequences of US gun laws. Now the Guardian’s editor-at-large, Gary took an unusual approach to covering the 2016 presidential election, reporting from one small town in Indiana, called Muncie, nicknamed ‘Middletown, America’.

We were really lucky to have Gary on NEF’s podcast the other week, talking about Middletown today. Can it help explain a US election result that few people predicted? And do we have ‘Middletowns’ in the UK that can help us understand our own political upheaval?