07 November, 2016

What I learned from visualizing Hillary Clinton’s emails – MIT MEDIA LAB – Medium

What I learned from visualizing Hillary Clinton’s emails – MIT MEDIA LAB – Medium: "And this brings me to my final point, which is that while I support Clinton in this election, and I think Trump is a bad choice for president (a really bad one), I still think that we should work on the creation of tools that improve the ability of people to personalize scrutinize politically relevant information. I now understand that much of the U.S. media may not share that view with me, and that I think this is an important point of reflection. I hope the media takes some time to think about this on November 9 (or the week after).



Also, the large number of people who were unable to interpret our tool as anything but an effort to support or oppose a political candidate — and that was true for both liberals and conservatives — speaks to me about an ineffective public sphere. And that’s something I think we should all be concerned about. This polarization is not just a cliché. It is a crippling societal condition that is expressed in the inability of people to see any merit, or any point, in opposing views. That’s a dangerous, and chronic, institutional disease that is expressed also in the inability of people to criticize their own candidates, because they fear being confused with someone their peers will interpret as a supporter of the opposing candidate. If you cannot see any merit in the candidate you oppose, even in one or two of the many points that have been made, you may have it."



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