There is a very familiar phenomenon that reflects the fundamental disparity in culture and communications.
While conservatives exist in a world saturated with media narratives, so that they know quite well what the other side thinks, the Left exists in an echo chamber of its own narratives and is utterly unaware of what conservatives are thinking or talking about it, unless one of its media outlets decides to report/spin it. And thus you have the Project Veritas report on Bernie Sanders blowing up on social media.
Meanwhile the media belatedly discover it and is infuriated at its existence.
The dispute between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren over whether he said a woman can’t win may be the most explosive story of the Democratic primary so far — but it wasn’t even the biggest story about Sanders on social media this week.
The big picture: A viral video from right-wing Project Veritas about a Sanders field organizer underscores how splintered the partisan digital universe is — and how difficult it is to get different slices of the electorate to pay attention to the same things.
Well yes.
Lefties care a great deal about the Sanders-Warren dispute over sexism. Conservatives don’t. They do care that a Sanders guy was touting reeducation gulags for conservatives. Lefties couldn’t care less. Some of them support gulags.
It’s difficult to get different slices of the electorate to pay attention to the same issues because they disagree on what they value, and because there are no more media outlets that actually speak across tribal lines. Or very few of them. You’ve got CNN and FOX News. Their respective demographics know what they want to hear and it’s their respective media’s job to give it to them. We’re beyond journalism and purely in narrative territory. Different sides tell different stories which reflect different ideas about what matters and what they want to get done.
Of the 30 biggest stories about Sanders between Monday and Wednesday, seven were related to tensions between Sanders and Warren, resulting in 390k interactions on social media (likes, comments, shares), according to data from NewsWhip provided exclusively to Axios.
But 10 of the biggest stories were about the undercover video from Project Veritas, amounting to 426k interactions.
This is why the media is obsessed with censoring conservatives on social media.
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