Taking a Trip to the Other Side
To be completely honest, I am not a very political person, nor have I ever been. However, my family is more liberal, so I can openly admit that my few political views are influenced. Furthermore, I don’t think I actually know anyone close to me who is very conservative, let alone a Trump supporter. These thoughts never really occurred to me before taking this class and only came to light when discussing the topic of living in a political bubble. When the 2016 election took place, I was in complete confidence that Hillary would become the United States’ new president. Along with my family and friends, every athlete, influencer, and musician I followed all spread the same message; “vote Hillary.” Therefore, when my phone screen started lighting up with the shocking texts of “Trump won?” hit my phone, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Of course, now I realize that I was merely blinding myself by being surrounded by people with the same political views.
That is why when I read this assignment, I was pretty interested to see the impact of this 24-hour experiment. I get my news from various sources from the left, ranging from CNN to MSNBC. I don’t think I have ever read from a conservative article by choice, so I was very curious to see how different the information would be. Since I don’t rely on specific news sources for my information, I decided to follow a few sources of varying bias and reliability to get a few perspectives on the right.
The first source I started following on my social accounts was InfoWars, the most right-leaning, factually inaccurate, and biased news source, according to Adfontes media. I chose this news source purely out of curiosity, as I’ve heard so much about Alex Jones. I have to say, spending a day scrolling through Instagram and twitter posts from InfoWars was more of a comedic experience for me than anything remotely serious. Their social media posts were composed of very “interesting” statements, images, and claims about the election, Joe Biden, and the left in general. These included a variety of pro-Trump memes (which I have never seen before) (See figure 1) and xenophobic comments on the “China Virus”. Due to these, I already had trouble staying objective and delving further into their media hole just off those initial signifiers. However, I carried on and looked further into some of the stories they were posting. I read about the claims that Joe Biden has been given the presidential debate questions in advance. I also read an article proposing clues that reveal Hillary Clinton’s potential connection to satanic forces. When I looked up the quotes or facts supporting these claims, I could not find one reliable source backing those claims. Furthermore, the lack of shares and comments on every post makes me assume that very few people have this mindset. This only confirmed my initial feelings of doubt regarding any of the content posted by InfoWars.
The other news source I chose was Fox news since it was around the opposite side of the news sources I usually access, like CNN. Immediately upon viewing their various media sources, I could tell they were not as far leaning as InfoWars. There were a lot of purely factual posts, talking about numbers and quotes from different people. For example, they showed two individual quotes of Kamala Harris attacking and Mike Pence Defending Donald Trump. However, I fully realized that I was in a conservative-leaning source when I went into every post’s comment section. I have never seen so many pro-Trump comments in my life! Almost every single one was either bashing Liberals or defending Trump, and it was crazy. I have only ever seen the exact opposite, and I guess this was a reality check for me, showing that millions out there have completely different political stances. However, the craziest thing I gathered from the comments was the number of people actively opposing the Corona Virus ban and mask requirements. On a post quoting Anthony Fauci’s opinion on how we shouldn’t trivialize the virus, hundreds of comments opposed him. Even verified accounts talked about how he is trying to impose government control, and that masks aren’t effective (see figure 2). To me, this was more shocking than any of the content I have seen so far. The fact that so many people are denying scientific conclusions due to Trump’s words actually instilled feelings of frustration and anger in me. I could deal with Fox’s news content, despite some of it showing some bias. It was the blatantly ignorant comments from followers that genuinely bothered me.
To sum up the whole experience, I would say that it was eye-opening. While I expected to see some of the stuff I saw, thinking about it and seeing it are two different things. I can easily admit that I have lived in a political bubble the majority of my life, and exercises like this give me a wake-up call to what is actually happening around me. While I feel that many opinions from the right are stupid, I’m sure just as many think the exact opposite. Even if I don’t agree with much of the opinionated content on Fox News, they have articles with objective observations. Furthermore, their more opinionated stories still give me a different perspective, and I feel like I need to read more of them in the future. This is to both keep an open mind, as well as pop my political bubble.