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Editor's Note:

In this series we look at how younger voters are likely to impact future elections and American politics going forward.

As we have seen in other articles in these pages, social media has become a key driver of the widening gap in voting behavior between voters over and under 45 years of age. In this article, we look at how the media habits of old and young voters contribute to and enable this gap.

Compared to news delivery systems in the past, news on social media is highly decentralized at its origin and destination. Rather than relying on executives, anchors, and editors to decide what news is fit for consumption, social media places that power directly in the hands of the user. This power allows users to seek out news that interests them and aligns with their concerns, resulting in a fragmented news landscape not defined by political polarization. With this greater access to personalized news feeds comes greater diversity in political perspectives.[1]

According to Pew, over 40% of Americans aged 18-29 say that their primary source of news comes from social media. Twenty-two percent of Americans aged 30-49 say the same. That number plummets to 6% and 3% respectively for those aged 50-64 and 65+. A greater percentage of 1829-year-olds get their news from social media than 65+ year-olds do from cable news shows.

This remarkable skew between older and younger generations has implications beyond just delivery methods because the experience of getting news from social media differs so drastically from the experience of getting news from legacy media.

Viewership among legacy news outlets (national network and cable news, radio, newspapers, and magazines) splits into two different ecosystems defined by party. Recent Pew research could not find a single news outlet that was watched by a majority of both Democrats and Republicans. Pew was able to identify a number of legacy news sources used almost exclusively by one party.

Social media platforms, by contrast, have users from both parties. The two most popular social media platforms, YouTube and Facebook, are used by the majority of adults in both parties and have almost no partisan split.

Source: Pew Research Center

Source: Pew Research Center

Source: Pew Research Center

There are still some party differences within the social media ecosystem, however. Younger Democrats are more likely to be on every major platform excluding Facebook. Instagram has an especially large gap between parties. But unlike legacy media, what isnt present in the data is a widely used platform just for Republicans or just for Democrats.[2]

The world of legacy media is bifurcated. The world of social media is fragmented.

The world of legacy media is bifurcated. The world of social media is fragmented.

The social versus traditional news usage patterns hold when looking specifically at those who report getting news from a platform, not just using it.

[3]Although there are differences by party, they are nowhere near the disparities we see in usage patterns by party in legacy media, and no single legacy media outlet approaches the consensus shown in the use of YouTube as a news source.

This is not to say that the experiences of Republicans and Democrats are at all similar on YouTube. A 34-year-old Democrat living in Detroit sees roughly the same thing on NBC News each day as a 68-year-old Republican living in Seattle because the news content is curated by the network, not the user. But a 26-year-old Republican living in Birmingham may have a dramatically different YouTube feed than a 26-year-old Democrat living across the street.

Social media is designed to intentionally fragment user bases into ever narrower groups defined by specific personal interests. A single social media user could belong to a climate change collective on Instagram, an anti-tax Facebook group, and a Southeast Asian cooking community on TikTok. This varied news diet is virtually impossible to receive through legacy medias bifurcated news landscape.

This same characteristic of hyper-personalized news feeds can lead to echo chambers, which happen when a pocket of like-minded individuals forms and fosters distrust of outside sources. But this same phenomenon of pocket formation is also how Internet fandoms develop and how BookTok or Black Twitter or a Zelda subreddit forms.

In short, those who get their news from social media have a greater diversity in opinion than those who primarily get their news from legacy media.

Recent survey data from Pew shows how the relationship differences in social media usage by age relates to peoples political ideology. Pew refines political ideology by splitting the public into nine distinct groups: four on the left, four on the right and one with those too uninvolved politically to be classified.

Source: Pew Research Center

Within the four groups that make up consistent Democratic voters, older Democrats are much more likely to cluster in just two of Pews typologies either Democratic Mainstay or Establishment Liberal.[4] Democrats under 50, by contrast, are just as likely to be found in any of the four groups; they have no clear typology preference. As a result, it would be much easier to predict the political ideology of a 53-year-old Democrat chosen at random than a 31-year-old.

[5]To a lesser extent this holds for Republicans as well; however, older Republicans are slightly more varied in their political ideology than their Democratic counterparts. Younger Republicans are slightly less varied in comparison to younger Democrats. A plurality of them is categorized by Pew as being in the Ambivalent Right typology. The prevalence of this ideological perspective among younger Republican party identifiers and the lack of young Republicans in traditionally conservative typologies squares with research showing that young Republicans are increasingly at odds with older members of their party.

The Pew political ideology data shows younger voters are driving emerging new wings of both parties. This is happening in the Republican Party with the rise of the Ambivalent Right. Among Democrats its reflected in the fact that younger voters make up the bulk of those Pew calls the Outsider Left and Progressive Left. Both phenomena are enabled by the nature of the social media they use as the principal source of news for voters under 50.

Social media allows younger Americans to have more individualized political interests than older voters. They are seeking a political party that will support this diversity of perspectives and welcome their ideas. Whichever one does so through an effective understanding of the social media information ecosystem will enjoy ever increasing electoral success.

Footnotes

[1] This blog does not address the issue of mis/disinformation social media, which is related to news ecosystems, but not directly under the scope of this blog.With users serving as their own editors, mis/disinformation can more easily slip into their news diet, but how this compares to legacy media and how it is driven by partisan forces requires further analysis.

[2] Alt-Right social media sites exist but are currently at such a low level of usage that they dont impact the overall results.

[3] This data was provided by Pew in a specific crosstab request and is not available on their website data. To view see the following PP_2021.11.09_political-typology_REPORT. Pew did not have specific age breaks on their website, so they created a new document with those breaks for us. For each of the individual social media sites, a respondent is asked if they used a specific site for news information only if they had first indicated that they had ever used that platform.

[4] A value of 20% in the graphs indicates 20% of total Democrats are 50+ and Democratic Mainstays not 20% of Democrats who are 50+ are Democratic Mainstays.

[5] The data used for the graphs is not directly included in Pews published work. Pew published the percent of each party in each typology and the percent of each typology who was under 50. We used these two sets of figures to calculate what percent of each party was young and in a specific typology group. This is the data used for the graphs and that data set is included below.

Excerpt from:
How younger voters will impact elections: How legacy media and social media impact old and young voters - Brookings Institution

Is Mencken based on Donald Trump in Succession? The alt-right politician, Jeryd Mencken, is front and center in Season 4, Episode 8.

Its no secret that the characters in Succession are based on several real-life counterparts. Now that the election is finally upon our favorite (or least favorite) characters, its time to look in-depth at Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk). We first meet Mencken in Season 3 in the famous What It Takes episode, which brings us behind the scenes of the Republican Partys corruption.

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At the time, Logan Roy decides to back Mencken as the Republican candidate in the upcoming election over more centrist and traditional options. Roman (Kieran Culkin) sees himself in Mencken and they bond over their disruptor identities. But now that were on the precipice of Successions final Election Day, we cant help but wonder if Mencken is directly based on Donald Trump.

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While the most obvious comparison to draw to Jeryd Mencken is Donald Trump, Mencken is perhaps an even more ominous future of Americas democracy. It could be surmised that the previous president, nicknamed The Raisin, was more Trump-esque, although we know little about him besides his willingness to bend to the Roys. Of course, Trump bends to no one (or so it seems), which is just one similarity he shares with Mencken.

In Succession, Mencken is an outspoken alt-right pundit who believes that races shouldnt mix (yep, hes very scary). When he says things like, People trust people who look like them, and I love this country, but lets take a beat before we fundamentally alter its composition, these are carefully-coded phrases to further his all-white agenda.

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We know that Mencken is not a good guy, thanks to Shivs aversion to him. While Shiv has already thrown her morals in the trash, she supported Gil Eavis (a Bernie Sanders stand-in) at one point, so her heart was in the right place. She fears that if Mencken wins, women, children, people of color, and all disenfranchised communities will be in major trouble. But most importantly, the future of democracy will be at risk.

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This sounds like what people said about Trump, but Mencken also draws comparisons to pundits such as Richard Spencer, Josh Hawley, and Tucker Carlson. Mencken is much younger and more charismatic than Trump, and his all-white agenda closely mirrors Richard's. Mencken tells the voters that no one can pocket him. But at the same time, he will happily conspire with the Roy family to accomplish a shared agenda.

Richard Spencer

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Many right-wing politicians and pundits today, Trump aside, claim theyre all doing what they believe is right for the country. They claim they cant be bought and, like Trump, denounce traditional politics. Mencken does the same. Shiv even calls him a YouTube provocateur, hinting at a possible Jordan Peterson comparison as well. But at the end of the day, our politicians and Mencken all have their own power and financial interests at heart.

While Mencken may not be a direct version of Trump, he definitely evokes bits and pieces of Trumps rhetoric and election behavior. Democratic candidate Daniel Jimnez (Elliot Villar), on the other hand, is unwilling to play into the Roys hands. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) has made it clear that ideologically, he wants Jimnez to win, but because Jimnez is less willing than Mencken to play ball with the Roys, Kendalls allegiances are more complicated.

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We know that Gil draws many parallels to Bernie Sanders, but who does that make Jimnez? Because Jimnez wins the Democratic ticket, Gil is in the race as his running mate. However, Bernie didnt run alongside Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden in their respective elections. In fact, Kendall and Jimnez seem to have somewhat of a relationship, but whenever Kendall speaks to him, he doesnt seem very open or interested in what Kendalls agenda is.

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Jimnez evokes politicians such as Barack Obama or Cory Bookerhes a charismatic person of color who still feeds into the political system to rise above it. In many ways, this means that Jimnez is willing to sit down at the table with the Roys, but whether he would ever agree to anything with them is a major question mark. Even still, for the future of democracy, it seems like Shiv and Kendall want Jimnez to win.

Of course, as the owners of ATN, the Roys have some power over what happens, which is a scary depiction of our real-life democracy. Is it really left in the hands of the wealthiest few?

Tune into Succession every Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO to see who takes the cake in an all-too-realistic alternate reality.

Read more from the original source:
Is Mencken Based on Trump in 'Succession'? He's an Alt-Right ... - Distractify

Irish Times

The piece ran on 11 May and accused people who use fake tan of mocking those with naturally dark skin

The Irish Times has apologised for running an article about Irish womens use of fake tan that was submitted by a hoaxer who used artificial intelligence.

The editor, Ruadhn Mac Cormaic, said on Sunday that it had fallen victim to a deliberate and coordinated deception that showed a need for stronger controls.

It was a breach of the trust between the Irish Times and its readers, and we are genuinely sorry. The incident has highlighted a gap in our pre-publication procedures, he said in a statement.

We need to make them more robust, and we will. It has also underlined one of the challenges raised by generative AI for news organisations. We, like others, will learn and adapt.

The paper ran the opinion piece from a contributor bylined as Adriana Acosta-Cortez on 11 May. It accused Irish women who used fake tan of mocking those with naturally dark skin. Acosta-Cortez was described as a 29-year-old Ecuadorian health worker who lived in north Dublin. A profile picture showed a blue-haired woman.

A Twitter account in Acosta-Cortezs name posted a message the next day criticising the Irish Times for running the article:

https://t.co/UHYCk0lHOe@IrishTimes genuinely sad that a once respectable news source has degraded themselves with such divisive tripe in order to generate clicks and traffic for their website. You need a better screening process than a believable gmail address #buyapaper gg

It included a link to an Irish Times article from January about robot infiltration of media.

The newspaper deleted the opinion piece within hours and launched a review.

The statement on Sunday confirmed Irelands paper of record had been duped. As in any 24/7 news operation, some days we do better than others. But last Thursday we got it badly wrong, said Mac Cormaic. It was a hoax; the person we were corresponding with was not who they claimed to be.

The article ran under the headline: Irish womens obsession with fake tan is problematic.

It began: Dear Irish women, we need to talk about fake tan. The article said women who artificially darkened their skin were donning an exotic costume.

Fake tan represents more than just an innocuous cosmetic choice; it raises questions of cultural appropriation and fetishisation of the high melanin content found in more pigmented people.

The piece was the papers second-most read article and prompted debate on radio and social media.

The person who controls Acosta-Cortezs Twitter account told the Guardian on Sunday, via direct message, that the Irish Timess apology sidestepped its decision to publish an incendiary article with an extreme leftwing viewpoint in pursuit of clicks.

The person said they were Irish, a college student and identified as non-binary. They said they created the Acosta-Cortez persona by repurposing the Twitter account, which dates from February 2021, by using some Spanish and following Ecuadorian outlets.

They said they used GPT-4 to create approximately 80% of the article and the image generator Dalle-E 2 to create a profile picture of a quintessential woke journalist using the prompts female, overweight, blue hair, business casual clothing, smug expression.

The hoaxs goal was to give my friends a laugh and to stir the shit in the debate about identity politics.

Some people have called me an alt-right troll but I dont think that I am. I think that identity politics is an extremely unhelpful lens through which to interpret the world.

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Irish Times apologises for hoax AI article about womens use of fake tan - The Guardian

At The New York Times Book Review, we write about thousands of books every year. Many of them are good. Some are even great. But we get that sometimes you just want to know, What should I read that is good or great for me?

Well, here you go a running list of some of the years best, most interesting, most talked-about books. Check back next month to see what weve added.

(For more recommendations, subscribe to our Read Like the Wind newsletter, check out our romance columnists favorite books of the year so far or visit our What to Read page.)

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes. The billionaire decides to support the collective, citing common interests, but some of the activists suspect ulterior motives.

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This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon the Darkness for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

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Hardings latest novel was inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community. Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

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I want a hard-boiled tale from a master of noir

In the second novel in Mosleys King Oliver series, a Black private detective in New York investigates whether the government framed a prominent white supremacist. The plot gets more intricate the more he digs, with prison contractors, alt-right militias and Russian oil traffickers all in play.

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Rushdies new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

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A comedic take on the trials of immigration, Mas latest novel follows a Chinese man who is woefully unprepared for his move to America, but who powers through thanks to his belief that generosity and connection always exist among his fellow countrymen.

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In her radiant and brilliantly crafted fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on a classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take Little Women, move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and youve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

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Nonfiction

I want to take a head-spinning trip through the deep state

The people in this darkly funny book include fabulists, truth tellers, combatants, whistle-blowers. Like many of us, they have left traces of themselves in the digital ether by making a phone call, texting a friend, looking up something online. Howley writes about the national security state and those who get entangled in it Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Reality Winner all figure into Howleys riveting account.

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The central claim of this manifesto by the Princeton sociologist (who won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2016 book Evicted, about exploitation in Milwaukees poorest housing market) is that poverty in the United States is the product not only of larger economic shifts, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans.

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More here:
The Best Books to Read in 2023 - The New York Times

This piece appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of NACLA's quarterly print magazine, the NACLA Report. Subscribe in print today!

In November 2022, key figures of the Latin America Right gathered at an upscale hotel in Mexico City. On stage, the main organizer, Eduardo Verstegui, a Mexican actor, producer, and former advisor to Donald Trump on policies concerning the Latino community, gifted a Mexican football jersey to Brazilian lawmaker Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of the then-outgoing president. The jerseys number, 27, alluded to Bolsonaro as a possible presidential candidate in Brazil's 2027 elections. As Verstegui harshly attacked the Left and the administration of President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador, Bolsonaro in turn praised him as a potential far-right candidate in Mexicos 2024 elections, eliciting cheers from the crowd. For Verstegui, the conference represented conservative unity at a time when the true Right found itself orphaned.

The rallying force behind the event was the U.S.-based Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). In addition to Bolsonaro, the hundreds of attendees included defeated Chilean presidential candidate Jos Antonio Kast and Argentine libertarian economist and presidential hopeful Javier Milei. Mexico was represented by clerics, former legislators from the center-right Partido Accin Nacional (PAN), and anti-abortion activists.

Former Colombian president lvaro Uribe gave a short and lackluster address, while Senator Mara Fernanda Cabal, a rising star of the Colombian Right who was introduced to the audience as the iron maiden against communism, gave a fiery one. Ghosts from the past were present as well, such as Ramfis Domnguez-Trujillo, grandson of Dominican despot Rafael Trujillo, and Zury Ros, current Guatemalan presidential candidate and daughter of convicted genocidaire General Efran Ros Montt.

U.S. political figures made appearances, most via videoconference. Propagandist Steve Bannon, Senator Ted Cruz, former U.S. ambassador to Mexico Chris Landau, conservative pundit Jack Posobiec, and CPAC's leading power couple Matt and Mercedes Schlapp all boasted about the growing strength of the conservative cause across the Americas. Even Donald Trump delivered a short, rather tepid video message, which the audience nevertheless noisily applauded. Europe, too, had a small but meaningful representation. A message from Santiago Abascal, head of the Spanish party Vox, met a warm reception, while Polish anticommunist icon Lech Walesa delivered a rambling keynote address that was not nearly as combative as those of his U.S. and Latin American peers.

CPAC Mexico was an occasion for reckoning. Contrary to the optimism that followed Trumps and Bolsonaros elections and the fall of Evo Morales in Bolivia, recent defeats in Chile, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Honduras, and Brazil seem to have put right-wing forces against the ropes. Yet these losses have galvanized conservatives, who, like they have in the past, are turning to internationalism to bolster their rise. Even in defeat, recent elections across the continent reveal that right-wing platforms are not only viable, but popular and capable of rallying grassroots and elite sectors, building coalitions, and gaining power in local and national arenas.

Three decades after the end of the Cold War and the consolidation of a widespread consensus supporting electoral democracy, the Old Right has sprung back as a seemingly good faith participant in the democratic game. This right wing sits at a crossroads. Given the decline of established center-right parties like Venezuelas COPEI or Chiles Christian Democratic Party over the past 20 years, a new constellation of hardline conservative actors is uniting internationally against new enemies like globalism, gender ideology, and the gay lobby.

But the roots of their grievances are decades old: their Cold War battles did not collapse with the fall of the Soviet Bloc, but rather they reconfigured in opposition to the 1990 creation of the So Paulo Forum (FSP), a continent-wide alliance of leftist and reformist parties, and with the rise of left-leaning Pink Tide governments in the early 2000s. Old tropes about communist subversion are joined today by warnings against cultural Marxism and its woke, progressive, feminist, and politically correct incarnations.

Fifty years before the CPAC Mexico gathering, Mexico City hosted a different mixture of fervent conservative crusaders. In 1972, the World Anti-Communist League, created in 1966 in the heat of the Vietnam War to foster a united international anticommunist front, held its first meeting outside of Asia. Thanks to its active anticommunist movement, Mexico was chosen as host. Activists welcomed over 300 committed cold warriors to Mexico City from around the world, including officials from Taiwan, Korea, South Vietnam, Guatemala, Paraguay, and Nicaragua; Cuban exiles; former fascist collaborators from Germany, Croatia, and Ukraine; Middle Eastern and African activists; and Latin American clerics and university students, among many others. For the Mexicans, it was a moment of pride and the culmination of decades of domestic and international activism, lobbying, fundraising, and proselytizing.

The WACL was the offspring of the Asian Peoples Anti-Communist League, a 1950s effort by East Asian governments to push back against Cold War neutralism and contain communist China. In the 1970s, as military regimes swept across most of Latin America and initiatives emerged for interstate collaboration against communism, most of them brokered by the United States, entities such as WACL provided spaces for expanding these alliances.

A major ally of the Reagan administration, the WACL became a global platform for U.S. neoconservatives such as Senator Jesse Helms and retired Major General John K. Singlaub, as well as for powerful religious organizations including Korean religious leader Reverend Sun Myung Moons Unification Church. During the 1972 conference in Mexico, Latin American members founded the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL), which soon included top civilian and military figures from across the region and became a key component of the multinational state terror initiative known as Operation Condor. The CAL also fueled conflict in Central America with fighters, funding, weapons, and a well-oiled propaganda machine.

While 50 years apart, the 1972 and the 2022 summits in Mexico are kindred spirits. Yet, unlike the East Asian-dominated WACL, CPACs clear center is in the Western Hemisphere, specifically the United States, and it traces its origins to the U.S. New Right of the 1960s and the conservative response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But CPAC has become increasingly less U.S.-centric. Meetings in Brazil, Japan, Australia, Hungary, Israel, and now Mexico are evidence of the willingness of Latin American and other global allies to participate in its expanding network.

At CPAC Mexico 2022, Eduardo Bolsonaro and Verstegui repeated Jair Bolsonaros claim that his defeat was the product of electoral frauda favored right-wing tactic for discrediting elections. At the same time, conservatives rejoiced in the defeat of Chiles progressive draft constitution in the September 2022 plebiscite, which Jos Antonio Kast previously deemed a victory against the ideology and the violence of the few. In the political world the Right inhabits, the battle has just begun and is as wide and hostile as they ever imagined it.

Right-Wing Resistance?

In recent years, the idea of resistance has become central to the Rights political imagination. According to journalist and researcher Pablo Stefanoni, the Rights success in positioning itself as the rebel victim of a globalist-progressive establishment allows it to compete with the Left in being outraged about reality and propose ways to transform it. For Stefanoni, the phenomenon is related to the fact that the Left has stopped reading the Right, while the Right, at least the alt-right, reads and discusses the Left. While arguable and perhaps simplifying, this perspective has been borne out at CPACs Latin American summits: the Right is evidently adept at constructing an image of their leftist-progressive enemies, in picking apart and weaponizing their discourse, and in capitalizing on anti-establishment rhetoric to position their pro-life, pro-business, pro-traditional family messages in mainstream channels and among a sizable support base.

Claims about a political landscape in which globalism and nationalism have displaced left and right distinctions often ring hollow in the ears of these conservatives. Despite its different tendencies, the Right is trying to build a clear sense of unity against its enemies. On stage at CPAC Mexico, combative taunting of zurdos (lefties), progres (progressives) and la derechita cobarde (the petty cowardly Right) combined with a slew of calls to defend free enterprise, private property, the traditional family, and life from conception on. Religious slogans such as Viva Cristo Rey (Long Live Christ the King) and appeals to defend Christianity and religious freedom abounded. Messages about combat, battle, and struggle against globalisma malleable term that often encompasses the Left, feminism, and LGBTQI+ groupsare key to the Rights discursive arsenal.

Read the rest of this article, available open access for a limited time.

Luis Herrn-vila is a historian of the Cold War in Latin America and assistant professor of history at the University of New Mexico. His research focuses on Mexican and other Latin American conservative, anticommunist, and extreme right movements.

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The Reinvention of the Latin American Right - NACLA