The Comfort Zone

I’m not going to lie to you, dear reader. This week was a challenge for me. My readings focused on politics, crowdsourcing and the global impact of emerging media. These readings forced me to come out of my comfort zone in regards to readings about political commentary. It made me realize that I had made that most common of mistakes…I had unfollowed, unfriended, and curated my social media news feeds until I was in a “bubble” of like-minded individuals with no outside opinions allowed. I’m grateful for this week’s readings because at points it made me realize just how damaging that “bubble” can be, and how it’s important that we maintain a healthy perspective, especially when it comes to politics. This week’s post touches on the topic but only lightly and I hope you too gain some perspective as well from my take on how 2016 changed not only the political landscape but the media landscape as well, and how we can try and do better in the future for ourselves and our organizations by recognizing change as its happening through emerging media.

It’s common knowledge in most higher education circles that the tools and platforms used to communicate news and other important information is changing almost daily along with the public's media consumption habits.  To quote a professor of mine, “Teaching about these changes is difficult. In fact, most, if not all, journalism and communication textbooks are out-of-date the moment they are printed because of the speed of advancements in the world of digital media.” This past year was one of challenges for the traditional media, one where the ever changing habits of the public’s media consumption was one of the biggest stars of the 2016 presidential election. Traditional media’s perception, credibility, and trustworthiness have all been called into serious question by over half the country. But how did we get here? Why did the traditional media get it so wrong in 2016 and why didn’t they see this coming? 

Donald Trump’s campaign was able to pull off something that nobody thought they could do. Every poll in the country by most established news outlets had him losing the general election at varying points throughout 2016 by up to 80%. Donald Trump was the end result of years of action by online communities who had gotten more than fed up with the status quo. They were tired of not seeing their voices, concerns, and stories in the traditional media. So they took to the Web, to write and read blogs, to create their own news sites (a la Breitbart News) and to discuss things that they saw missing in the traditional media coverage. In Digital Democracy: Reimagining Pathways to Political Participation, the authors stated that their research pointed towards the fact that “blog readers are involved in a range of participatory activities, both online and offline, and that these two spheres are highly complementary and mutual supportive.” This suggests that a virtual and real world combination of activism is emerging to create a truly digital democracy on both sides of the aisle.

The disparity between this group of actively engaged users and the group who were actively engaged users for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, could not have been wider. Democratic nominee supporters were with traditional media, often sighting the stories most often published as for the greater good (ex. Marriage equality in 2015, Islamaphobia discussion over terrorist threat discussions, and so on.) Hillary Clinton’s camp got it wrong but so did almost all of the established mainstream media. They didn’t ignore what was happening online on sites such as Brietbart News but they didn’t fully engage in it. They didn’t take the time to understand just how pervasive sites such as Brietbart were getting. They didn’t invest in trying to understand the messages these groups were sending and the support they were receiving. Instead they ignored it completely or underreported it and as such, they allowed the biggest change in political history to occur.

Donald Trump’s political career could easily be defined in his use of social media, particularly Twitter. Never in the country’s history has a president been so free and willing to communicate with the public through such a personal messaging tool. Many experts would say that this is what gave him the election. He was not afraid to break hardwired political rules. A few examples of these rules are below, taken from How the political rules changed in 2016, written by AEI.

• ·         Celebrities don’t count.
• ·         Polling and big data don’t automatically generate the right moves
• ·         Outrageous statements aren’t disqualifying.

That last one is yuge. A study back in 2011 found that the “digital divide for social media users is wider between the haves and have-nots than it is between young and old” (So much for digital democracy: New study finds elite viewpoints dominate online content.) Simply put, politically incorrect, working class were (and are) underrepresented on the Internet. Their messages were being ignored by the mainstream and Donald Trump saw that. He was able to take those politically incorrect feelings and give them a physical mouthpiece. And the mainstream media took him at his word. They saw Donald Trump throughout his campaign as someone who was worthy of being taken seriously but not literally, while his supporters saw it the other way around.

So what does all this mean for us as strategic communicators? For me the biggest lesson in learning about the 2016 election was the idea of complacency. We all have a tendency to get in our own bubbles, or comfort zones. Clearly, traditional media were prepared for the old political guard’s way of doing things when the country was ready for a stiff departure from that. They didn’t take the time to see and acknowledge things from that metaphorical “other person’s” point of view. We as a society clearly were caught up in our own typical every-4-year political cycle and failed to notice it crumbling around us. As communicators, we have to be aware of changes happening around us and organizations, even if that change is not one we like or approve of. That change can be online or offline, a new product or tool, or a person running for political office. We have to be willing to take a step back and see it from another perspective before the lack of perspective drowns us.

As I said in my intro this week, I was pushed out of comfort zone reading and writing this week. But I am so glad I was, because it really brought together for me why Donald Trump is now our president and how we can take the lessons currently being learned by the traditional media and apply it to our own work and lives. Thanks for stopping by and see you guys again next week!