“Pluralistic democracy doesn’t work if too many people are too angry to compromise. It also doesn’t work if too many people are too tired to listen.”
– Media studies scholar and
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (2016) author
Whitney Phillips, on the challenges of covering—not amplifying—mis/disinformation amidst “a politics of too much.” Information overload in a deeply fractured media landscape drives rage
and silence, Phillips argues, warning that the latter—disengagement—is just as concerning. “It’s the quieter articulation of stress: giving up on the conversation entirely.”
