Landslide

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How does the internet work to polarize us on an individual level?

As tech and media companies, battle for online engagement, they feed their users — they feed us — content that will grab attention, elicit emotion, and confirm existing beliefs. In a way, it traps everyone in their own bespoke bubble, often without our realizing it.

After previous episodes analyzed the right-wing media ecosystem, Landslide: Engines of Outrage now turns to look outside of it, offering tools for all of us to diagnose our own information diets and fight back against the incentives of an internet built to polarize.

Created and hosted by Ben Bradford.

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Librarians in Ukraine. Rural newspapers. A tweak to social media algorithms. The infrastructure of a political campaign. All of these offer lessons about how to beat back misinformation and conspiracy theories. But are they enough to pierce the right-wing media bubble?

This episode looks at solutions — from the anodyne to the unsavory — to defuse the engines of outrage and ultimately bring Americans back to a shared reality.

Created and hosted by Ben Bradford.

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In the early 2000s, key tech companies made a series of choices that shaped the future of the internet. They "gave away"" their products "for free." From an initial tweak to Facebook's NewsFeed to conspiracy theories about permanent markers in the 2020 election, that decision — and the relentless hunt for engagement that followed — paved the way for outrage-fueled content, viral conspiracy theories, and polarizing misinformation. And it all supercharged a right-wing media bubble inflated by the same forces.

Part Two of "Landslide: Engines of Outrage" explores how the internet, profit motives, human psychology, and political benefit are fusing together to widen our political divide.

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Just a few decades ago most people used — and trusted — the same news sources. Now, Americans are siloed in separate ecosystems, consuming conflicting depictions of reality. Misinformation runs rampant. Conspiracy theories flourish. And extremism grows. What can bring us back to a shared, fact-based understanding?

A new miniseries from Landslide explores America's information divide — starting with a coordinated campaign in the early 1970s to undermine the press, and the alternate media ecosystem that followed.

Created and hosted by Ben Bradford.

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