In her review of Andrew Doyle’s recently published book arguing the case for free speech, novelist, lawyer and commentator Helen Dale makes the following observation:
Relatedly, one of the most depressing characteristics of our contemporary media environment is what I’ve come to call “the silo effect.” Both social media (by dint of algorithms) and now conventional media (by dint of deliberate hiring and firing) are herding their viewers and readers into ideological silos. Once there, they’re unlikely to encounter anything other than intellectual comfort food with which they already agree.Siloing started in academe, where the boundaries between disciplines encourages it, was massively aggravated by social media and then infected institutions as social-media-inflamed university graduates spread out into the workforce. The effect being worse in media due to the “go broke, go woke” problem of shrinking incomes leading to shrinking newsrooms more easily dominated by recent graduates. A process that intensified the Hate Inc. media model analysed by journalist Matt Taibbi.
Cancel culture works best on little people — junior academics or low-level employees. Neither I nor Doyle (as we admit) can be cancelled. In both cases, people tried and failed: their behaviour parlayed our books into bestsellers. We can, however, be siloed. Unless you’re J.K. Rowling, siloing works on nearly everyone.
The underlying pattern revolves around media, particularly “quality” media, providing a set of opinions — prestige opinions — the holding of which grant prestige by marking one as being of the smart and the good. The great benefit of prestige opinions is that you don’t have to know about a subject in any depth, you only have to know what the smart-and-good people think.
Luxury beliefs (beliefs that provide status for elite folk while imposing costs lower down the social scale) are a subset of prestige opinions. “Defund the police”, with the resultant surge in homicides as vilified police withdraw from active policing, is an example of a luxury belief.
So, at the most general level, we have “clickbait tribalism”, where media outlets pander to their subscriber base to build and maintain an audience, leaning into the in-group/out-group tribalism to which we Homo sapiens are so prone.
In the “quality” media, prestige opinions operate as a particular version of such opinion tribalism, because they provide added status. Luxury beliefs are a subset of prestige opinions: the most directly toxic version of the status strategy.
The siloing that Helen Dale describes above feeds off the prestige-opinion media model that public broadcasting zeroed in decades ago (though the operation of the model has intensified over time) and has always been a bit of a thing.
Providing prestige opinions has increasingly become a service that public broadcasting and other “quality” media provide. The combination of surging midwit graduates in societies ever more flooded with information seriously upped the appeal of the economising-on-information (and cognitive effort), signal-you-are-smart-and-good service that the prestige-opinion media model provides.
My 2000 “Virtue Over Veracity” article in The Australian newspaper was an early attempt to articulate the prestige opinion model of “quality” media (‘Print’s elite puts virtue above veracity’, The Australian, Media supplement, 22 June 2000.)
In a recent essay, Curtin Yarvis notes that ostentatious fact-checking is part of the prestige media package: these opinions are clearly superior, for they have been fact-checked. Even though such fact-checking is often just another form of narrative enforcing. Ostentatious fact-checking thereby does double service to the prestige opinion game: providing an ostentatious performance of accuracy while protecting the prestige opinions themselves.
As Helen Dale observes in her book review, a specific view of the world that came out of media effects theory and related academic nonsense actively encourages siloing (in effect, self-curating what one reads):
Add in all the above and you get intensified siloing and so intensified polarisation.
Another way to think about it is that, with the (increasing) flood of information, it is hard to sort out signal from noise. Media companies offer signal-identifying services. The identified signal is more welcome if it accords with beliefs one is emotionally invested in. Hence the siloed tribalism of modern media.
The signal identification is even more welcome if it provides status markers and status reinforcement. Hence the appeal of prestige opinions in “quality” media that already has a status element built into its marketing. That the "quality" media will report very similar stories in very similar ways, far from being a warning sign, is easily taken as a marker that one is getting The Truth.
Unfortunately, thanks to the now common belief that word choice is an effect of cultural hegemony, the problem for Doyle is that left partisans are likely to respond by refusing to read his book, if not actively seeking to get bookshops to drop it. And yes, this behaviour is rooted in adherence to a form of word magic. The view that words, ideas, and arguments can cause harm in the same way a punch does means safety is only possible if one refuses to engage. The logic is impeccable: when you think language makes the world, you are frightened of words. Worse, Mill’s harm principle is no defence against people who insist on equating spiritual or psychological harm with physical violence.As folk accept the providing prestige-opinions service that public broadcasting and other “quality” media offer, such opinions become assets, the value of which one seeks to protect. Refusing to read folk outside those who are equally invested in maintaining the value of such beliefs-as-assets is a form of self-protection. Beliefs that are assets both for status and for self-identity as a good-and-smart person.
Add in all the above and you get intensified siloing and so intensified polarisation.
Another way to think about it is that, with the (increasing) flood of information, it is hard to sort out signal from noise. Media companies offer signal-identifying services. The identified signal is more welcome if it accords with beliefs one is emotionally invested in. Hence the siloed tribalism of modern media.
The signal identification is even more welcome if it provides status markers and status reinforcement. Hence the appeal of prestige opinions in “quality” media that already has a status element built into its marketing. That the "quality" media will report very similar stories in very similar ways, far from being a warning sign, is easily taken as a marker that one is getting The Truth.
If the "quality" media does not report something, it is functionally not-a-thing for all those taking their cues from such media. The result is the behaviour of those responding to different cues becomes mysterious, and presumably malign. Because that feeds the status strategy and status differentiation.
If the public beliefs impose costs on those of lower social status, the status signal is more effective still at status differentiating. Hence the generation of luxury beliefs. With all these processes being amplified by the reinforcing feedback effects of social media.
Without even considering the problem of luxury beliefs, the problem is even worse. For prestige opinions only provide positive status if contrary opinions generate negative status. If opinion X is a sign of virtue, then opinion not-X becomes a sign of vice, of viciousness.
If the public beliefs impose costs on those of lower social status, the status signal is more effective still at status differentiating. Hence the generation of luxury beliefs. With all these processes being amplified by the reinforcing feedback effects of social media.
Without even considering the problem of luxury beliefs, the problem is even worse. For prestige opinions only provide positive status if contrary opinions generate negative status. If opinion X is a sign of virtue, then opinion not-X becomes a sign of vice, of viciousness.
The prestige opinion model generates pressure for censorship of contrary opinions. Both among those for whom their prestige opinions are assets to be defended and those who purvey such prestige opinions, because central to the “service” they are applying is to also “identify” illegitimate wickedness and stupidity.
So, it goes further than self-protective siloing. Many people have been encouraged by “quality” media (including by public broadcasting) to “invest” in beliefs as cognitive assets that mark them off as being of the smart-and-the-good while also allowing them to economise on information and cognitive effort. This leads them to demand, or support, censorship to protect those assets.
So, it goes further than self-protective siloing. Many people have been encouraged by “quality” media (including by public broadcasting) to “invest” in beliefs as cognitive assets that mark them off as being of the smart-and-the-good while also allowing them to economise on information and cognitive effort. This leads them to demand, or support, censorship to protect those assets.
Especially as those prestige opinions become reinforced and protected by a series of pseudo-intellectual smears. Once activated (e.g. TERF), the smear puts a fence around tagged opinion and tagged person, meaning that no further consideration is required. It is revealing how these smears represent an assault on the character of the person so tagged via their (actual or alleged) opinion. The smearing attack on moral character reveals very clearly that an in-group/out-group status game is being played.
The “paradox” of journalists and reporters being in favour of censorship is no paradox at all. It is where their business model, and their own status strategy, leads them. For among the first to buy into the prestige-opinion model are those who push prestige opinions.
What is acceptable trumps what is true (or might be true). Anyone who is in favour of any form of censorship of opinions clearly (whatever they may tell themselves) prefers what is acceptable to what is (inconveniently) true, or might be true. For censorship is not only an act of social dominance, it is all about policing the acceptable.
Yet, the problem is worse still. Because the prestige-opinion model provides the “quality” media with an incentive to frustrate policy accountability. Any information or policy outcomes that contradict or undermine the prestige-opinion assets they have been providing, and adhere to themselves, attack both their own sense of status and their business model. (And yes, public broadcasters also have a business model: to create a core of active partisans for their services.)
Moreover, not-for-profit organisations, including tax-funded organisations, lacking a clear “bottom line”, tend to reflect the interests of their staff. In the case of public broadcasting, the status strategies of their staff.
For issues where there often has not been enough time to test the accuracy of claims, and which will have very different significance depending on one's social position, values, interests and concerns, to generate such rapid conformities is a sign that there are strong pressures to hold the same (narrow) range of opinions. Opinions become conventions, things one does (or holds) because other people do. As they become markers of knowing status, they become social norms: opinions one is expected to hold if one is of the smart and good and will likely be subject to sanctions if one does not as people protect their status-and-identity assets.
The “paradox” of journalists and reporters being in favour of censorship is no paradox at all. It is where their business model, and their own status strategy, leads them. For among the first to buy into the prestige-opinion model are those who push prestige opinions.
What is acceptable trumps what is true (or might be true). Anyone who is in favour of any form of censorship of opinions clearly (whatever they may tell themselves) prefers what is acceptable to what is (inconveniently) true, or might be true. For censorship is not only an act of social dominance, it is all about policing the acceptable.
Yet, the problem is worse still. Because the prestige-opinion model provides the “quality” media with an incentive to frustrate policy accountability. Any information or policy outcomes that contradict or undermine the prestige-opinion assets they have been providing, and adhere to themselves, attack both their own sense of status and their business model. (And yes, public broadcasters also have a business model: to create a core of active partisans for their services.)
Moreover, not-for-profit organisations, including tax-funded organisations, lacking a clear “bottom line”, tend to reflect the interests of their staff. In the case of public broadcasting, the status strategies of their staff.
The conformity of opinion across "quality" media is reassuring for the consumers of the prestige-opinion model, as it reinforces the sense that folk who matter all agree on what is the righteous truth. In fact, that "quality" media is so readily dominated by rapidly emerging conformities in what is supposed to be the "first draft" of history is a danger sign.
The prestige-opinion model also creates perverse incentives within bureaucracies: whether government, non-profit or corporate. The more folk have invested (at least cognitively) in prestige opinions as assets, the more they have incentives to block information that undermine their prestige-opinion assets. Including information relevant to the successful operation of their organisation.
While the “go woke, go broke” dynamic is easily over-stated, it is not hard to find cases of marketing and other commercial decisions clearly based on the prestige-opinion status game that have damaged sales because too many customers were not interested in paying for status games they were not invested in and that shifted the product away from what they wanted. The pattern has become particularly marked in cinema, television and comics in the US and the rest of the developed Anglosphere.
Journalist and first-rate science populariser Will Storr (whose latest book, The Status Game, is required reading to understand the world around us) made the point in his interview with the Triggernometry boys that the modern world of science and mass prosperity was built on prestige increasingly accruing to competence and success. People gained prestige from being clever at inventing new gadgets and expanding our understanding of the world around us. As Alexander Pope (1688–1744) famously said of Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727):
Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
The modern world, the mass prosperity on which the abolition of slavery, the expansion of the franchise, legal equality for women and so much more was all built on, came about because status through competence-and-success prestige came to dominate the pre-existing (and up to then dominant) status game of virtue, of propriety.
The trouble is, competence and success through actual achievement is hard. Ostentatious performance of propriety is much easier. Social media makes it easier still and broadcasts the performative propriety much more widely.
We are observing the increasing replacement of prestige through competence and success by status through ostentatious performance of propriety. It is polluting our public discourse, undermining democratic accountability and encouraging bad (even disastrous) policy.
Michael Shellenberger’s latest book San Fransicko provides vivid examples of such disastrous dynamics in US “progressive” urban policies. In the latter part of this interview, Shellenberger discusses how uniformity of opinion among folk in the mainstream media frustrates accountability for bad “progressive” policies. What he is describing is a classic example of how media that both itself invests in, and purveys, prestige opinions undermines democratic accountability quite directly, fostering ever more disastrous policy outcomes.
While the “go woke, go broke” dynamic is easily over-stated, it is not hard to find cases of marketing and other commercial decisions clearly based on the prestige-opinion status game that have damaged sales because too many customers were not interested in paying for status games they were not invested in and that shifted the product away from what they wanted. The pattern has become particularly marked in cinema, television and comics in the US and the rest of the developed Anglosphere.
Journalist and first-rate science populariser Will Storr (whose latest book, The Status Game, is required reading to understand the world around us) made the point in his interview with the Triggernometry boys that the modern world of science and mass prosperity was built on prestige increasingly accruing to competence and success. People gained prestige from being clever at inventing new gadgets and expanding our understanding of the world around us. As Alexander Pope (1688–1744) famously said of Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727):
Nature, and Nature’s laws lay hid in night.
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.
The modern world, the mass prosperity on which the abolition of slavery, the expansion of the franchise, legal equality for women and so much more was all built on, came about because status through competence-and-success prestige came to dominate the pre-existing (and up to then dominant) status game of virtue, of propriety.
The trouble is, competence and success through actual achievement is hard. Ostentatious performance of propriety is much easier. Social media makes it easier still and broadcasts the performative propriety much more widely.
We are observing the increasing replacement of prestige through competence and success by status through ostentatious performance of propriety. It is polluting our public discourse, undermining democratic accountability and encouraging bad (even disastrous) policy.
Michael Shellenberger’s latest book San Fransicko provides vivid examples of such disastrous dynamics in US “progressive” urban policies. In the latter part of this interview, Shellenberger discusses how uniformity of opinion among folk in the mainstream media frustrates accountability for bad “progressive” policies. What he is describing is a classic example of how media that both itself invests in, and purveys, prestige opinions undermines democratic accountability quite directly, fostering ever more disastrous policy outcomes.
The biggest problem in Western civilisation is the expansion of social milieu (public, corporate and non-profit bureaucracies; universities; school systems) where ideas are not reality-tested but they are status-selected. The prestige opinion model interacting with social media has made the problem WAY worse.
So, those opinions you have picked up from “quality media”. Are they assets you wish to protect? If so they may also be a spiralling social, organisational and civilisational disaster that you have bought into.
[An earlier version was posted on Medium. This post has been expanded since I first posted it.]
Good stuff. Only quibble is that abolishing slavery was a cause not the result of increasing prosperity - removing slaves forced the development of technologies to replace them, and allowed the slaves to rise in the world, adding to total wealth of the population.
ReplyDeleteInteractive. Yes, abolishing slavery increased production overall but rising prosperity also made it easier to agitate against it and provided alternatives.
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