Why conservatives are winning the internet [View all]

[applegrove]

Why conservatives are winning the internet

A new book explains why digital activism helps conservatives more than liberals.

By Sean Illing at Vox

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/3/18624687/conservatism-liberals-internet-activism-jen-schradie

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Sean Illing

Why is that? Is there something inherent to conservatism that makes it more effective in the digital sphere? Or is the gap simply about resource disparities?

Jen Schradie

The simple answer is that conservatives are more likely to have more resources and to take advantage of that. The other is that they’re more likely to have hierarchical infrastructures that make it easier to engage the digital labor that’s needed to promote online activism. In other words, they tend to have more top-down organizations, and that’s just a more efficient way to distribute labor and get the message out.

In terms of the actual ideology itself, I do think there’s something about the nature of conservatism that makes it easier to promote online. Conservatives tend to focus on simple, clear messages around freedom in particular. The left tends to focus on this general idea of fairness.

Conservatives are generally monolithic in their attacks on, say, Obamacare. The left wants a diverse array of voices. The left tends to want to include a lot of different people and a lot of different issues, and the result is a more muddled message that is just harder to communicate.


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