6 Ways to Improve our Political Conversations on Social Media
By Brittany Olson
Brittany Olson is a junior at Utah Valley University studying Writing Studies. She is (obviously) a writer, reader, gamer, raver, traveller, lover, and dreamer who wishes everyone could just get along. She aspires to be a technical writer, freelance editor, and professional vacationer. See her sporadic blog posts at Obnoxious Prose.
Ally Bichsel is a senior at Utah Valley University studying Public Relations and Strategic Communications. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors, reading, writing, and watching sports. Her goal is to work as a qualitative researcher for a public relations firm. See her occasional articles at Beyond Women's Sports.
Additional Reading
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you may have noticed that politics have taken over social media. You can’t scroll through five posts without seeing some clickbait minute long video about how stupid, racist, triggered, bigoted, politically correct, corrupt, socialist some government figure is.
What usually accompanies these videos are long arguments in the comments with no consensus being reached. This results in people losing respect for each other or losing entire relationships themselves. All the while people are becoming more entrenched in either side and every post is becoming an us versus them tug of war.
What we also see happening, which is arguably even more dangerous, is people posting politically with no one commenting and no conversation happening at all. We’re unwilling to challenge arguments in an effort to avoid fighting. But challenging ideas and having some debate is good for helping those ideas expand and fine tune themselves. It can help the truth come to light if a story has been distorted and another person you associate with has another perspective or piece of information you may not have had. Simply scrolling past an idea you completely don’t agree with and discounting the person who posted it just builds resentment and doesn’t broaden either of your perspectives.
In a time where we are becoming increasingly divided, we have to be able to have these conversations with each other to fine tune our belief systems and remain united and active in our communities. The trick is to have respectful, productive discussions rather than blaming, shaming shouting matches. Below are some ways we can work to be more empathetic while still having these difficult conversations.
1. Recognize your immediate emotional response
If you’re even a little bit passionate about politics or social issues, you’ve experienced that moment of scrolling through a social media feed when you see someone you know has posted something that you feel is wrong, distorted, or attacking something you believe to be extremely important. You feel an instant flare of anger or incredulity. You think, “how could anyone POSSIBLY agree with that?!” You look to see who’s posted this garbage and immediately start typing out a scathing response telling the person just how wrong they are and how disappointed you are to be associated with someone who would think this way/believe this crap/support this person, etc. Before you know it, you’re at war with someone who’s supposed to be your friend (or at least distant acquaintance), and not making any effort to understand that person or their opinion. And you definitely haven’t changed anybody’s mind about the issue by attacking them out the gate.
Instead, at that moment that you see a post and have your first visceral reaction to the information in front of you, it’s helpful to take a beat. Don’t turn off the emotion but examine it. What emotion is it? Anger? Disappointment? Sadness? Condescension, even? One important thing to realize is that anger is generally a smokescreen for a deeper emotion such as hurt or fear. Are you truly feeling angry at this person for their opinion or are you hurt because they don’t realize the consequences of their actions on you or others? Understanding the base emotion that your reaction is coming from is helpful to put your own opinion into perspective and come up with a thoughtful and heartfelt response rather than an abrupt and angry one.
2. Think about this person’s perspective
Take a moment and think about why you are so passionate about a particular political stance. For example, are you a feminist because you’ve personally seen inequality in your own life or been unfairly treated because of your gender? Or are you anti-abortion due to your religious upbringing?
Our basis in particular beliefs often comes from personal experiences that have led us to lean more strongly towards a particular side. When approaching someone you disagree with on social media, use your knowledge of the other person and their experiences to look at the particular issue from their eyes. Does this person feel strongly about minimum wage because they own a small business that can’t afford to raise wages at such an abrupt rate? Does this person feel strongly about LGBT rights because they have a family member that took their own life due to bullying about their sexuality?
You can gain a different perspective on the issue from looking at it from their point of view and that may refine the way you think about the issue yourself. It’ll also help you to be more empathetic and approach the subject in a way that won’t offend the person you’re trying to communicate with.
If you’re still having trouble understanding this opposing point of view, ask the other person for more tools to understand their side. This can be anything from articles and other evidence or just for them to explain personally what the issue at hand means to them. This shows the other person that you’re actively trying to understand and makes them more receptive to continuing the conversation to try and reach a consensus. (For more information on ways to try seeing from another person's perspective, see 3 counter intuitive ways to take on another person’s point of view. Ed.)
3. Approach what you agree on first
Now that you’re coming at an argument more aware of your own emotions and the person you’ll be directing your comments to, start the conversation with something you can both agree on. Going on the offensive right away is going to make the other person, shockingly, go on the defensive. They won’t be interested in debate and coming to some semblance of agreement because they’ll be too busy defending their claim. Again, it becomes me versus you and our instinct is to fight back rather than calmly discuss.
Disagreements on hot button issues often come from a difference on how to reach an end goal rather than the end goal itself. We all want the poor to be less poor. We all want more jobs. We all want life to be just a little easier. We just disagree on how exactly we can make that happen. Show the person you’re trying to converse with that you understand where they’re coming from and how you want what’s best for our world as well. Then you can rationally discuss your various methods on how to reach this mutual goal and maybe come up with a whole new innovative solution together.
4. Would you say this to this person if they were standing in front of you?
We can all agree that the internet is a place where people do not use their most respectful arsenal of language. Without a live human being in front of us, it’s easy for you to dehumanize the person you’re disagreeing with online. You can turn them into just a dissenting voice rather than the complex, passionate, and interesting human that they are. When formulating a comment towards someone on the internet, we should also ask ourselves, “Is this something I would have the guts to say if I was face to face with this person?” If not, it’s probably something you can keep to yourself or tone down.
It’s also helpful to humanize the people on the other end of the keyboard as to not lump them into the side you don’t agree with. People are generally not as black and white as Republican and Democrat but more moderate and grey. When you get online, sometimes it’s hard to remember that the more conservative or liberal person you’re facing online is not the entire embodiment of the enemy, but just another concerned citizen of the world, just like you.
5. Be willing to be wrong
I’ll be the first to admit: I hate being wrong. There’s nothing worse than feeling completely confident in a piece of information, to defend it, only to be proven wrong by evidence from the person I’m debating. But if I can manage to put aside my ego and give up that particular part of my ideology, it gives me room to expand and form even more complex ideas about an issue.
Sometimes we’ll continue to defend a piece of information that we know is wrong just to save face and avoid that sinking feeling. When we do this, we can’t move forward with discourse and we won’t gain anything from the conversation because we’re too focused on this emotional reaction. When we admit we’re wrong, the person we are conversing with might even have more respect for us for being vulnerable in the long run, even if they rub it in your face a little first. (Also, try not to be the person that rubs being right in others’ faces.) You show your integrity when you can admit you might not have all the answers and you open yourself up to new perspectives (To learn more about how to admit that you're wrong, see 9 Humble Ways to Admit You’re Wrong. Ed.)
6. If all else fails, log off
Even if we are relentlessly trying to continue a conversation and reach some sort of agreement with each other, the effort can be exhausting. You may find that political conversations on social media are affecting you in your day to day life. If you’re having feelings of depression or anxiety after these types of conversations and you stop getting enjoyment out of being online, it may be time for a social media fast. Take some time to give yourself some self care and take a break from the grind of social media disagreements. (For more information on when to walk away from a debate, see When to walk away from an argument. Ed.)
Conclusion
Whether we like it or not, social media is our new public sphere where we can openly share our perspectives to help influence social and political change. We have a duty to continue the conversation and broaden our minds to different ideas to better the world we live in and we can’t do this if we’re constantly attacking each other. It’s ironic that in a world where we’ve never been more connected technologically, we struggle so much to connect emotionally. But I think if we can re-humanize each other and actively make an effort to understand one another’s perspective, as well as our own, we can use social media to band more fiercely together rather than tear us apart.