Mixed media: how Australia’s newspapers became locked in a war of left versus right

Australia has very little diversity in its traditional media sector, argues Denis Muller in this cross-posting from The Conversation, and this is only being made worse by the increased polarisation of the country’s two main newspaper companies, News Corp and Fairfax Media.

We are living through a period of fragmentation and polarisation in public discourse on a scale mankind has not before experienced. By far the greatest fragmenting and polarising force is social media.

An increasing proportion of the population, especially those under 40, get their news from social media, overwhelmingly from Facebook. The algorithms that tailor what Facebook prioritises for each individual allow users to choose only those topics or opinions that they want to hear. This has led to the formation of echo chambers or information cocoons.

So we have the paradox of the internet: the technology that provides a global village square also provides the means by which people in the square can block their ears and shut their eyes to things they don’t want to hear or see.

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