Unresolved Foreign Policy issues, twitter memes and the moderate majority.
“One thing we do know about the internet is that it ultimately amplifies the voices at the extremes.”
- Alec J Ross - Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -
Something about Alec J Ross’s statement irks me. After all, Jeff Jarvis did say: “Technology is agnostic”, so why wouldn’t the Internet also amplify moderate voices? If the so-called silent majority were to be prompted to focus on one important issue and their opinions be echoed online, wouldn’t the sheer volume of those voices push back radicals to the fringes, thus moderating the narrative? Why would the resulting dialogue be sectarian? Wouldn’t it rather pull people together, comforted by the fact that their opinions can be publicly shared and rationally debated? Extrapolating on the stance of the U.S State Department Official, Social Media is for Al Qaeda and über-agnostics?
Internet doesn’t amplify the voices at the extremes. Neither does social media.
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