Enlightened Populism

Reflections on the News Cycle of a Pandemic

Edición de la obra Enlightened Populism

Pandemics, global warming and other existential threats to humanity invite questions on the currently dominant sociopolitical constructs and the fundamental flaws within established systems, which may help us reevaluate the means by which human beings and the planet’s resources are grouped and classified from nation states to localities. The book is primarily based on comments on News posts on Facebook and a selection from some of the most interesting replies that followed. Reflections are made on the media’s relationship with reality, typical tactics of media framing, agenda setting, the superficial discourse of hard news, how media platforms cater their content to serve readers in separate bubbles, and how social media channels and other interactive internet platforms help widen the gaps between these bubbles. Comments on the news posts provided by mainstream media organizations are utilized to highlight the links between intensely covered issues and the underreported newsworthy incidents, to shed some light on the common roots of longstanding struggles in multiple places around the world and the need to dismantle tribalism, cronyism, polarization, toxic competitiveness, systemic bigotry… Enlightened populism is presented as a healthy alternative to the two dominant behavioral patterns of communication in today’s world, “Blind Elitism” and “Ignorant Populism”; it may help provide the essential infrastructure for human beings to efficiently challenge the mentioned aspects of the status quo. PS: The book is primarily based on casual comments and conversations on Facebook, if you care about spelling, punctuation and the grammatical structure of a sentence more than the ideas expressed in it, this is not the right book for you.