Keep On Tweeting, There's No Techno-Fix For Incivility Or Injustice
Evan Selinger
2014-01-02 00:00:00
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Most of us share Bruni’s guiding concern. Online incivility is rampant because it comes easily. When someone says something so off-putting that it makes powerful emotions stir, the sweet release of public evisceration can seem more appealing than giving time-consuming, rational consideration to the troubling matter. The speed of communicating over frictionless networks exacerbates intemperance. So does the mediated nature of exchanging barbs with someone whose eyes you can avoid looking into.

​Precarious situations degenerate further when vitriol scales up and the voices of righteously indignant individuals transform into the aggregate beast of the “righteous online mob”. Then, the stakes can be much higher than hurt feelings over immoderately couched opinions. As tech writer Bianca Bosker laments: “For the targets of violent Internet vigilantism, the physical and digital can meld in ways that jeopardize peoples’ livelihoods, or even their safety.”

Bruni’s solution is for us to spend less time with media that ignite the flames of impulsiveness and more time with media that are conducive to, well…the opposite. Justifying his predilection for fiction, he writes: “But I’d bet big on real reading, fiction or nonfiction, as a prompt for empathy and a whole lot more: coolheadedness, maybe even open-mindedness, definitely deliberation. It doesn’t just yank you outside of yourself, making you consider other viewpoints without allowing for the incessant interjection and exaltation of your own. It slackens the pace. Forces a pause.”

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