how is the digital Revolution for example having an effect on the polarization of American politics as I think it is I would say that we have today a mismatch between our political culture and our political system a mismatch between our political culture and our political system uh and to try to explain what I mean by that very briefly uh let me draw an analogy for you if you go back to the 1950s 60s 7s right through the early 880s and you think about Prime Time network television you had television that was dominated by three major
networks with Prime Time shows were being watched by 50 to 80 million people so the Bill Cosby Show would be watched by 50 million people every week and there was an episode of Dallas that 80 million people watched 72 or 5% of American households were watching this this is an interesting State of Affairs it gives you a national culture of course it also is homogenizing and it it drives the culture to the center maybe it's mediocre maybe you know the culture isn't so great but it's a national culture everybody's watching the same thing it's kind
of a Centrist National culture well interestingly that's kind of how the American political process worked too uh we have a two- party system why because we have something called first P the post voting that just means you know uh if you get a majority of the votes you win and it's win or take all in our presidency and what uh that does is it drives the two parties that form to the middle and it means that they have to compete for the median voter and so the uh guys running for president end up kind of
saying the same thing you get a Centrist politics Centrist presidential uh uh uh campaigns maybe it's sort of mediocre but it's uh uh it's much more National and less polarized well now what has happened in terms of like culture well what happened was because the development of you know uh uh uh cable TV and then the Internet it's changed dramatic Al the top Prime Time network television shows now get like 11 million it's much less you get a a niche markets it's now makes sense for producers of content to to produce shows that appeal to
a niche of the market and that's a great thing in a way I mean you get some incredibly vulgar stuff you get some incredibly brainless stuff and you get some great TV too it's probably a lot better than it was in the 1950s 6070s and right through the 80s but it's not a national thing people are watching their own stuff on online or on cable and of course that's happening with our news too isn't it so you're getting news uh fragmentation and on the internet you get little group fragmentation you get niches of people who
are reading the same stuff talking to each other this is a field day a golden era a Heyday for single issue people and for uh uh people who have a more extreme view they talk to each other online it's self-reinforcing they're they are now able to uh uh in fact it makes them more extreme and it creates a political culture well it's more like uh systems uh uh so for example our two-party political system is to be contrasted with let's say the Italian political system why is that in in a place like Italy if you
get five% of the vote if your party gets 5% of the vote maybe even 3% of the vote you get a person in Parliament and then the parliament votes for president so you get uh it makes sense if you for you if you're Italian to form a political party all you need is 3 % of the vote 5% of the vote you get all this proliferation of parties Niche parties that get a person or two in the Parliament and then the these parliamentarians elect the president now that leads to paralysis in a lot of cases
and instability and demoralization and Corruption and a lot of bad effects there and that's what our political culture is moving to e for
