Issue #38: Political discourse: the good and the bad
An entry page to cover all aspects, the good and the bad, of how we discuss politics today.
This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it. You can join and suggest improvements or edits to this page.
Political discourse is an important part of democratic life. There is a profoundly noble aspect to political discourse and dialogue in general. A healthy exchange of ideas is necessary in order to define the rules of our public life, and to develop strategies and policies for the society to progress.
There is also a dark side to political discourse, a side that anyone can unfortunately easily observe today. This dark side has many facets: divisive discourse, fake news, disinformation, logical fallacies, hate speech, etc.
Most people have more common ground than they think they do, but buy into narratives that polarize, and feed biases instead of understanding the full scope of the topic being discussed.
As a starting point of any discussion on politics, people are invited to get the facts straight: people's opinion is a matter of freedom of conscience, but the facts have to be straight.
Note: The purpose of this page is not to fully cover the topic of political discourse, but to provide an outline of this wide-ranging topic, with links to various articles where we can explore each aspect in more depth.
Censorship
Conservatism
Cynicism
Differ We Must: How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America
Disinformation
Echo chamber
Freedom of speech — Freedom of speech is not what people think it is...
How to talk with victims of disinformation — Placeholder...
Information overload
Media — Media and democracy
Propaganda
Reporters Without Borders — For press freedom.
Sarcasm
Social networks — Social networks and democracy.
Stochastic terrorism — Terrorism randomly incited by divisive discourse.
Wedge issues
An entry page to cover all aspects, the good and the bad, of how we discuss politics today.