Don't ask me how it's done. But it does seem clear to me that there was a time when most people tuned into three mainstream networks and listened to Walter Cronkite together.
This meant that there was room for disagreement and differing interpretations, but we all began in the same place. Same facts, same editorializing. We were anchored there, as the cognitive psychologists say. When you're anchored, you don't wander very far. So in the end we were pretty close together -- and the GOP and Democratic voters could talk, party -- even intermarry. It was a civil time for most.
Then the proliferation of cable. We thought it might well bring a diversity of points of view, hoping that it would enrich the discourse with more minority and extreme ideas. The old model (shown a century ago by Hotelling) made us converge on the center in our perspectives. The new model would allow each of us to choose from among many and varied news sources, broadening and diversifiying our thinking.
Except that is not what happened.
It turned out that the old three-network-centrist model was not the binding constraint. What constrains us is... us. Start with our incapacity to process varied and diverse points of view. So most people settled on one cable news network, one narrow sliver of a perspective, and started to think like a Panda bear eats -- bamboo shoots for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Further, we faced other cognitive constraints -- for example, we remember best what is vivid and recent (two well studied biases) -- cable networks knew that to capture and keep us in their market share they needed to up the ante, and make their narrative the most compelling, the most fiery, the most dramatic -- the most combustible. Martial music and banner headlines touted a small narrow sampling of the violence on the planet and called it "terrorism" -- and this sold their bill of good to our most primal fears, and that became the new theme: EVERYONE IS COMING TO GET YOU!
And look at where we are. The RNC is now the Hang 'Em High Party, calling for lawlessness (they want to arrest, try, and execute Clinton in a kangaroo court of their own, and they want to their gun-toting Pinkertons to kill with impunity anyone who keeps them up at night). The Left is better, but also narrowly focused -- for them the Wall Street Banksters are after their homes, white cops are after their friends, Christians are peering into their bedrooms.
Fear is the new currency.
We've been afraid before, but in the past, cool heads had a chance to prevail, perhaps because we shared a media. But now, there is a lunatic calling Hillary Clinton a treasonous crook shouting his message day and night on one "newscast" while on another Trump is being called out for a rapist and a thief. If either are true, we do hope the judicial system finds them guilty. But that no longer matters, because today the average Joe thinks he knows the truth before investigation -- his need for visceral stimulation has been met day and night by a noxious, narrow media voice that seeks to keep him in a trance, and this requires that he never take a deep breath and ask, Wait, what? Can that be true?
If you point out that there is another point of view -- watch out! People defending their little house on the prairie from Injuns are not in the mood to listen. There's a whole lot of shooting going on but not much else.
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http://people.bath.ac.uk/ecsjgs/Teaching/Industrial%20Organisation/Papers/Hotelling%20-%20Stability%20in%20Competition.pdf
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