Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is fuelling the toxic media discourse she so despises
At a US congressional hearing last week, representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the leading light of the 2018 Democratic intake – confronted Facebook’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg was supposedly attending the hearing to discuss libra, Facebook’s nascent digital currency, now facing considerable legislative pressure. In five blistering minutes,
Ocasio-Cortez widened her aim, taking him to task on issues ranging from Facebook’s decision to stop censoring lies in political advertisements to the company’s links to nefarious data-merchants Cambridge Analytica.
Clearly unprepared for Ocasio-Cortez or her line of questioning, Zuckerberg floundered. At some moments, he was irritable and dismissive. At others, he appeared hopelessly naive, not least when inelegantly explaining that “lying is bad” while stumbling over why he now condones it.
But while one could admire Ocasio-Cortez’s tradecraft, there was something unsettling about the scene too. Hostile and accusatory, it was indicative of a broader malaise in the state of public debate today.
Too often, it seemed that the goal of the young congresswoman’s questioning was not the answer it might elicit, but rather the delivery of the question itself. After one particularly explosive question, which simultaneously alluded to “ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures” and “right-wing bias” on social media, Zuckerberg was cut off before he could even answer.
This wasn’t the questioning of an investigation. This was a performance, with each question delivered for rhetorical effect. In Ocasio-Cortez’s eyes, Zuckerberg wasn’t meeting politicians to provide answers to their questions – he was there to be tried in the court of public opinion. The questions were designed to be chopped up and shipped out across social media, and then to spread as virally as possible.
We are seeing something similar at play in our own politics here in Britain. Take Prime Minister’s Questions. Once a venue of serious debate, today the experience is something else entirely. Lines of forensic questioning have been jettisoned for short, tub-thumping appeals, shouted over the heads of the MPs present – and over the heads even of the watching press – and out to an online audience.
It may be effective in the short term, but it is the tactic of demagoguery and populism. Rather than attempt to persuade your opponent of the relative strength and merit of your case, appeals are made directly to those who already support you – the messy issue of facts and evidence be damned.
This matters, because the issues we confront today are not binary questions. They are complex and multi-faceted, and offer few simple answers.
Take as an example one of the charges Ocasio-Cortez threw at Zuckerberg: Facebook’s decision not to censor demonstrable lies in political adverts.
On one hand, allowing the preventable spread of lies over social media appears morally indefensible. If you know a politician to be lying, surely you stop it? On the other, what is the result of giving Facebook the power of a censor? What happens when Zuckerberg is able silence politicians he opposes or promote those he likes?
And by refusing to exercise that power, was the Facebook boss not, in fact, deliberately avoiding what Ocasio-Cortez suggests he covets: undue political power?
It only takes a little reflection to realise that a seemingly clear issue is actually a lot knottier and harder to resolve than we might first imagine. Sadly, reflection tends to be in short supply, overridden by the rapid outrage that social media affords us.
If we are to engage with today’s complex challenges, each side must be given a fairer hearing. It is the duty of those within the debate, whoever they may be, to encourage this.
Ocasio-Cortez was right to question the role that Facebook is playing in our increasingly toxic public discourse. She would do well to ask now whether she herself has become part of the problem.
Main image credit: Getty