With the midterm elections coming, we at CNET have been publishing a series of stories looking at how to be an informed and active voter in today’s day and age.
My story today looks at why the tone of politics has changed, and boy has it ever.
You can read my story on CNET.
Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I saw some political advertising, but nothing like people see in far more competitive counties and states. Traveling this summer, I got a taste of it though as we drove from Maryland up through New York and back, confusing Google and Facebook’s advertising systems enough to send us local ads from New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
So, I started digging into it. Turns out the tight political races didn’t just have torrents of ads online, they also had nonstop social media posts attacking their opponents as well. And those posts didn’t just attack substance of policy debate, either. Many of them were deeply personal.
https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/the-normalizing-of-extreme-politics-is-playing-out-on-twitter/
