JOIN IN THE CHANT SERIES
"I think of the chants the recent subway series in New York, and that is quite different to when President Bush threw out a pitch after 9/11 and had people cheering," Mollica explained. "For most of the fans they're probably there for the game," said Mollica, who also noted how the times have changed. This could be a case where the chants have become akin to a politicized version of "The Wave" or other fan-based activities. "Twitter has taken over what sports talk radio was, and it is now sports talk radio on steroids!"Īnother consideration with the recent chants of "F**k Joe Biden" is whether everyone in the stadiums really shares that sentiment. "You can't go on Twitter on a football Sunday without seeing this sort of negativity," he explained. Mollica also noted that this isn't really limited to politics, and unfortunately Twitter has become an anti-social network to tear down the other side on a plethora of issues. One factor has been that social media makes it far easier to be negative than positive. Social media had the potential for a sharing of news and information and to bring topics that weren't getting the spotlight, but instead it has become a place where this discourse is all too common." I'm really disheartened by what social media has become because these overtake everything else. "It is from the elements of the far right or far left, and at times it still makes it hard to get away from the negativity. "When we see these sorts of topics trending it is from the usual suspects," added Mollica. But this is still a fairly small number in the grand scheme of things, and instead these just drown out all the other discussions of the day. To the casual observer it would seem that the masses are truly political and hostile. The fact that some 200,000 to 300,000 tweets in the past day were related to Trump or Biden is notable for a couple of reasons. Now the same level of hostility is being directed at Joe Biden." When Donald Trump was president a lot of hostility was directed at him, but he also used the platform as well to target those he had issue with. "Social media had been the place where politicians and their followers could make their opinions heard," said Mollica, "but increasing it has become divisive and hostile. "Unfortunately in the last four or five years the discourse in politics has bled into the culture of America as a whole," explained Jason Mollica, professorial lecturer in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C. As a result it has transformed some of the social platforms – most notably Twitter – into a 24/7 propaganda machine where the sentiments bring out the worst.
For years there had been complaints that Americans failed to pay too much attention to politics, but now thanks to social media its seems a very vocal segment of the population only pays attention to politics, and misses no opportunity to make their opinion heard.
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