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A patient in her early thirties recently admitted that she hadn't voted, yet again, in the UK elections because she felt overwhelmed by information, tweets, Facebook messages and instagrams giving her bits of information that she couldn't make sense of. And, worst of all, she didn't know what was true and wasn't.
At least 40% of the American public turn to social media as their only source of news. Social media, in all its multifarious forms, has overtaken full sentences and live voice contact as a way of communicating, whether it be directions, experience, self-importance, or the condemnation or praise of public figures. The success of electioneering is increasingly dependent on sound bite slogans, one line mantras, or 140 characters.
If we are surprised – now rather frequently –of the results of recent elections; e.g. Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, Corbyn's rise and May's slump in the UK, and Macron1 in France– what is going on? The polls that we relied on in the past have notably failed to predict outcomes.
In fact, the traditional analysis of voting trends, breaking down groups according to age, ethnic origin, sex, economic class and type of employment, marital status, and so on, are increasingly failing to show any predictable pattern at all.
Even though we may like to believe voting is a rational process that reflects the interests of particular groups, like many other decisions in our lives, it is highly emotional. In the past the press has prided itself on delivering the “facts”, albeit not without inevitable bias. Now the “facts” are also bec