Issues@Hand

AFA initiatives, Christian activism, news briefs

June 2018 – Neil Johnson, a physicist running University of Miami’s Complexity Interdisciplinary Group, sees a troubling trend in America’s news consumption: The more news the populace consumes, the more polarized it becomes.

As a physicist, Johnson is accustomed to bell curves with few people on the extremes and most falling somewhere in the middle. But when it comes to news consumption or political stories, Johnson routinely finds a U-shaped curve with numerous people at both extremes and few in the middle.

Fake news stories make their contribution with many drawing countless visits to websites but giving nothing productive in return. And with video and social media algorithms feeding visitors what they want to see, the polarization will only become more concrete.

Bryan Fischer, host of Focal Point on American Family Radio, told AFA Journal, “The solution is not to devalue news. Instead, we need to make sure we only place value on news that comes from trustworthy sources, sources which evaluate everything that happens in our culture through the lens of Scripture.”

miamiherald.com, 4/3/18