I think Politico’s Jonathan Martin must have been told, “write a piece in which prominent Republicans find as many possible ways to say ‘epistemic closure’ without ever actually using that phrase.” The result is pretty impressive: The GOP’s media cocoon.

Bring on the thesaurus:

• “a political-media coccoon that has become intellectually suffocating and self-defeating”
• “Pauline Kaelism”
• “the hermetically sealed bubble — except it’s not confined to geography but rather a self-selected media universe in which only their own views are reinforced and an alternate reality is reflected”
• “‘an era of on-demand reality‘”
• “‘We have become what the left was in the ’70s — insular.'”
• “…this reassuring pocket universe”
• “Like a political version of ‘Thelma and Louise,’ some far-right conservatives are in such denial that they’d just as soon keep on driving off the cliff than face up to a reality they’d rather not confront”
• “the choose-your-own-adventure news world”
• “‘Social media has made it easier to self-select…a universe… that is wedded to its own self-fulfilling prophecies‘”
• “‘Unfortunately, for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party, the echo chamber [now] is louder and more difficult to overcome'”

The article goes on to talk about the market forces that create and sustain this hermetically sealed information space, and how Republicans concerned with winning future elections might work to transcend it.

This entry was posted by jbc on Monday, November 12th, 2012 at 8:58 am and is filed under Epistemology, the_media, the_usa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.