How Social Media Is Ruining Politics

Our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens.

If traditional print and broadcast media required candidates to be nouns—stable, coherent figures—social media pushes them to be verbs, engines of activity. Authority and respect don’t accumulate on social media; they have to be earned anew at each moment. You’re only as relevant as your last tweet. The more established among this year’s candidates have been slow to learn this lesson. That’s particularly true of Clinton and Bush, the erstwhile shoo-ins. Their Twitter tiff was an exception to their generally anodyne presence on social media. They’ve played it safe, burnishing their images as reliable public servants while trying to avoid any misstep that might blow up into a TV controversy.

Social media favors the bitty over the meaty, the cutting over the considered. It also prizes emotionalism over reason. The more visceral the message, the more quickly it circulates and the longer it holds the darting public eye.