A different take on social media and democracy

We've talked about social media a lot on this show over the years — usually focusing on algorithms, echo chambers, polarization, and the other ways it's damaging to democracy. This week, however, we hear a different take from V Spehar, who has more than 3 million followers on the TikTok account Under the Desk News.

V built a reputation providing recaps of the daily news for an audience who might not consume news anywhere else. The Under the Desk News audience is politically diverse and V talks about some of the conversations that happen in the comments section. V's also seen how social media can bring people together in real life and encourage people to become civically informed and engaged.

Check out V's new podcast, American Fever Dream.

Episode Transcript

Michael Berkman
From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy on the campus of Penn State University, I'm Michael Berkman.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.

Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, we are talking with V Spehar, who is the creator of Under the Desk news on TikTok, and the host of the podcast, American Fever Dream. V visited Penn State a couple of weeks ago and gave a talk and met with some of our students here. And it's just was, it's been a really interesting experience reflecting on the work that V does and thinking about it, in contrast to some of what we typically hear about social media on this podcast, and, and other places, I think, as you'll hear in the interview, V has a much more positive outlook on the role that social media can play for, for media literacy and for our democracy than maybe some of the folks that we've talked to previously or that our listeners might have heard or read about in other places.

Candis Watts Smith
I'm really glad that we invited V to Democracy Works, because they, as you mentioned, illuminate a different side of what we typically think about social media. I think if we ask just the average person, even maybe our average listener, what they think about social media, and by that, for example, tick tock or Facebook, or Instagram, or x, they would probably use mostly negative words to describe or characterize these tools, right and divisive on serious junk or time sucks. People do scroll. It's a great place for celebrity gossip. And we've had plenty of guests who are helping us to think about how politics on social media can be divisive and can enhance polarization, that we see many of the ways that Americans are divided in their real lives.

Candis Watts Smith
They're also divided in the, you know, on the interwebs, right, that people bicker relentlessly and they say whatever they want to say. But I think on the other side, just as well, if we ask people how much time they spend on social media, they wouldn't say a lot. And if we ask them how much they learned from social media, they might say a lot.

Candis Watts Smith
And you can think about how many questions how many sentences you might have begun with, I saw this guy on TikTok, or I learned or, you know, whatever on Facebook er, can you believe someone's so sad on Instagram, whatever, that people are using their devices a lot more to consume news, they're moving away from television. And so it can't be all bad. And so like you said, vSphere is trying to use these tools for good to provide information, given how much people are using these tools. Providing helpful content, perhaps is the direction that we need to go think more critically about cannabis,

Michael Berkman
I think that really gets to the heart of some of the questions that I have in my mind, about something like the work that that V is doing. So I don't think of V as a journalist comparable to reporters, with the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, they are not out there gathering information. They're not trained professionally in journalistic ethics or practices. Why do we trust journalists to the extent that we do and it's because we have an expectation, one that I think has been really brutalized by Trump, in particular with his attacks on the fake media. But we trust them, because they're professionals, because they're operating under certain ethical codes, because they're requiring two sources before they're able to talk about something.

Michael Berkman
I mean, Jenna could go could add a lot more to that than I can. But the trust comes from the sort of institution that they are and the practices that they follow. But with V, the trust is coming from someplace else. And I think it's quite interesting. I mean, they talked about it a little bit in terms of a kind of social world, or what did they call it? The third place like that this online community is one that has learned to trust them and others, I guess, involved with it, because of who they are, rather than because of the sort of practices they follow, or their training.

Candis Watts Smith
I think you might even maybe not learn to trust I think that some people earn trust. I think that's true. I think that people gravitate toward Are people that trust is, you know, like a bank account, right that people like a currency that you build over time and people will blast you in the comments if you are not, right. I mean, so there's that part to where you know, someone puts up a something on Instagram or they put, and then you read the comments. And people will say, that's not true, or that's true. Or I also read this. And so where journalists get their trust from being a part of an institution, and we understand that if they are hired by a certain entity, that they have checked all the qualifications, trust in the social media sphere is earned through over time interactions and conversations with millions of people. And in like, real time.

Jenna Spinelle
And I think that's a good segue into the interview, we can hear V talk about how they have worked to build that trust over the past couple of years, and what some of those interactions with their followers look like. So let's go now to the interview with V Sphar.

Jenna Spinelle
V Spehar, welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us today.

V Spehar
Thanks for having me.

Jenna Spinelle
So I was saying to you before we started recording that, you know, normally we talk with scholars and people who study things like social media and news and what those things mean for democracy. So I'm very excited to have the chance to talk with someone today. And I think our listeners will be excited to hear from someone who is doing those things in actual life, as opposed to just studying it and publishing a paper on it after the fact. But before we get into all of your work on under the desk news and your new podcast, American fever dream, just talk a little bit about how you got here. Were you interested in politics growing up? Was it something that you talked about on the dinner table? And I know you had a very different career in food before you started working more in news?

V Spehar
Yeah. So growing up, I wouldn't say that my family was like super political. They were more interested in the news as it related to like, what fun gossip was happening in town. And I think your definition of news changes, right? There's like big global news. And then there's like the hot stuff that's happening in your town. And I would say we were more on the hot stuff happening in town level. I went to school for theater, undergrad, I got a master's degree in marketing, because if you have an undergrad degree in theater, you have to do something. And then I started working in food and restaurants. And I worked as a chef as an event planner. But the most rewarding job I had was as the director of impact for the James Beard Foundation. And in that role, I was working with chefs to lobby Congress for a better food policy, whether that was advocating for the rights of animals that would be brought to slaughter someday, or that was talking about smart catch, and what we should be doing about fishing, and really giving chefs a voice in politics to be leading that legislation, as opposed to like hoping some Congressman just happens to know about the economics of small business and feeding people.

V Spehar
And then the pandemic came, and I got furloughed from that job, because, of course, all food and beverage shut down. And a lot of my chef friends were, you know, celebrity chefs, you might call them and they started making tic TOCs because they were all out of the restaurant. And so I started making tic TOCs making fun of them kind of or like imitating them or do adding them. And then I started making tic TOCs of me making these like elaborate crazy cheeseburgers, while also talking about how to apply for the PPP loan or the shuttered venue or whatever other government programs were coming out, trying to bring that through line of impact and politics back to the table after you know COVID burned our table down. And then January 6, seventh. And I sort of in a funny way, I was having a meeting with the with the Veterans Affairs Department about how we were going to be feeding veterans. And so I was wearing a suit from the waist up, as you do on Zoom calls.

V Spehar
And I just saw what was happening on TV. I had been in the capitol a bunch, I knew that people were in places they shouldn't be. And I just dove under my desk and it was like Mike, Mike Pence, you could invoke the 25th Amendment, you could be president for 14 whole days. And people thought that was funny. They liked it. Give them a sense of calmness, in this moment of chaos, also gave them something to anchor on this 25th amendment that they maybe hadn't thought of or didn't even know about existed. There was a path there was something we could do this wasn't going to end there was another level of democracy to pull. And that's when under the Destiny started and just got popular, just stayed under that desk and started telling people more about civics.

Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. So give us a sense of who your audience is. I think, you know, tick tock is often stereotypically associated with Gen Z, and I'm sure that is a large, you know, proportion of your audience, but it's not, it's not all Gen Z. So give us a sense of who's interacting with your content.

V Spehar
So I think a lot of the traditional media when they report on me if they will call me the go to new source for millennials and Gen Z, and that's because they somewhat falsely associate Tik Tok with only young people. My audience It is pretty divided evenly between Gen Z, millennials, Gen X and even boomers. And I think that's important to realize that the conversation we're having on tick tock isn't just issues for BI and about young people. It's issues that bring everyone to the table. So right now my audience, I would say it's pretty evenly distributed, maybe leaning heavy millennial Gen Z, but a significant portion of Boomers, Gen X and older 30%. I think it's, I think I'm 20% Male Audience 80% Female 30% identify as conservative, which I think is very interesting, huge military population.

V Spehar
The number one employer of my audience is the United States Army, which is, I think, interesting. I mean, they're a big employer in America anyway. And so it's a little bit of everyone. And I'm really proud of that, I think that I've set a place for us to have conversations where we're all interacting with news and politics and current events. And then we can take what we learn, research it more, and apply it to how it shows up in our lives. Because while I'm in Rochester, New York, you know, talking about something, there's someone in Northwest Arkansas, with five kids, you know, living, and they're hearing it differently. And who am I to like, say, Well, you should see it the way the New York sees it, right. So I think it's been a great place to bring people together. And I think it proves that there is an appetite. And there is a respectability, for a place to host all these different types of people,

Jenna Spinelle
We talk a lot about how polarized and divided America is. And you could envision a scenario where that would just be a hot mess in your comments. But I could also see, maybe it's more civil, maybe there is some actual, like respectful engagement happening. So um, give us a picture of what that looks like.

V Spehar
So I am just as much a community member of under the desk as I am the host of the show. So I've made my own comments and commenting back and forth, there's a couple things that I do to protect the space. One is use keyword filtering. The fact that no slurs or bad words will show up in the comments means whoever said a slur or a bad word got to have the feeling of posting that. But it never showed up on the feed. So everybody kind of got what they wanted out of it, right? Because I truly believe that people who leave bad comments oftentimes aren't looking for a good faith argument. They're just looking to be heard or copy paste their thing that gives them some relief. So they got to have that, but it didn't show up in the comments. And then when I go in the comments, and I see different things going on. A lot of times, some of the most divisive comments have usernames that are actually that person's first and last name. So it's like Dave Smith, 5654, right. So I'll go and I'll be like, Dave, my guy, come on, man, be cool. Just like that. I'm talking to them as a person, because they are a person and we're in a community, we're all equals.

V Spehar
And then they will be like our IV. Alright, you caught me this time, you know, we're all in on the joke together, we're all policing ourselves, we're all engaging. And I'll give you a couple tries. And if it turns out that there's just somebody there who wants to be sassy, or just wants to cause trouble, I just block them. Because to be in the community is a right to have a protected space as a right. And we've built this platform together, me and the 3 million followers. And I feel a responsibility to keeping that place safe, not so safe, that it's sterile, where we're not having difficult conversations or disagreeing, but where it doesn't turn to abuse, which is never productive.

Jenna Spinelle
So the other thing that often comes up in this stuff, when you talk about community and social media, some people might say that's an oxymoron in some ways, because there's also this other thing happening of where, you know, Gen Z in particular reports, high levels of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and people will often link that to more time spent on social media as opposed to non social media, you know, IRL interactions, right? So, um, how do you think about that relationship between, you know, forming a community on social media, but also having a community outside of it.

V Spehar
So I think it's easy to paint a correlation between more time on social media and increased feelings of loneliness. And what that does is absolve the world, the community, the town, of the fact that there are no third places anymore. When I was a kid, we go outside and play all day, right? And that would be one thing, or my mom would drop us off at the mall. We'd cruise around the mall, get a little orange Giulia shop, do whatever. We go rollerskating we'd go to the bookstore, we would go to the library, all these things were like, third places for people to exist. There was a lot of going over my friend's house, right? Homeownership is a difficult thing for people right now. Also, people don't have as many children right now. That was one of three my friends were one to five, four. So it was like, Yeah, you got all these kids in the neighborhood. And they're like at Allison's house one day, and they're at my mom's house the next day, and everybody's feeding each other. That was the culture of the 80s and 90s. It was a little bit different. But it's, it was third places. There was a third place to go. There wasn't just worker school, and we don't have that anymore.

V Spehar
Now what we have is social media. We have fragile homeownership, where you're not living in the same house in the same town you lived in your entire life that your parents lived in your grandparents lived in. And so I actually think Social media is the remedy in many ways to the lack of third place. It's just that third place is in the metal sphere, right? It's in the online now. And I would love to see more third places showing up in the world. But even today, I went to get a coffee and there's a sign at the Panera that says, between the hours of 11 and five, no 116 to 18 is allowed unsupervised because they're loud. And they're damaging things, right? Well, where do you want these kids to go? You want to mean? And it's not of course, it's not like Panera is fall today, though they don't need to collect them either.

V Spehar
But it's another consequence of not having a third place to go. It's not normalized to go to the library the way that it was when we were kids, right? It's not normalized to get dropped off at the mall. Where is the model even. So I think we've developed these social media spaces. And a lot of what I've seen is that it has caught a lot of people from despair. Again, going back to the northwest Arkansas example, if you're a queer kid down in Northwest Arkansas, you may not see yourself anywhere, but you go on Tik Tok, and you're everywhere, and you have power and you're cool. And you can talk to other people and you don't feel alone. So I don't think social media is the cause of loneliness. I think it's the lack of stability, IRL, if you will, for comfort, reflect reflection, and bringing people together in a way that's not cringe or awkward or expensive, right?

Jenna Spinelle
And do you see among your followers, any kind of desire to try to, I don't want to say rebuild, I don't think we necessarily as great as it would be to have the Orange Julius Baer. That's gonna work now, but not rebuild third spaces, but create something that will work for today's environment where you can maybe just like, even if you spend half your time there on your phone, you're still with other people and can maybe have some more kind of in person interactions.

V Spehar
Let me give you an example of how I think social media drives the steam for third places and how they get created. There's a creator that I greatly respect her name is mercury stardust. And she's got I think she's got like two or 3 million followers. So substantial, but you know, put that out across the nation. And that's maybe a couple 100 in each town. And she released a book for renters about how to like, fix your own stuff around the house. It's called Safe and sound. And she did a book tour. And I'm pretty sure she did every state. And there were lines around the block for this niche, trans handyman creator. For a book that is specifically about home repair, right?

V Spehar
This isn't like, we wouldn't think it would be a super sexy book, but it is. And there were lines around the block people coming from miles and miles away people flying into a city just to see her just to be with other people who follow mercury, who are interested in learning about the difference between different types of plunders. Right? Why would we think that? And that's because of the community that she built online. And it doesn't matter what their rallying around the rallying around plungers we are desperate for that community. But her book tour sold out. And people were having a great time meeting each other exchanging phone numbers, having fun talking about what they learned in the book, talking about how good it was to see other trans folks even talking about if they weren't a trans person themselves, how much they learned about the queer and trans community that they didn't otherwise know. And and what joy it brought to them were what questions they had, and Mercury was there to feel those questions, which is so helpful. So I think that that is an example of ways that social media is creating a third place. You can also look at conventions like VidCon, they can get 70,000 people from across the nation to come to meet content creators, and jump in a big, you know, pit of squish mellows. It's very fun. And I think the more that we create these opportunities, the less loneliness, we will feel. But social media really has been a catch all for so many people who don't otherwise feel like they can go talk to someone.

Jenna Spinelle
I think that there is also this sense, if you look at the people who do polling and surveys about, you know, news consumption among Gen Z. It's like this idea that no news is homework, right? Like, it's something that you don't really want to do. And maybe it's always been that way, but we just didn't have as many things to distract ourselves with, as we do today. But you know, how do you think about the kind of eat your broccoli aspect of a lot of these kind of meaty topics that you dive into?

V Spehar
So I've never had a problem with Gen Z, getting excited about the news. And I think when we look at polls, we're finding them more out of touch than ever, with what the actual feelings of people are. And I've also never known a Gen Z person to answer their phone. So how are an email? Right? So how are you pulling them truly, it's not the same as it used to be. And I think that it shows a lack of trust from traditional media towards young people, which is just been forever will be forever. The idea that they're not going to care about this or they can't get it or they're not smart enough or they're whatever, whatever. They're too passionate. They're not passionate enough. They're not smart enough. All they care about is makeup tutorials. I have not found that to be true. I have found Gen Z to be more civically engaged than I remember being at their age and some of it is out of necessity and some of it is out of out. of innovation. And a lot of it focuses around the issues that we have failed them the most on, when that comes to things like gun activism, right?

V Spehar
When it comes to things like racial equality, women's rights, the things that have always been issues, but that Gen Z in particular, has suffered the most under climate change kind of stuff. And just as much as older people who maybe rely on polls or whatever, aren't trusting Gen Z, Gen. Z is distrusting of those people, because there's no respect there, right? Like, I find Gen Z gets things really fast. And they do apply it to their niche community in a more intense way than other people in the past word, right? So when I'm doing a news story, or I'm putting together the news, I'm thinking about the first 100 People who ever followed me. And that's typically who I make content for, honestly, because those are like your core audience. Those are your early adopters. And like, who really cares about you, and people come and go, and I even said to the class today, you may outgrow me, I'm top of the funnel for so many people who are just getting into news and politics. And you may watch me for a year or two and then be like, Okay, I think I can graduate to NPR right now I'm ready for a little bit more long form, or whatever the case may be, and they all work together. But I don't think it's true that Gen Z doesn't want to learn about what's going on around them. I think they are constantly inundated with Doom and difficulty. And so now if you want to add something to that, we better make it compelling. And is there something they could do about it today? Because they don't have the time to just self reflect on the stuff that's happening to them actively in a day. Nevermind, start taking on bigger issues.

Jenna Spinelle
Right, and so that, you know, we're seeing more traditional news outlets, make a push to get on, tick tock and do more on YouTube shorts, and like all these things, but that feels a bit inauthentic. If what you described like, Hey, here's this big media conglomerate, we're going to try to make some funny videos, you know, so is, is that might the better way to go be to really lean more into creators like you who can build trust can build authentic relationships with audiences. And rather than having still this like wall of a media brand, between the audience and the creator.

V Spehar
So I was the face of the LA Times tick tock, The Washington Post, tick tock and have done work for NBC. For the first two and a half years that it did under the desk news, I was a pariah to Trad media, they thought it was stupid. They thought it was dumb, they didn't think it was going to go anywhere. They thought it was a joke. They refuse to accept that this was a legitimate way to deliver information or that there was any intelligence behind it. And then the Pew Research came out with that article in October that said, one in three people get their news on tick tock, and they freaked out. And now we see them trying to like catch up. And in some ways, the first thing that a lot of tried media did was pick the youngest person on their team and make them the face. Being a tick tock personality is more than just being a face like it is part entertainment. It's like how you would pick an anchor for a TV show or something right, you wouldn't just pick the most angry looking person, there'd have to be something behind it that they were special at.

V Spehar
And so I think they sort of failed at that first, trying to just pick somebody new and young and throw them out there. And then now they've switched to what I call like the Philip DeFranco style. And I have great respect for Philly. He was like the original G to do news and politics on YouTube. But his style is voiceover and a ton of fast moving video jump clips. And where I think Trad media does well with that style is that it falls very much into the wheelhouse of addictive, angry or emotionally triggering content. And so now what we see from you know, the big news channels is that Philip DeFranco style voiceover with fast moving video. And I think that's actually good. I like that. Because Trump media has the money to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, they have the money to produce this incredible video content that they should be showing that they don't get to show when they're doing their nightly show. And it's also very shareable. You can show and tell with that. And that works for social media too. And somebody could take that B roll video and then add their voice over to it without disrupting the broadcast in some ways. And so I think that's something good that Trad media is doing in social media.

V Spehar
But I still think that they think it's a fad. And then it will go away at some point. And as I was talking to a class earlier about, I think that comes from a scarcity, scarcity mindset. So much of journalism is being destroyed right now. And I absolutely respect the idea that people who took the traditional path in journalism and democracy are looking at it like, I've been doing this for 20 years, I've earned my spot. And now all of a sudden some kid on tic TOCs gonna like take over my audience. Yes and no, we need both. It's a partnership of both, but it takes respect of both right? I'm a really, really good storyteller. But a lot of the news that I get is from The Washington Post is from the New York Times is from the LA Times is from ABC, NBC, the Associated Press, BBC Axios, Al-Jazeera, you name it. I'm just going to consolidating it and being the storyteller per and they are really good at finding the story. But yeah, it's respect for both.

Jenna Spinelle
So you know, one issue that obviously we care a lot about our listeners care about is democracy and the health in the future of democracy, which there's also been polling to suggest that Gen Z has, you know, lower levels of support for democracy than previous generations. I guess I want to ask one, how that stacks up with what you've seen, and then to, for the folks listening from democracy focused organizations, like how can we all be working better with creators to maybe try to get some of our messaging out there in 2024, and beyond.

V Spehar
So I think a lot of times when people use the word democracy, they use it interchangeably with freedom. And where that becomes difficult is people's idea of freedom is very different. Somebody's idea of freedom is never having to see a gay person for the rest of their life, right. And other people's idea of freedom is, is equality and like being able to mix evenly? So one, it's defining what does democracy mean? What are the levers of democracy that people have to use, and also recognizing that we're all sharing those levers, and some people want to pull the lever up, and some want to pull it down, and some don't want to touch it at all? I, again, don't agree that young people aren't interested in democracy, I think they've seen democracy presented to them as the American political system, which is easy to critique.

V Spehar
And when you have a president like Joe Biden, who I think is a very effective statesman, and has done more than maybe any other president in my lifetime for democracy, he also comes out and says, Well, I'm a capitalist, and the kids hate that, right? The kids hate capitalism, because it hasn't served them so far. They're too young to have. They don't have stocks, like what's capitalism to a young person? It's a system of oppression. So I think first we have to define what do they mean when they say they'll participate in democracy or not? Now, there's been some discourse online about kids on the left, not voting, they're not going to vote, they're going to withhold their vote to punish the Democrats for not being progressive enough. We have nine months to the election, I can absolutely promise you that if you threaten them, and say, Well, if you don't vote for Joe Biden, then you'll end up in this worse situation.

V Spehar
There is nothing that turns anybody off more than an ultimatum. And what I'm seeing is a lot of sense of urgency, panic from people who work in democracy, that the kids aren't going to vote. I truly believe in my heart of hearts, they are going to vote. I believe that they are disappointed and disillusioned right now. And rightfully so in many ways. What are we doing to earn their vote? threatening them isn't going to work? Right. Are we talking about the down ballot, the importance of your friends and neighbors that are running for office? Are we talking about ballot initiatives? That's what I'm focused on this year, because truly no one is excited about the Trump Biden rematch. And I think it just further exhausts people. It also makes people feel like they have no choice. Joe didn't debate or primary. You got Marianne Williamson on Tik Tok every single night at 7pm. For hours and hours and hours. Joe is not there. Give it a rest. Don't threaten them. They will vote. They do care. They understand they are smart. But you're not earning their votes the way that we maybe earned a Millennials vote.

Jenna Spinelle
That's well said. And we'll close here give you a chance to talk about what you're working on. Now. Tell us about your new podcast and other projects you have coming up that our listeners may want to check out.

V Spehar
Yes, thank you. So you can find me at under the desk news on tick tock, Instagram and everywhere else. You get your social medias. I have a new podcast. I'm super proud of it. I'm very excited. It's called American fever dream. And it's being produced by betches media. And I chose them specifically because they're a woman owned independent media entity. And you know what the state of journalism right now it's a little tricky to try and sell it to like a big org. I was like, Maybe we stay independent for a while. And what we're going to do every week is exactly that. We are joking. My co host is Amanda Duberman. She was the former director of news for Huffington Post. She's the director of news for Betches.

V Spehar
And we're joking that we are in our down ballot era. Each week, we're going to talk about down ballot candidates that are making huge changes at the state and local level, hoping to inspire other candidates to take from that example and bring it home to them. We're also going to be talking about what's happening with democracy, politics, even a little bit of pop culture, trying to give it some levity, a podcast that you could just walk around and sort of reflect with it's kind of part group chat part analysis, but hopefully a comfortable place to think a little bit more about what's going on, have a little bit of fun. And we'll also be touring it. So we'll be out in the streets live. We're hoping to be at the DNC in different places. So hopefully you all will come to see us. Please follow the show. Now if you follow the show now and subscribe. It helps us enter the charts at a higher level, which is really important to the success of the show. And it's called American fever dream.

Jenna Spinelle
We'll link it in the show notes as well. V Thank you so much for joining us today.

V Spehar
Thanks for having me.

Michael Berkman
Terrific interview Jen and I thought that these personality really came through in it just a delightful person. said, and really I think person trying to do really good and important work on social media. It reminded me his their discussion of the third place reminded me of the last podcast that I was on agenda with Chris, when we were talking with Cynthia Miller in dress about sort of the Bad Place in social media, the way that the sort of communities are developed around cooking shows, or all kinds of what would seem like innocuous sort of virtual spaces and real spaces as well, but virtual spaces, where there's actually these extremist sort of messaging that's being delivered, and that it gets deeper and deeper.

Michael Berkman
And the algorithms drive you further and further into a sort of extremist position. And I think the Wii is describing a different kind of third place online, one where people are getting together around their interest and acquiring good information and learning. And I think it's worth mentioning as well, that V thinks of the work that they're doing as a kind of gateway for young people to to get into perhaps more sophisticated ways of acquiring information about the news and politics and what's going on around them.

Candis Watts Smith
Yeah, I really appreciated that component and thinking about it that way. And it's something that I've seen in real life, where there's some personality, some influencer content creator, that provides information about whatever topic and then they say that they're going to be in real life somewhere. And how many people will flock to go and see that person? And so I thought, I mean, I think that's really fascinating about thinking, you know, we always talk about like, well, people aren't gathering in social spaces anymore. They're not in bowling leagues and stuff. But there are there is a way in which people use social media to gather with people that they share an affinity with, or an interest with. And they can do so in a way that they never could have done in a bowling alley in the first place. Because you know, only the people who are close by can go to that place, where here, you might be the weird kid, and then rule wherever.

Candis Watts Smith
And you can connect with other queer kids from other places. And that only can happen on the internet, it right that you can bring all of these people to one place and air quotes in a way that you could not have before. And that you get to we talk about how segregated we are. And so these online places also bring people who probably wouldn't normally interact with each other to the same place. And so just as well, you know, that there are places there were real, live, third places that were not healthy for society, and that exist on the internet. And then there are also third places that are great for places to thrive and connect. And we see that on the internet, too.

Michael Berkman
Yeah, I mean, we often, of course, comment, complain, note how so much of social media is highly siloed and segregated. And you're only hearing from and talking to people that you already agree with, but at least according to how Vi describes their own audience. It's fairly diverse, and would include people from both the left and the right, and bringing them together in a way to communicate with one another, I guess, through the comments and other kinds of means like that. And frankly, you know, if you're watching the NBC Nightly News or something, you don't even have that opportunity. There, you're just a passive consumer of it.

Candis Watts Smith
One of the things that V mentioned about doing democracy is that I think that the lesson that they talked about, and who are the characters involved, and getting any kind of thing changed. And I do see in my students, they don't want to just know the theory. They want to know. Well, now what, what do I do? How, you know, we're talking about inequality. What do I do? We're talking about polarization, what do I do? What policy needs to be implemented? And what Vee talks about is you have to have storytellers you have to have politicians, you have to have activists, you have to have strategic thinkers, and they don't all have to be the same person, but they can work together.

Candis Watts Smith
And so I thought that was really helpful to think through how social media can also be used as a place where stories are told, and people can use those stories and those personalities to talk to people who can make a difference either through their activism or through their policymaking. So there's, I think, the component of when we talk about social media and we think about journalism and making helping to make informed citizens but there's also this other way that social media can be used to tell stories that can motivate people to want to make a difference in their own kind of sphere of influence.

Michael Berkman
So I think that's a terrific summation of some of the kinds of work that he's doing and the importance of it when it is captivating and I can see why people are watching it. From the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, I'm Michael Berkman.

Candis Watts Smith
And I'm Candis Watts Smith. Thanks for listening.

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