Author and researcher Allison Sher spent years studying how outrage moves through media systems — and what it does to the people inside them. Her conclusion: the division we experience isn’t just a political problem. It’s a contagion, and most of us don’t realize we’ve been exposed.

In this conversation, David and Allison explore the psychological and structural forces that keep Americans locked in separate realities, why the perceived polarization online vastly overstates how divided people actually are in person, and what genuine sense-making looks like in a media landscape designed to prevent it.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Most conversations about media bias stop at pointing fingers — at a network, a platform, an algorithm. This one goes deeper. Allison’s framework asks us to look at the system as a whole, including the parts we play in it, and to take seriously the possibility that our own side’s narrative is just as incomplete as the one we’re criticizing.

That’s a harder ask than outrage. It’s also a more useful one. At a moment when the two-party system is pushing both sides toward the conclusion that the other is an existential threat, the ability to question your own information diet may be one of the most genuinely radical acts available to an ordinary citizen.

Allison Sher is the author of The Social Contagion: Viral Ideologies and the Culture War for America’s Future. She researches how ideology spreads through media ecosystems, facilitates cross-partisan dialogue, and advocates for a return to unbiased, whole-picture journalism as a civic practice.

Links

Alison Sher (alisonsher.com)