The Beginning of Truth, Love & Light

In October, I volunteered for the Harris Campaign largely to avoid the feelings I felt post-2016. If Harris lost, I didn’t want to feel like I could have done more to help.  I truly believed in her message of freedom and joy as a stark contrast to the hate of the Trump campaign.  I want to tell you this story because while I was doing it, I brushed much of what happened aside as part of my duty to the campaign; I thought the voter responses to texts were simply people who were annoyed with texts or thought volunteers were bots. I thought some of the responses to my calls were simply annoyance with call canvassing. All the volunteers seemed to agree, so we continued to text to set up rallies, get out voter information, and a few times to persuade folks to vote for Harris.  

I texted voters for several hours a day over a few weeks. I made some calls during the final days of the campaigns to help with the call banking in swing states. What I did not expect was the sheer disrespect and violent messages from Trump supporters. The messages were vile. They were sometimes hard to read. They were sometimes directed at Kamala, and they were sometimes directed at me as a volunteer. There were some days when I had to quit because it seemed like it was an exercise in sheer rejection therapy. 

To illustrate what I am speaking about, I will give you a few examples. One day, I was texting folks, asking them to attend a rally in one of the swing states. The responses from Trump supporters usually included things like “F Kamala “or something similar. I had one person tell me that I was going to hell for being a volunteer for her, and another said they hoped that I “put a bullet in my head,” another said they knew that “Jesus was not in my heart.” There were racist responses, there were misogynist responses, and there were vulgar responses. Some called her a “communist.” After an hour or two of doing this, you can see why I would get upset. However, I chalked it up to perhaps people thinking I was a bot and not an actual human. I no longer think that is the case after seeing Trump win the election and how folks behave now. Based on what I see in how people voted, I think the hatred was a feature, not a bug for them. Trump gave them permission to be mean and vile and call names, and they were fine doing it to me and many of the other volunteers. This is not to say that his voters are a monolith. They are not. However, the red meat base is.

The other type of Trump supporter was the supporter who based their decisions on a reality based on fiction and misinformation. They would say things that were wholly false and outside of reality.  The Trump campaign and the entire right-wing messaging machine (including Fox News and information spread and respread on X) set up a series of falsehoods that they believed to be true and that they based their votes on that were grounded entirely in falsehoods. It was tough to convince someone that what they told me was untrue. 

What is happening here in the political landscape is that Trump supporters primarily used the social construction of reality – to create their perceptions and held beliefs.  Perception becomes a reality for them.  The social construction of reality is a theory suggesting that humans understand reality through interactions and communication. This includes how we see and interpret the world around us and how we interact with others. These right-wing media echo chambers create what they believe to be accurate, but it isn’t based on fact.  This is a link to a research study that seems to reflect this, and I will go into more detail about this research and an Ipsos poll that shows how our perception of reality tends to affect voting patterns. Here, the study shows that “individuals that consume more "conservative" media are more likely to view inflation and unemployment as serious problems, more likely to be pessimistic about the state of the US economy, and more likely to believe the US is currently in a recession or will be in the future. We also find that greater consumption of more "mainstream" media has the opposite effects.” This research also shows that the "information economy" in which individuals participate plays a crucial role in shaping their attitudes about the state of the real economy.

According to a recent Ipsos survey, Americans who answered questions about inflation, crime, and immigration incorrectly were likelier to vote for Trump. In contrast, Americans who answered those questions correctly preferred Harris. As a result, diverging realities ultimately affect ballot choices.

Additionally, Americans' Misperceptions about the issues affect their views of the candidates. Americans who answered questions about inflation incorrectly were more likely to prefer Trump over Harris regarding the economy. The same pattern applies to immigration and crime.

Additionally, this article from the Brookings Institute shows how misinformation affected the 2024 election. West and his colleague Karmack recently published a Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation, which I have just started to read. I will share any good information and tips I gain from it. Karmarck and West argue that we are not doomed to live in an apocalyptic, post-truth world but can take actions consistent with long-held free speech values. Citizen education can go a long way toward making us more discerning consumers of online materials. We can also reduce disinformation risks through digital literacy programs, regulation, legislation, and negotiation with other countries.

As you can see, our media landscape has created a complicated problem. Those on the left live in a world based on fact and reality. While those on the right are being fed a propagandist vision of the world we live in, which is not based on fact. We are living in a world saturated with disinformation and misinformation. As a result, this creates polarization and the current voting patterns we saw in the 2024 election.

In my experience working on the campaign, Harris supporters were largely positive. They thanked us for being volunteers and were joyful about the world they wanted to see, full of joy and inclusion. This was indeed a stark contrast to what Trump supporters were telling me. These voters were also very grounded in the truth and facts and tended to get their news from reputable sources.

My time working on the campaign showed me the stark differences, much of which came from where folks were getting their information.  The caveat is that this is just my experience with talking to voters and may not be representative of everyone’s experiences. A lot of fellow Americans feel that crime, immigration, and the economy are all worse than they are, and this is due to their daily media diet and the communities that reinforce these assumptions.

In closing, we have a crisis of media literacy that is becoming a severe problem that we must address head-on. This will be especially true when Trump takes office and lies as President. To survive as a democracy, we must learn to be critical media consumers and remain grounded in the truth, love, and light. My goal with this blog/newsletter is to help folks be better media consumers and practice media literacy. I hope you will join me. I teach much of this in my media and journalism classes, along with what misinformation is out there and how we can keep turning to reputable sources while using critical thinking skills.