Bubble Bursters | Beyond Intractability

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A window into what we collectively know about more constructive ways of handling the intractable conflicts that threaten both our relationships and our societies.

Masthead

A window into what we collectively know about more constructive ways of handling the intractable conflicts that threaten both our relationships and our societies.

Welcome to the New Beyond Intractability
Find out about the recent upgrades to BI including our new Constructive Conflict Guide which organizes BI content around a framework for analyzing and then limiting or solving conflict problems, focusing particularly on hyper-polarization and threats to democracy (from both the left and the right).

Welcome to the New Beyond Intractability
Find out about the recent upgrades to BI including our new Constructive Conflict Guide which organizes BI content around a framework for analyzing and then limiting or solving conflict problems.

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

Bubble Busters help people see beyond the self-righteous, us-vs-them, good-vs-evil information bubbles in which so many of us now live. Examples include the journalists who show up on the top of Ad Fontes and/or AllSides media bias charts. For instance AllSides lists the BBC News, the Christian Science Monitor, Newsweek, Reuters, Real Clear Politics, The Hill, and the Wall Street Journal as being "center," while Ad Fontes lists the BBC, the Hill, and the Christian Science Monitor as slightly left leaning, and the Wall Street Journal as slightly right leaning. (The only truly center organizations they show are NewsNation and Straight Arrow News.) Either way, any of these organizations are likely closer to the center, and hence publishing more reliable news than the many, many organizations farther to the left and right that most of us rely on. All Sides, itself, does a good job, not just of publishing "centrist" news, but by sending out a newsletter, and highlighting on their homepage stories written by people and organizations on both the left and the right, so readers can see for themselves how each side is viewing different contentious events. Other examples of efforts to take us out of our information bubbles include this New York Times article that asks readers to consider the possibility that they (not their political opponents) might actually be the bad guys or this article that tries to help progressives understand the appeal of Donald Trump. Other examples include this article that tries to help people understand how information bubbles distort our view of the world.

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More from
Beyond Intractability

About Beyond Intractability

Built over the last 35 years by over 500 contributors, Beyond Intractability is a free information system that supports those wanting to more constructively address conflict at all levels — from the individual to the societal. More...

Intractability Challenge

Our inability to constructively handle intractable conflict is the most serious, and the most neglected, problem facing humanity. Solving today's tough problems depends upon finding better ways of dealing with these conflicts. More...

BI Substack Newsletter

BI's free Substack newsletter highlights the latest thinking on democratic decline, hyper-polarization, intractable conflict, and what can, and is, being done to address these challenges. More...

Constructive Conflict Resource Guide

A free Guide to understanding the causes and consequences of intractable conflicts and the ways in which we can all help handle these conflicts more constructively — from the interpersonal to the societal level. More...

Full BI Knowledge Base

This section is built around the BI website's traditional format, providing access to all the resources generated over the last 35 years by Beyond Intractability. More...

Colleague, News, and Opinion Links

Organized links to the thousands of outside resources describing elements of the massively parallel effort to strengthen democracy and constructively handle intractable conflicts. More...

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