Adapting Information Feeds to Support the Great Reframing
Newsletter #392 — October 15, 2025
Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess
Big Picture Newsletter Series - Post 4
Building From Where We Were
In the first post in this Big Picture Newsletter Series, we argued that the key to escaping our hyper-polarized, dysfunctional politics and its many associated threats lies in abandoning our now dominant, us-vs-them way of looking at the world. In its place, we said that we need to focus our attention on the destructive conflict dynamics that have been tearing us apart and start working much harder and smarter to reverse those dynamics.
Doing that, we argued, is the key to building a democracy in which most everyone would want to live, not a democracy for just a select and powerful few. Creating this "democracy for all" will require cultivating a framework capable of tying together a society composed of citizens from very different circumstances and with very different beliefs systems. Such a framework would have to be based on the principles of coexistence, mutual respect (though not agreement) and, where appropriate, collaborative efforts to solve shared problems.
We Need To Change Our Information Streams
This is something that will be impossible for us to do from the base of information and knowledge we currently get from today's dominant information sources. Those sources are focused on serving the needs of those who see the world through the lens of an us-vs-them struggle between good (one's own side) and evil (the other side). This is analogous to trying to learn how to grow a garden by reading books about how to build a table. You can't figure out how to build a reconciled, peaceful society by reading books about how to fight a figurative (and perhaps literal) civil war.
For the Great Reframing to work, we are going to have to work together to build, and then pay attention to, a completely different collection of information — one focused on making the democracy-for-all that we talked about in the last newsletter actually work.
We All Need to Develop "Information Agency"
What we are calling for is a somewhat different way of looking at the many problems caused by the inflammatory information "bubbles" in which most people now live. Instead of looking at ourselves as helpless, passive information consumers, whose opinions are shaped by evil, hatemongering media companies, this way of thinking about the inflammatory media problem emphasizes the fact that we have " information agency" — we have the power to decide what information we seek out and what information we pay attention to. We can decide not to pay attention to all of those cherry-picked, out-of-context horror stories about how bad the other side is. Instead, we can seek out and carefully consider stories that focus on the positive things that people are doing to bridge the divide and build a better future.
This doesn't mean we have to be Pollyannas. We can and should recognize bad things that the other side is doing — things that we should speak out against and otherwise oppose. And, we should do the same thing when our side goes too far.
However, because of the overwhelming presence and power of us-vs-them algorithms and media frames, few people are aware of stories about how people have lived cooperatively with, even thrived, with people who have very different moral beliefs and economic circumstances. This is a situation in which Kenneth Boulding's first law applies — if it exists, it must be possible. Altering our information feeds so we see examples that demonstrate that a positive future is possible can go a long way toward convincing people that the cause is not hopeless and that there is better future worth working toward.
If enough people can be persuaded to do this, we can create a "reverse bandwagon" effect – instead of everybody getting on board with evermore extreme statements of hate and animosity, we can persuade people to start joining the coexistence "we-can-work-together-to-solve-our problems" bandwagon. This may sound Pollyanna-ish to people who haven't been involved in, or learned about such efforts. But everyone that we know who has been involved in such efforts finds them invigorating and profoundly hope-inducing. The key to doing this is by voting with our feet and walking away from purveyors of divisive information and toward those who can help us figure out how to reverse the hyperpolarization spiral and actually live together respectfully.
How To Do This
We can do this in several ways. First, we can intentionally seek and read constructive stories when they appear in mainstream news sources and avoid reading or watching hateful, divisive stories. The more positive stories are "clicked on," the more likely it is that news providers will produce more of that kind of content, as they pay close attention to what attracts reader and listener interest.
We can also seek out information from so-called heterodox sources such as Substack that offer a wider range of perspectives than one typically finds in the mainstream media — perspectives that are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom. (This is the kind of information that we try to share in our links posts. We know our readers are getting plenty of their sides' traditional stories about how good their side is are and how bad the other side is. We try to post stories that dispel those stereotypes and tell different, surprising stories.)
In the realm of social media, we can do something similar. The big difference is that, in this format, we each have the ability to share and amplify more constructive content.
These are all things that can be done gradually, in the privacy of one's personal reading and listening. We can move slowly and suggest more conciliatory materials to others and thereby avoid the social risk that comes from being too far out of step with one's friends and associates. That said, there are also times when a substantial degree of moral courage is required. Take, for example, the unequivocal need for everyone to openly condemn political violence, including, especially, violence committed against one's political opponents.
The refocusing and reorientation of the information feeds upon which our political and social worldviews are based is the biggest key to turning hyper-polarization around because it makes everything else we need to do possible. By changing the information that we pay attention to, we really can give ourselves a comprehensive and much more positive way of looking at the world.
More narrowly focused activities, such as participation in bridge building dialogues add only a small, but still potentially quite important increment, to the body of information upon which our worldviews are based. The big advantage of such activities is that they can do much to dispel the evil caricatures we often have of "the other." This, in turn, can help us understand the wisdom of reorienting our information sources away from us-vs-them politics.
Expanding our Views of "Acceptable"
The other key to making great reframing work is recognizing that, if we are to escape the hyper-polarization trap, we are going to have to accept a range of opinion that is much wider than what is currently accepted by the political orthodoxies of the left and right. While we can still deeply believe in and want to respectfully advocate for our preferred set of moral beliefs, we also have to leave a respected place in society for people with very different views. Otherwise, you're going to have an all-out battle for social dominance, one that will almost certainly fall victim to some combination of the dystopian outcomes associated with unrestrained "I'll Fight You for It" rules which we talked about in Newsletter 389. In short, for democracy to work, we have to be willing to embrace a more diverse ideological diversity than the one championed by the diversity movement.
Making the great reframing work also requires attending to lots of information about strategies for making the transition to a democracy-for-all world from today's us-vs-them world (in which the two sides really do threaten one another). This is going to involve a complex array of trust-earning and confidence-building measures. It is also going to require sophisticated strategies for reducing the influence of bad-faith actors — provocateurs, who have figured out how to profit from divisive politics and spreading hate — people who understandably feel threatened by the democracy-for-all work that we are talking about.
We will talk about these issues in the remaining sections of the big picture series.
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About the MBI Newsletters
Two or three times a week, Guy and Heidi Burgess, the BI Directors, share some of our thoughts on political hyper-polarization and related topics. We also share essays from our colleagues and other contributors, and every week or so, we devote one newsletter to annotated links to outside readings that we found particularly useful relating to U.S. hyper-polarization, threats to peace (and actual violence) in other countries, and related topics of interest. Each Newsletter is posted on BI, and sent out by email through Substack to subscribers. You can sign up to receive your copy here and find the latest newsletter here or on our BI Newsletter page, which also provides access to all the past newsletters, going back to 2017.
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