I used to say that if you get all your information from social media, consider yourself uninformed.

Now, I think I have to update this. I read the other day — and I very much agree — that quite a number of people are moving from being uninformed, to being misinformed, to being aggressively wrong. We saw a good illustration for this during the pandemic.

Please don’t get me wrong — social media and new media can, of course, be a precious source of information. With a few clicks, you can access very specialized and precious content. For example, my newsletter is read by people from dozens of countries all over the world.

But that’s not how most people use social media. In general, social media is driven by emotions — often by anger. I think that this is actually one of the reasons why many people are so angry and unhappy about politics, about the world, and about their own lives.

We used to have a “pick and choose” culture, where people opened the newspaper and chose which articles they would read. Now, algorithms make sure we’re only being served certain pieces of information or news. People go online to like something they already agree with — or to be outraged about something they disagree with. Few people go online to listen to both sides in order to carefully make up their minds. And I think this has important consequences for politics and elections.

We used to argue about opinions. Now, increasingly, we argue just as passionately about facts.

Politics was always structured by cleavages. An important cleavage in many European countries, for example, was religion (Protestant versus Catholic). The cleavage between urban and rural areas is one of the most important one structuring electoral behavior in many countries. And a lot has been written about the gender gap — the fact that men behave differently electorally than women.

And I really see a new cleavage emerging now, the one between people who consume traditional news and voters who consume mostly social media and new media. The first group is probably more inclined to vote for centrist parties, and probably more loyal in the long run to the parties of their choice. The second group is more inclined to vote for the extremes — either on the left or on the right. They’re also more volatile. For campaign purposes, they’re an interesting group — but also unreliable.