Eh, I wouldn't lean on it that much. Yes, a significant factor, but activism or its appearance is in many ways more an effect of finding and cultivating an audience and optimizing for their attention, and ultimately things like advertising dollars and social media likes and such.
I think there is this insidious link between people's opinions and "biased" news coverage where they are both spontaneously emerging and evolving and in effect causing one another specifically not being driven by an external activist idealism but emerging from the motivation to make money and get attention - which I think is much more dangerous and scary than if the news was being driven by some intentional agenda. Like it's this organism or disease which is evolving to take maximum advantage of human weaknesses, on one side of the publisher for the needs and rewards of money and approval, on the side of the consumer for what grabs attentions, builds loyalty, and shapes opinions. It's this monster that is shaping the human world out of control.
It is also possible that it is 2am and I have been watching too much Ghost in the Shell.
I think there is this insidious link between people's opinions and "biased" news coverage where they are both spontaneously emerging and evolving and in effect causing one another specifically not being driven by an external activist idealism but emerging from the motivation to make money and get attention - which I think is much more dangerous and scary than if the news was being driven by some intentional agenda. Like it's this organism or disease which is evolving to take maximum advantage of human weaknesses, on one side of the publisher for the needs and rewards of money and approval, on the side of the consumer for what grabs attentions, builds loyalty, and shapes opinions. It's this monster that is shaping the human world out of control.
It is also possible that it is 2am and I have been watching too much Ghost in the Shell.