Comment by inglor_cz
5 years ago
People who spend their time commenting on social networks are not necessarily people who actually have skin in the game.
From my relatively small sample of the Czech Twitter, the discourse there is dominated by about thirty journalists and white collar workers. No ghetto voices to be heard; people in ghettos have more urgent problems than to sit on the phone and crank out 60 status updates a day.
People in American ghettos do express their opinions online, but the upper classes and special interest groups have much more ability to construct and influence the dominant narratives. So one should always question whatever is the prevailing wisdom surrounding lower class Americans. For example, in the 80s and 90s it was thought that a punitive criminal justice system and a draconian war on drugs was what they needed. Turns out, retrospectively, that was probably not an optimal approach and most people nowadays want to ratchet down the war on drugs.
That's a very good point about Twitter, but the Internet is way bigger than that...