Political Polarization Feels Unstoppable. Will it Destroy Democracy?

Episode Transcript
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Jim Cardoso (00:00):
Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's

(00:14):
episode of at the boundary, thepodcast from the global and
national security Institute atthe University of South Florida.
I'm Jim Cardoso, Senior Directorfor GNSI and your host for at
the boundary. We're excited tohave Dr Joshua skaco On the show
today. He's Associate Professorof Communication here at USF,

(00:36):
and he recently became theuniversity's first ever Carnegie
fellow. We'll tell you moreabout that achievement and have
a great conversation with Jossin a moment. First couple quick
notes, summer is a littlequieter on a university campus,
but that just gives GNSI theopportunity to find new ways to
inform decision makers, preparethe next generation of national

(00:57):
security professionals andenable practical solutions. To
that end, we're beginning a newconference series called The
Florida security forum, as thename suggests, we'll tackle the
big national security issuesthat are of concern across the
US, but particularly impact thestate of Florida. It'll be held

(01:18):
annually in November, with thefirst event scheduled for
November 4 at Port Tampa Bay.
We're excited to be partneredwith port Tampa Bay to deep dive
the theme port and maritimesecurity risks and resilience,
and the pun was definitelyintended. Look for a link in the
show notes to receive updates onthe conference as we finalize
the agenda and the speakerlineup. Also, we published a new

(01:39):
decision brief last week on thetopic of the BRICS
intergovernmental partnership.
The brief examines how thosecountries are using their gold
holdings to build an alternativeto the US dollar to compete on
the global economic stage. Youcan find a link in the show
notes, all right, time towelcome our guests into the

(02:01):
studio. Dr Josh skaco, as wementioned earlier, Josh is the
first person in the history ofthe University of South Florida
to be named a Carnegie fellow.
We're going to talk to him alittle bit about that, as well
as his activities as thefounding director of USF center
for sustainable democracy. Hespecializes in political
communication and polarizationand their impacts on national

(02:22):
security. So we're going to walkthat fine line of discussing
political polarization withoutbecoming politically polarized.
Josh, welcome to the program.
Thanks for having me. Jim, sohow did you get into this area
of scholarship and research? Imean, my experience is that
people are happy to talkpolitics and be politically

(02:45):
polarizing, but not as manyactually study

Josh Scacco (02:48):
it, or even happier not to talk about politics. If
that's true. Yeah, I have beeninterested in politics, the
political process, for as longas I can remember, probably
since my early teens and when Iwas in college, I worked in the
Pennsylvania legislature. Andafter I was done with college, I

(03:08):
worked for a member oflegislative leadership and the
Pennsylvania House ofRepresentatives. When I went to
get my masters at Georgetown, Iwas in Washington, DC, so I
worked on Capitol Hill for USsenator. And the great thing
about the senator's office, thesenator at the time was
Pennsylvania's US senator, ArlenSpecter was his office had a

(03:32):
just fantastic mix of staffersfrom across the political
spectrum that were offeringideas to him to senior staff,
and so the conversations werereally generative in a lot of
ways, especially for a young guywho didn't know whether or not

(03:52):
he wanted to go into politics orwhether or not he wanted to do
something else. But if nothingelse, those experiences have
kind of stuck with me now comingback into the university setting
as a professor and now as adirector of a center, to be able
to think about what would itlook like if we depolarized a
lot of the very polarizingtopics, issues and reactions

(04:15):
that many people have topolitical events.

Yeah, what? So you started out in kind of in
politics on the outskirts, andmaybe even considering getting
more deeply into it, but thenyou sort of made that turn into
academia. What? Not a bad turn,but it's definitely a different
turn. So what? What kind of amade that come about?

One day, a young legislative staffer was
answering his like 700 phonecall from a constituent, and,
you know, I began to realizejust I was one of the staffers.
Yes, we all had to do phone dutyat particular points. So one of
the things that I was realizingwas, at particular times during

(04:57):
the day, we would get aparticular type of. Caller that
would be echoing a particulartype of message. So for
instance, around like two, threeo'clock in the afternoon, we
will get callers who had, forinstance, been listening to Rush
Limbaugh or talk radio, and sohad been who would then echo
particular types of messages tous. So what I was interested in

(05:19):
didn't realize this at the timewas the patterns that I was
hearing, yeah, and so I begin, Ibegan then to look at the
transcripts of the radioprograms that were on at
particular times of the day,begin to even listen in to get
some ideas on maybe what somepeople would be talking about.
Our communications team wouldobviously be giving us, you

(05:41):
know, additional sort of notesand things in the

military, they called it intelligence
preparation of the battlefield.
That's right, you're doingright?

Basically here, it's just basically
communication research, youknow, yeah, and I was interested
in the patterns. So when I went,so when I decided to go get my
PhD, I went to University ofTexas at Austin, Hook 'em Horns,
and it was, you know, reallygreat experience. I was studying
media effects and those types ofthings. It was precisely some of

(06:09):
the things that I had beenthinking about at when I was
answering phones fromconstituents who genuinely had
concerns, but were using peoplelike talk radio, those types of
things to verbalize theirconcerns right in a really
concise, really concise type ofway. Hmm,

and but of course, in everything that's spoken on
talk radio is absolutely 100%always, always right, always
right. Well, not sensationalizedat all, either

not at all, not extreme in any kind of way or
anything. So yeah, I guess thatalso would have been my first
real like it was the baptism toreally understanding
information, misinformation,information quality issues and
those types of things, because Iwould be the staffer on the
other end of the phone gettingyelled

at. That's That is a good reason for to move on
from there well, and I'm gladyou did, too, because what
you're doing, it's, it is sounique. And you know, we as a
national security Institute, Imean, obviously sustainable
democracy is important tonational security. I mean, they
do go, they do go hand in glove.
So actually, I was thinking asI'm surprised, we're at 8087 88
episodes in. We've never had youon before, and I guarantee we're

(07:18):
gonna have you on again afterthis, but, well, we'll see how
the conversation goes, but Ithink it's gonna go great, and I
look forward to having you onagain in the future. Jeff rock,
he's one of our genus i SeniorFellow and intelligent
historian. He says thathistorians almost see it as a
personal challenge when someonesays something is, quote,
unquote unprecedented. ManyAmericans today would say that

(07:41):
current political polarizationhas never been this bad, and the
country is more divided thanever. IE, it's unprecedented.
How would you respond to that?
In

a lot of ways, we have moments of political,
partisan, polarizing rupture inAmerican history. We do. We
fought a civil war for thisparticular reason where the
breakdown in our politicalprocess could not, you know, our
government couldn't leverage aparticular solution to the
question of slavery, to thequestion of the expansion of

(08:17):
slavery, and so the breakdown onthat process led to a Civil War.
The Civil War decided that withyou know 500,000 500,000 deaths,
and you know millions of others,you know injured. And so we can
look at that moment. We can alsolook at the moment of like the
1950s and 1960s as a significantsort of societal rupture over

(08:39):
civil rights in the UnitedStates for persons of color. And
I think one of the keycomponents, if you look at the
common threads over history ofwhat leads to these particular
moments of really extremity, itoftentimes goes back to this
question of, what type ofpluralistic democracy are we

(09:00):
gonna be because if we look atworld democracies, for instance,
we are one of the most diverse,yeah, in the sense of our
people, race, class, ethnicity,religion across the board. You
can kind of think through whatwe talk about, migratory rates
of people to the United States.

And there really is unique aspect of America across
the world.

It is absolutely and what makes it a strength is
also, in a lot of ways, a keyvulnerability that can be
exploited in a democracy,because many other democracies
are much more homogeneous interms of their populations. You
know, I was reading something, Iwas looking at statistics
recently, that that we'reshowing that the the Nordic

(09:43):
countries are much more are muchhigher on kind of the democracy
index in terms of standardmeasures that experts across
internationally use. You canalso look at it and say, well,
they're much more homogeneous interms of their populations. Yes,
they're also much smaller.
Alert. And what we're talkingabout here is a country of 300
plus million people coming frommany areas in the world, not

(10:05):
just currently, buthistorically, many areas of the
world. So you have culture, youhave geography. You overlay that
with personal difference, andwhat that looks like. And so
what you have is you havemoments where these ruptures
occur oftentimes arounddifference, how society,
government, civil society,private sector, are going to,

(10:26):
are going to manage, cultivate,foster these differences. And
you do my and you do sometimesget these sort of moments of
really extreme polarizationaround these issues

to and to continue.
I mean, like I said, I did alast week's episode on at the
boundaries with Jeff rocktalking about some, you know,
intelligence history. He went onto say, and again, I'm not mean
to go back, but it is veryrelevant that the only that was,
the only time he actually almostleaned into using the word
unprecedented, was thetechnological change that is
happening right now, andsupercharging and the

(11:02):
intelligence side, it's moresupercharging almost a level of
a surveillance state thatgenerates some concerns. And
would you agree that, also thatsome of the technology and some
of the media capabilities outthere is supercharging, some of
the polarization,

so we can look at it. I'm a communication
researcher, so oftentimes I'mthinking of the technology, the
communication technologies, themedia that are coming to play
here. And what you have is amoment where the means by which
people assess and trustinformation is challenged in an
unprecedented manner. You canlook at, for instance,

(11:38):
artificial intelligence. You canlook at, you can look at these
types of mechanisms that arereally deep, deep fakes, for
instance, and the ways in whichit challenges how we as human
beings assess information, andoftentimes out of means of
survival. Biologically, we havedeveloped fine senses to assess

(12:01):
if something's good or bad, andthe people who are using this
technology in nefarious ways toproduce disinformation,
intentionally spreading falseinformation, are essentially
trying to use our sensibilitiesagainst us in this way, Whether
it's deep fakes that aremimicking the voices and the

(12:23):
persons of people that we trust,but we could think of this as if
we were, if we were talkingabout foreign intelligence
operations against, forinstance, another country like
the United States. And think2016 Russia against the United
States right in that election.
And one of the key components isthe academic research says that
there wasn't actually a lot ofeffect on the final vote and in

(12:46):
the 2016 presidential electionfrom that particular instance.
But the key component for me,that I look at there is
essentially what it was doing.
Was it was using our networks oftrust, our own family members,
our own friends who agree withus politically, which is we're
more likely to be around peoplewho agree with us politically,

(13:08):
infiltrating those networks,having your grandmother or a
friend share those particularthings, and we're more likely to
trust it because we trust thepeople around us. So there's
almost something reallyinsidious about coming into our
personal houses and using ourpeople and using the people we
trust against us, and that Ithink makes this moment

(13:29):
particularly interesting, somewould say even unprecedented, is
the ways in which it is using usagainst ourselves in these
particular ways.

Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, it always
seemed, and we've done someother podcasts and other
discussions about some of theyou know, misinformation,
different disinformationcampaigns have gone on the past.
And as you said, it didn'treally seem to the research
should didn't really have muchimpact, but it does seem that
more the intent is just tocreate chaos. It not so much for

(14:03):
for or against a particularcandidate, but almost just to
undermine the entire Democraticdemocratic process, voting
process itself, and and youstill see people, to this day,
questioning the voting process,and now it's even filtering
down, and we talked about thatbefore that some of the some of
the things that are happening atthe higher levels of government

(14:24):
polarization start to filterdown to the lower levels. In
fact, let's talk about that fora second. So, I mean, I think,
you know, you said that you'reseeing some of the things we saw
as polarization. Normally, it'sless polarized at the local
level, right? The example youuse was, you know, filling in
potholes. That's what'simportant at the local level.
But even filling in potholes isbecoming polarized. Potholes is
becoming polarized now, becauseit's sort of it's a trickle down

(14:46):
economics effect ofpolarization. Can you talk a
little bit about

that? Absolutely.
So I'll say that there'sactually a really great set of
folks at Princeton Universitywith the bridging device.
Initiative, and one of thethings that they're doing is
they're tracking actuallythreats, harassment and
political violence against localofficials across the United
States. And one of the thingsthat they've been finding is to

(15:11):
illustrate, kind of, some ofwhat we're talking about here,
that the instances of threats,harassment and violence against
local elected officials. Sothese are your clerks, your
supervisors of election, yourschool board members. It's gone
up over the past, over the pastseveral years that they've been
tracking and things we can look,for instance, at the recent

(15:33):
tragedy in Minnesota andMinnesota, and it wasn't even a
sitting Speaker of the House. Itwas a former Speaker of the
House, right, a state senator aswell, that these are, ultimately
what happens, is the type ofkind of messaging environment

(15:53):
that we've been seeing whereoftentimes political leaders
lean into the message that'sgonna get them lots of
attention. Yeah. Is also, in alot of ways, feeding a
permission structure for peopleas well. Some people, not
everyone. This is not a majorityof people, but it feeds a
permission structure for peopleto engage in a type of behavior

(16:15):
that maybe they might other theymight not otherwise do. Yeah,
and that is, in a lot of ways,the risk that we can think about
here. It's going to be thethings that, if we think about,
like this notion ofpolarization, which, which I
know you had referenced, andI've talked about some of my
work it, what it ultimately doesis these messages fall with on

(16:36):
people who are alreadypredisposed to believe them. And
so all of it's potentially doingis moving people in a more
extreme direction. And when youmove people in a more extreme
direction, you're giving themoptions to consider that have
nothing to do with sort of likedialog and the traditional sort
of democratic means that wemight expect. You know,

(16:57):
participatory democracy in termsof going out and maybe
demonstrating or even voting andthose types of things, they're
pushed in another direction, andthat other direction is anti
democratic in some instances.
Again, this isn't with everyone,but that permission structure is
one of the things that weakensdemocracies. It's one of the
things violence and polarizationare kind of key components of

(17:19):
democratic backsliding that wesee internationally. And those
are also some of the things thatyou know, the center here at USF
is studying and looking at andalso trying to mitigate in some
ways. Like, how do we how do wemake sure that we are
depolarizing the politicalenvironments that we're in, or
even, like, the public healthenvironments that we're in,
which are also highly polarizedat the moment, how do we

(17:41):
depolarize some of theseparticular topics, that we can
at least bring people to thetable? Because if they're, if
they're at the table, I thinkthey're probably less likely to
go out and engage in some sortof, like dangerous, violent
behavior,

yeah, you know, you know, kind of continuing on that
line of the backsliding and thedepolarization, you know, I, I
get the sense too that manyAmericans feel that we as a
nation, we can never, we cannever return to a an environment
where polarization isn'tconstantly being just ratcheted
up and fed by social mediatechnology. Now you run the

(18:16):
Center for sustainabledemocracy. And so I very much in
the title, I would sense thatyou would not agree with that,
that we can't get back to a amore civil form of our
democracy. What's your

we have to see the way ahead. Yeah. We have to be
thinking about this as, firstoff, how do we talk to younger
people about this, in the senseof what messages are they
getting in their classrooms?

Talk more about that. I'm not gonna let you
know,

but it lies with younger people. It also is with
us in a lot of ways too, of whatcan we do? And I think one of
the key components is so much ofwhat is coming at people right
now, technologically,politically, economically, even
culturally, is balkanizing us.
It's pushing us into ourrespective corners. It's pushing

(19:05):
us away from community andcreating community, or it's
pushing us, in a lot of ways,towards makeshift communities
online, which can be reallyhelpful. For instance, you know,
there's a lot of research aboutcancer support communities and
how those can be reallybeneficial for cancer patients.
Not all those communities arelike that online, though, and
some of those communities canbreed polarization, extremism,

(19:29):
those particular types ofthings. So how are we creating
the conditions each one of us toencourage people to come
together, of creating communityin those particular types of
things? Because democracy isbased on community. It's based
on if it's not people agreeing,because we're not all gonna
agree, it's at least peoplelooking at their neighbor and
essentially saying, You knowwhat, you have a right to exist.

(19:51):
You are a human being, and youmight have a particular set of
beliefs. That's okay, yeah. AndI think we have to. Really think
about those particular things interms of what is, what is the
roots of our humanity and thoseand those types of things. So
oftentimes, a lot of theCenter's work is trying to
understand, well, here are someof the ills that we're

(20:11):
experiencing. So informationquality issues, for instance, or
political leaders trying todrive the attention economy in
order to get as many eyeballs onthem. And those types of things,
regardless of what they say andreally what we really we should
be taking those types of like,the types of lessons that we
have from that, which is what wetry to do at the center, and

(20:32):
bring them back to say, okay,how can we mitigate some of
these things create the types ofcommunities that are going to be
really important for long termdemocracy? And that's really
what we're talking about. We'retalking about. We're talking
about 21st Century democracyhere. It's gonna look different
than in the 20th century. It'sgonna look different than when
we signed the Declaration ofIndependence. It just is. Part
of that's technology, and someof that's going to be, how do we

(20:52):
coexist with the technology thatwe have and with the media
system that we have? Or if wecan't coexist with it. How do we
rework it in a way to make itsafe for democracy?

Yeah, technology lends a certain facelessness to
polarization and to politicaldiscussion, which then breeds
more, it seems more of anability to take an extreme view
or consider an extreme action,whereas you're sitting across
from the table and like I'msitting across the table from
you, it's you can still disagreewith somebody, but it's hard to

(21:27):
really just viscerally hatesomebody that you've never met
before. When you're sittingacross the table from them, you
know you can have adisagreement, and hopefully a
respectful professionaldisagreement, but the
technologies is made it so easyto disagree in a disrespectful,
confrontational way, right? Sothat's the thing, I guess we
get, which you didn't have whenthe, you know, they had

(21:49):
disagreements when theDeclaration of Independence was
signed, but they had to sit, youknow, sit across the table and
talk it out, yeah, and figure itout

in a really hot room in Philadelphia, right?
It's kind of like a papalconclave. It's like, you know,
you put people together for longenough and you basically give
them basic necessities, they'regoing to come to some decisions
fairly quickly figure it out.
Yeah, exactly when you'resitting in front of your laptop,
it's, there's, there's no,there's no potential end to what
you're talking about here. Andthat, I think, is something that

(22:18):
getting people to see first, ourhumanity is really, really,
really important. And if youhear from political leaders,
sometimes what they're doing isthey're using language that
dehumanizes their opposition.
And we know from again, historytells us that whether it's the

(22:39):
Balkans or other places withsectarian conflict and those
types of things that when youstart to dehumanize your your
neighbors, when you start todehumanize communities, it opens
the door potentially for otherextreme actions that people can
take and governments can

take. Yeah, you talked about the attention
economy, and you know, if youuse it, you wrote a book. When
did you publish your book? Theubiquitous presidency, 2021,
2021, okay,

so it was a pandemic book. So if I forget
some things about it, it's, youknow, it was, it was a pandemic.
There was lots going on.

Probably be other stuff, maybe other stuff coming
out in the future, but, but itwas interesting because you, you
devote particular attention tothe presidential communications
of Barack Obama and DonaldTrump. Yeah. Now most people
listening go, okay, these twoguys are as different as two
human beings can be, but you sawa lot of similarities in the

(23:29):
communications and how theypresented the presidency to the
nation, to the audience. Can youspeak more about

that? So I don't want to give like the spoilers
for like the you know, thepeople who are watching, because
I'd love for them to go out andbuy, yes,

it's true, and you should buy the book. It'll give
you a few teasers here. No,

but I'll say that there is a to understand where
Donald Trump comes from. Youhave to understand Barack Obama.
You have to understand the wayBarack which

some people listening this would just go,
they're just they're quiveringright now, and they hear that,
yeah, like, I don't

think people like turn the channel anymore, but
you know, like the car radio orwhatever, hang with me, everyone
there is, there's a bigdifference in style. There's a
big difference in how theydeliver the tools that they've
used and the areas that theywent into in terms of
communication and those types ofthings. You know, one of my

(24:25):
experiences as a young Hillstaffer, and then also getting
my masters at Georgetown. At thesame time, it was 2009 or 2010
Yeah, but it was winter, 20092010 I was in DC. And the big
and the one of the big storiesin DC was Barack Obama was
showing up at courtside at aGeorgetown basketball game. And

(24:49):
not only that, but he showed upat the game and was giving
commentary from the from thecourt about the game, and was
also talking about likelegislative. Compromise and
working with Republicans inthose particular types of
things, a setting you wouldnever really see the President
going to right? Yeah, fastforward, you know, you have

(25:10):
eight years of those particulartypes of presidential
communication, those types ofthings, and along comes Donald
Trump. And Donald Trump adifferent tone, different sort
of message, but is alsoventuring into some of these
spaces that were potentially offlimits to political leaders to
go into, uses Twitter in waysthat people say is like, coarse

(25:36):
and I'm presidential and thosetypes of things, and yet, when I
talk to my students, I'm like,are Donald Trump's tweets more
or less like the tweets that yougenerally see on Twitter. And
most of the time, my studentsare like, well, they're they're
a lot like the tweets you see.
It's like, so he's adapting tothe communication medium, yeah.
And so do we not expect that,you know, those particular types

(25:57):
of things? So there's not aneasy answer to these things, and
I think so, what you see isBarack Obama opens the door and
really becomes the communicativeair that gives us Donald Trump,
and the ways in which hecommunicates, the volume by
which both of them communicate,the ways in which they use the
Attention Economy to get to gainpeople's, you know, visibility

(26:21):
for themselves, for others andthose types of things. It also
helps us explain why Joe Bidenstruggled so much as president
because he could not keep upwith the content beast, yeah,
that modern presidents have toengage in. They are all content
creators. From here on out, theyare going to be content creators
competing with the influencerson Instagram that are baking the
cakes or like showing you how topunt a football. So that's

(26:44):
really where the President isnow, and once we start to see
the President as another contentcreator that just has a lot of
power in their office, maybe webegin to start approaching
presidential communication inways where we can critically
assess what is being said, asopposed to, you know,
journalists being wowed by thefact that that Donald Trump has

(27:05):
gone into this space tocommunicate, or Barack Obama,
you know, went on Between TwoFerns, or, like some other, like
late night comedy show, yeah.

And you wonder what, what is, is that, by the,
whatever the powers that be, aswe get into, you know, the you
know, Donald Trump is termlimited, so the next from both
parties is going to be, youknow, new, I won't say new
faces. They're people that areknown. But are they going to
look at who they promote and whothey try to nominate based on
their ability to have that, thatubiquity of communications, that

(27:38):
ability to hold an audience,basically all, everyone,
everywhere, constantly, all thetime, right? Because it wasn't a
skill set really neededpreviously, although, I mean,
presidents were severalpresidents were master
communication, no question aboutthat. But how they communicate
has changed, and they've got tobe able to hold that audience
basically 20, 474, years.

And the way you can kind of think about it is, if
the President isn't filling thatkind of space someone else's
someone or other people aregonna do it, if you think about
it in terms of kind of like, ifyou just reduce it to sheer
politics and those types ofthings, it's the opposition
might fill that space. Theymight frame the debate that
would put that would put thepresident at a disadvantage,

(28:19):
which is partly the reason whynow modern presidents
communicate so much is they'reconstantly having to first tell
us, then remind us, thencontinue to remind us, over and
over and over again of somethingthat we need to remember between
making dinner, cleaning thehouse, maybe watching Property
Brothers or something that'slike marketing. That's marketing
101, it's marketing 101, it verymuch is, I mean, in the 1960s

(28:44):
and 1970s and I teach this formy I teach this for my students.
You know, we oftentimes don'tthink of like Richard Nixon as
like a master communicator. Butbetween when he lost the
presidency in 1960 someone elsewho was much better looking on
television,

much better communicator in that media, yes,
and then GFK

to when he makes a comeback in 1968 he brings on
marketers, he brings on PR folksonto his 1968 campaign to market
him in like, a softer, gentlerNixon, you know, those types of
things. And there's actually areally famous book that talks
about, how do we market Nixonlike we do bars of soap? And
that really is what we'retalking about here. And so now

(29:24):
candidates and now presidentshave to market themselves in
ways that are everywhere, verymuch like our product placements
that we see today, ouradvertisements. And so when you
put it in that particular mode,you don't you don't notice
something until it's gone. Andthat was Joe Biden's issue.
Yeah, we thought everything was,you know, coming along and those

(29:45):
particular types of things ingeneral, until he wasn't doing
one of the very basic but moderntasks of the President, which
was communicating on a regular,frequent basis those types of
things. And it's just likepulling the advertisers.
Advertisement, you know, if youpull the coke advertisement,
it's going to take a bit, butpeople are going to notice when

(30:06):
someone's going to take overthat market share, right? And
that is what political leadershave to contend with in this
environment where there's somuch competition for attention.
Okay, let's turn

to the grant. Now, I want to talk a little bit
about that. That's, that's greatnews, you know? What are some of
the audience that you know, whatis the what is the Andrew
Carnegie fellowship? And whatare you gonna be focusing on
with this grant? I'm

really excited about this, as you noted, Jim,
this is the first time that afaculty member at the University
of South Florida has receivedthis fellowship. So really
humbled and grateful for that.
So the Carnegie Corporation ofNew York every year for really,
the past 10 years, 1011, yearsor so, has run a fellowship
program that is essentially whatthey bill it to be, kind of like

(30:52):
a big ideas in some type of wayto confront societal issues and
broadly defined, whatever thatwould be. For the past couple of
years, the focus of the programhas been on political
polarization. So this is theclass that the class of fellows
that I'm going to be in, Ibelieve, is the second class of
fellows looking at politicalpolarization in some type of

(31:17):
way. And so this year, theyfunded 27 individuals across the
United States. They got over 300applications. Each major
university in the United Statesand academic institution can
nominate one person and as partof the fellowship program, each

(31:41):
each fellow is granted $200,000to essentially conduct research
on something related topolitical polarization. So I'm
going to be focusing on theintersection of political
polarization and public healtharound vaccination in the United
States, particularly looking at,there's no controversy there,

(32:02):
none, none at all, none at all.
Particularly looking atchildhood vaccination among
Latino and Hispanic communitiesin the United States. And so,
really important topic, reallycontemporary topic, it's also
one of those things, if I if youthink through kind of it's like
one of those things that peopledon't realize right away when

(32:24):
you talk about democracy, it'slike democracy is central for
national security purposes.
Democracy and public health arealso related to in the sense of,
like, if you don't have ahealthy populace, if you have
huge issues with disease andthose and you know, individuals
are not going to be able toengage in the types of
activities, the participatoryactivities to engage in public
life. What that looks like interms of voting, in terms of

(32:45):
other forms of participation,you know. And so public health
is integral to understandinghealthy democracies,
particularly in 21st century,particularly in a world where
people travel a lot, they comeinto contact with many other
people. And so that's what thefocus of this is going to be

about, yeah, and we, and obviously, on the on the
heels of COVID, you know, it'sstill in recent memory, you can
see how that really can shutdown a society and and can, I
don't say, threaten democracy,but it can make some things
challenging that we sort of takefor granted, conducting a vote.
It's changed some things in howwe vote, and some say for the
better. Some would argue not forthe better, right? It's another
point of point of polarizationdiscussion as well. Right?

Absolutely. And you can look at there was not there.
There was not any merit to, youknow, some of the claims made
about the 2020, presidentialelection. But what I will tell
you is, if you look at the rootcause of those concerns, it's
comes out of a pandemic, andstates and localities trying to
adapt to a very serious publichealth threat, right? And we

(33:48):
oftentimes forget that, whichwas the ways in which voting was
temporarily and or permanentlyaltered, in some cases, to
provide more flexibility topeople. You know, those types of
things opening up more pollingsites to reduce, sort of like
people crowding into places andthat kind of stuff, all that
comes out of a big public healththreat. Yeah, so public health
and democracy are very muchintertwined with one another,

(34:11):
and that's really what some ofthis work is going to be
focusing on. It's how did webecome so polarized around the
sorts of topics that likevaccination and like childhood
vaccination, but also, moreimportantly, if you look at the
statistics on parents who areopting their children out of
vaccination in schools, they'regoing up. And if you also look

(34:34):
at vaccination rates in generalfor long managed diseases,
polio, measles, mumps, rubella,those, you know they're going
down. Yeah. And so we have to bethinking about what is the
messaging that people are beingexposed to in some of these
environments. So we're we'regoing to have a team of
researchers working on this,both here at USF, but also

(34:55):
across the United States, andwe're going to have individuals
who. Uh, work on the civilsociety industry side as part of
this, helping us kind ofunderstand what's going on. And
hopefully the goal is to figureout what might be some
approaches that we can mitigatethis, that we can use trusted,
uh, sources, trusted localsources. Um, in some ways,

(35:16):
influencers, even public healthinfluencers, um, who people
oftentimes look to as primarysources of information, using
modern communications, correct?
That, right? We have to be usingthe infrastructure that's in
place and what people listen to.
So we're going to be looking atsocial media messaging or but
we're also going to be lookingat Spanish language radio, um,
to understand what's going onwith with the sort of messaging

(35:39):
and things. And then we're goingto be figuring out what types of
messages can we use and create,potentially mitigate some of
these things.

Yeah, it's absolutely, you know,
fascinating conversation. Infact, that we're, we're already
over 30 minutes, so we're goingto start to kind of close things
out. But one, one, you know,last I definitely want to boot,
you know, tee this up for youwhen you won the Carnegie
fellowship, I saw a quote thatyou said, and it was that each
of us has an obligation to putin the work every day to

(36:09):
preserve and promote thepossibilities of democracy. I
have 27 year old twins, andthey're trying to put in that
work. They're trying to bethose, those responsible
citizens, responsible activecitizens, but you know, they're
getting bombarded by wildlyconflicting messages from
sources hard to tell who totrust. You have students,

(36:29):
obviously you're working withthat you're, you know, you're
trying to educate them so thatthey can go forward and be
responsible of responsiblecitizenry in a democracy. How do
you advise them to try to to toattain that level of civic
mindedness that's so importantto an active democracy.

So I think we have to start with in a lot of ways,
what is some of the most basicways that people can engage with
their democracy around them? Andit starts oftentimes with the
space between our ears. It's ourattention and where we allocate
our attention. And so we want tobe thinking about if so much of

(37:06):
what we deal with on a day today basis is the attention
economy. You know, we hope thatpeople, lots of people, are
listening to this podcast rightnow. We also know that they have
other options. They should behere. They should be they should
be here listening. We know, aswe know that, you know, there's
lots of other attention kind ofdirectors out there, right,

less worthy attention detractors. But yeah,
correct that question

exactly. So we want to be thinking about it as,
where can people allocate theirattention? And one of the things
that I think is really importantis that political leaders,
regardless of the stripes oftheir political party,
regardless of their ideology.
One of the things they're alwayslooking at is the metrics of the
people that are sharing orliking their posts on social

(37:51):
media, or are the eyeballs thatare watching them on some
network. They're always lookingat those things, just as they're
always looking at public opinionpolling and those things, we
want to be thinking about ourattention as just another metric
that are that political leadersare working with and they're
trying to gain our eyes and earsall the time. So how do we

(38:11):
strategically allocate ourattention to to political
leaders and away from politicalleaders at particular points.
And more importantly, how do webegin the process of, you know,
I know a lot of people say,Well, you know, someone like
Donald Trump, you know, he takesup a lot of attention space. He
does, which is how he becameDonald Trump. And before he was

(38:33):
Donald Trump, the President, youknow, he was Donald Trump, the
cultural figure, also taking upa lot of attention. He's been
doing this for decades, so he'svery good at it. But what we
want to be asking of people is,if they're like, Well, how do we
reallocate attention aroundsomeone like Donald Trump? It's
like, well, you can start in theplaces where Donald Trump is not

(38:54):
really as much of a presence, orthe President is not really as
much of a presence, your localcivic life in your own community
and in your own backyard, andthose types of things that can
be really helpful. I talked tostudents about it's not the most
exciting thing at all times, butthey want to understand where
the policies that they learnedthat affected them, their school
board is a good place to start.

(39:17):
You know, their local councilsand commissioners meetings and
those and those types of things,if you know, they're worried
about growth and urban sprawl,or even, like development in
their communities, you know,like, for instance, the
community redevelopment, youknow, boards here in the Bay
Area,

that is an issue.
Here in the Bay Area, it is.
It's a huge, it's a huge issue.

Those are also meetings, you know, going to
those meetings and listening inand figuring out what's going on
and which

have a reduced level of polarization, not
absent, but definitely a reducedline of polarization, to really
get involved in democraticprocess without maybe getting
sucked into the polarization ofit at the

same time. Yeah. I mean, I think it's pretty safe
to assume that if you did publicopinion polling on potholes like
none. 98% of people would belike, Sure, yes, Phil, you know,
you would get that like, point,those, I love potholes, exactly,
exactly, and so politicalreason? Yeah, probably I want,
you know, flatten tires and, youknow, I want cracked windshields
and all that other stuff. Youknow that we also oftentimes get

(40:16):
here, but it's much less. It'smuch less. And I want to quote
I'm political, because mosteverything's political, but it's
not going to be polarized.
You're not going to get theextremity of opinions. And
that's also where it's moreabout

policy than polity, basically. So the policy is
really what becomes moreimportant than the polity. The
political aspect it

is. And the other key component is, particularly
for, you know, your kids, youknow, but also for younger
people in general, it seemsreally daunting to be like, how
do I go out there and, like, dothese things and that kind of
stuff, you know, oftentimesstarting in a setting like that,
where there might be five peoplein the room and you're one of
those five people, guess what?
If you have something to say,you've shown up, yes, you're
gonna you're more likely to beher in those particular

(40:57):
settings. So if, like, if OscarWilde is right, and 90% of life
is showing up in a democracy,especially in like, local
democracy, like you can have,you can double, triple,
quadruple your impact. I mean,now I sound like a multi level
marketer, but it's like, you canquadruple your impact in local
democracy if you're one of fivepeople in a commission meeting,

(41:18):
and you're one of those peopletalking, and it's also great
practice as well for, you know,not not necessarily not running
for office or those types ofthings, but being a voice in
your community. What does thatlook like? And those are, I
think, some of the things thatwe oftentimes forget is where
can we allocate our attention?
And oftentimes, we can allocateour attention in the places

(41:39):
where people aren't lucky, andthat's and that's our local
communities. And at the sametime, it goes back to that
democratic community that wewere talking about. It's if you
want to be able to build andbolster community, that is one
of the biggest things you can doto prevent the sort of
retrenchment and democraticrights, the sort of democratic

(42:00):
backsliding and things that'sgoing into your local
communities, and actually beingable to hear and see and also
voice What's going on

that's now, that's a great final thought, actually.
I mean, you know, I think wealways think politics when we
when somebody says politics, youimmediately think of federal
level, you know, presidential,Congress, now, even the Supreme
Court, you know, is kind ofdragged into the political
aspects of it. But as you say, Imean, the vast majority of
political activity that happensacross this nation, it's going

(42:30):
to be at the local level, ascommunities, counties, state,
you know, level, there's just somuch going on and people,
there's, there is opportunity tobe involved. And that's, that's,
that's, that's a that's it,that's, I'm probably going to go
home and talk to my my kidstonight say, Hey, here's, here's
some ideas for you. I mean,they're not always talking
politics, but every once in awhile it is. It's good that they

(42:50):
think about it at least. I'mheartened by that. But it's kind
of hard to tell what to do, andsometimes the answers are fairly
just, Hey, do something local.
You know, clean up. Clean. Seewhat you can. Clean up your own
backyard, right, you know, andthen maybe, then your neighbor
clean up their backyard, and itgoes out

from there. And I'll just say on like, a final
point here that I think forthose of us in Florida, the
local importance becomes all themore kind of heightened after we
have, for instance, a hurricane,right? Clean up, rebuilding all
of the things that the closuresof government offices and those

(43:25):
types of things, and then how doyou rebuild and get a community
back on its feet? Well,oftentimes, what's happening is,
even before FEMA or stategovernment is in, it's our local
communities. It's our neighborsthat are helping neighbors until
power gets back on, until watergets back on. And those
particular types of things, wewant to be thinking about our

(43:46):
democracy in that way, as thetype of effort that each of us
can put in for our neighbors andfor our communities and those
types of things. Because itdoesn't matter if a tree has
fallen on a house. I mean, itdoesn't matter whether or not
you know the people in thathouse are Republican or
Democrat. You know, they'rehuman beings. We're human
beings. And so they're myneighbors. And so how do we get

(44:08):
to a kind of like a society andcommunity like that, when so
much else is being pushed aside?
But I think we have that uniqueif you're in an area that's
disaster prone, I think youuniquely understand what that
looks like and what communitylooks like in that particular
way.

Any that was, I mean, that was a great final
thought right by there. But Iwant to give you a Mr. Mr.
Carnegie fellowship awardee forUSF. I want to give you any
final thoughts before we

well podcast. You know, I'm, I'm grateful to be
here talking with you, and I'm,I will do a final thought in
terms of putting in a fantasticplug for the work that GNSI is
doing here on the USF campus.
And, you know, I look at,really, the work that this, that
the Center for sustainabledemocracy is doing in GNSI, is,
you know, really complementaryto each other in the sense that

(44:58):
democracy. See is nationalsecurity and having stable
societies where people have asay in kind of like the policy
and direction of that society isreally important for thinking
about, how do we make surepeople are safe and secure? How
do we prevent wars? How do wepromote kind of common ideals,

(45:21):
not only here, but also abroadand those types of things. And
so democracy and nationalsecurity go hand in

hand. We hope you enjoyed our conversation today
with Dr Joshua skaco, associateprofessor of communications here
at USF and the founding directorof the Center for sustainable
democracy, his work in politicalcommunication and polarization,
as well as politically polarizedpublic health issues is one of
the primary reasons he's thefirst person in the history of

(45:54):
USF to earn a spot on the AndrewCarnegie fellows list. His
insights into overcomingpolarization have been powerful
and will continue to be so nextweek on at the boundary, our
guest will be Dr Jonathanschroeden, who recently became
the Chief Research Officer forthe Center for naval analysis,
or CNA. He recently authored adecision brief on Afghanistan

(46:16):
for us, and he'll be joining usto discuss some of the
recommendations he offered forsecuring US interest in that
nation. He's one of thecountry's leading experts on
that country, and we're reallylooking forward to having him on
the show. Thanks for listeningtoday. If you like the podcast,
please subscribe and let yourfriends and colleagues know. You
can follow genus I on ourLinkedIn and X accounts at USF

(46:39):
underscore, GNSI, and check outour website as well, at
usf.edu/gnsi, while you'rethere, don't forget to subscribe
to our monthly newsletterthat's going to wrap up this
episode of at the boundary. Eachnew episode will feature global

(47:00):
and national security issueswe've found to be insightful,
intriguing, maybe controversial,but overall, just worth talking
about. I'm Jim Cardoso, andwe'll see you at the boundary.

Unknown (47:19):
You.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Political Polarization Feels Unstoppable. Will it Destroy Democracy?