I grew up in Springfield, Ill., steeped in lore about Abraham Lincoln: his home, his law office, even his tomb were regular stops. For a kid, I learned a lot about the Civil War.
What I had never heard of was the Springfield anti-black riot of 1908, among the worst ever in the north, and a catalyst to the formation of the NAACP.
During my high school years in the late 1960s, Cairo, Ill. broke out into open racial warfare. I did understand that Springfield was effectively segregated, and it remains so to this day.
I did not experience this racism directly. My parents supported the civil rights movement and use of the N-word was taboo in our house and anywhere else.
Still, the anger, resentment, and suppressed violence was all around me. As a Jew, I was sometimes asked by my classmates to show my horns.
My sense of the concept of understanding and the importance of communication was profoundly shaped by these experiences.
I studied sociology in college and took away two ideas. First, while our societies in the west are riven by conflict, civil society is the place where citizens mightencounter each other and, through communication, address the social problems that give rise to conflict.
Second, this process takes place in the “public sphere,” those places in society where we discuss our needs and goals and define the politics and policies it would take to reach them.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that without a civil society we live in a state of “war of all against all.” Life in the U.S. today sometimes feels like we might be approaching that point again.
Our society has many groups and interests which increasingly clash. But American society in the 19th century threw off slavery through a civil war, enthralled African Americans again through Jim Crow, and saw the growth of the first Gilded Age. We’d be hard put to think that ours is a more contentious time.
Conflict today is acted out online.
As far back as 1981, when I began my dissertation, it was clear that the broadband communication system would shape and control the flow of information in society.
I hoped this new technology would be used to expand communication and solve our public problems. Today, these technologies seem to sharpen our differences, and turn us against each other.
My hope that they can be still turned to the common good is reflected in my two major projects.
The Madison Commons (www.madisoncommons.org), founded in 2006, is a community-driven news site that we produce in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication; it is now the oldest continuous such project in the U.S.
It provides news and information about all of Madison's neighborhoods, with the aim of connecting communities through communication. Its aim is to connect our communities through communication.
My research on “Communication Ecologies, Political Contention, and Democratic Crisis,” with an extraordinary group of colleagues, explores the origins of political contention in Wisconsin from 2008 on.
By better understanding how the communication environment is inflaming political conflict, we hope to identify new pathways for civil understanding, agreement and democratic hope.
Lewis A. Friedland is a Vilas Distinguished Professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication. He founded and directs the Center for Communication and Democracy. His research and teaching centers on civic and citizen journalism, communication and society, communication research methods, international news reporting and civil society and public life.
Fueling Discovery
Fueling Discovery is a joint effort of the UW-Madison College of Letters & Science and the Wisconsin State Journal featuring faculty members wiring about their work in their own words. The effort was financed through sponsorships and gifts from alumni and friends.