The Joe Rogan Tucker Carlson news bubble extremism situation and what's really going on there,

wanting to just give up and quit the news, and who the AI boom's going to absolutely decimate over the next five years. We're talking about all of that on your special Friday, Philip DeFranco Show, aka From the Bastards, where y'all take control. Where y'all send in questions and I do my Philip DeFranco show thing and I turn it into a show for you. And today we start with Aden, who said, you know, he's concerned about rising political extremism on both left and right.

And he asked this important question.

How do you recommend for people from either lane separate themselves from such extreme beliefs?

A great and unfortunately timely question and where I'll start here is at the individual level.

Because the way that experts say that people can distance themselves in political extremism is by breaking out of their media bubbles and following a variety of sources to hear different perspectives.

Right, and a big thing with this is a few research study from this summer. They found that Democrats and independents who lean Democrat are much more likely than Republicans and GOP leaners to both use and trust a number of major news sources. Right. And so those who lean damn they consume and trust things like ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, as well as legacy newspapers like the New York Times and public broadcasters like NPR. Whereas those who lean Republican, they're more likely to distrust those than trust them. And instead, they found that they rely on a much more concentrated number of sources, including Fox News, the Joe Rogan experience, and the Tucker Carlson network. And then connected to that, Democrats consume a much wider variety of media sources at much more even rates, whereas Republicans, they disproportionately rely on Fox. Nearly six in ten Republican leaners, they said they regularly got news from the network. And that was double the share of those who said they consumed any other news source that P.U. asked about. Though I will say there was some overlap. One in five Republicans said they regularly get news from CNN and a similar share of Democrats that they consume news from Fox on a regular basis. And so with that in mind, you have experts saying that breaking out of media bubbles and diversifying sources is even more important now that social media has become such a major source of news for both parties. Great surveys show that nearly half of all adults get news social media, and that's evenly split with Republicans and Democrats. And because social media sites are algorithmically driven, it gets even easier for people to get sucked into partisan echo chambers. Also, and this is easier said than done, with politically polarized misinformation, exacerbating political extremism on both sides, experts argue that media literacy is needed. So even starting there, the left and right do not see eye to eye.

Right, 81% of Democrats agree that media literacy is important, whereas only 66% of Republicans say it is.

And that, as research actually shows, that Republicans need increased media literacy more than Democrats.

And with all this, numerous studies have found that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to both believe and spread political misinformation.

Right, in each specific study is interesting. There was a 2024 study that found that Republicans,

but not Democrats, were more likely to respond to instances of heightened political polarization

like elections by spreading false information, even when they knew that the content was likely fake.

Also, the media literacy disparity among Republicans appears to be top down.

Research has shown that Republican politicians are much more likely to share false or misleading information on social media and other public forums.

And so a big part of this is, you know, it's just not going to get better until politicians actually take responsibility to fight extremism and polarization and misinformation.

And again, easier said than done, moderating political rhetoric, it's an easy way for public officials to reduce the polarization, right? Take down the heat. And a big part of this is realizing that actually a lot of people have things in common.

And a big thing with that is that research actually shows that Americans are more polarized emotionally than ideologically,

meaning that, you know, they dislike members of the opposite political party more than they disagree on actual matters of policy.

Because while it feels like everyone has just gone crazy, studies show that Americans believe

that the far left and far right factions of the two parties, they're much larger than they actually are.

And another big thing with this is that failure to call out bad actors, it only increases polarization by normalizing political violence.

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