On October 5, 2020, I wrote a post talking about how, for me, the United States of America (USA) has a great deal of influence over my day-to-day life, despite my desire for this not to be the case. In that post, I suggested that my feelings about Donald Trump are mostly irrelevant to the state of affairs of the world, and especially the USA, as I am not an American citizen. As I said in that post “the American people will do what they think is best,” especially with regard to whom they select to represent them in the international arena. This past week has been particularly interesting and so I have decided to follow up my previous post.
For those of you who may not be aware (I am envious if you are such a person), on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 there was a riot at the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. This riot resulted in the breaching of the building by rioters, which has resulted in several deaths and what some regard as an attack on American democracy. As the current president of the USA (Donald Trump) essentially goaded the rioters on to perform this act, it has been suggested this is an attempted coup. Essentially, the incident could be a failed attempt by Trump to overthrow the existing government and install his own, of which he would be the supreme power in this new government. This is my interpretation of the incident. There are certainly others who would suggest different interpretations.
However this incident is viewed and interpreted, what I wish to focus on is something a little different. Yesterday, I happened upon an interesting comment on Reddit, suggesting that there should be a filter created to filter out all the USA focused news items from Reddit. Ironically, a quick search in Google suggests this isn’t the first time people have asked this sort of question. I’d like to briefly consider this simple request.
For me, especially in that I happen to live in the country which shares the longest border with the USA, it seems unlikely that I will ever be able to live my life without having to keep myself informed regarding the goings-on of the USA. Whether I like it or not, I kind of need to know what the president of the USA is doing, what sorts of decisions he is making, and what sort of leader he is. If nothing more, those around me will talk about “those crazy Americans” and educate me. I am also well aware that many Americans frequently seek asylum in the country I am in, particularly as affairs in the USA become more and more unpredictable. All things considered, to consciously attempt to ignore the sleeping giant next door would likely be taking a huge risk on my part. I need to keep on top of American affairs.
However, the country I am in represents less than one percent of the total world population. That is, collectively, all the people in this country who are in the same sort of situation as I find myself in, make up less than one percent of the total population of the world. Furthermore, the population of the USA itself makes up approximately four percent of the total population of the world. Combined, these two countries together make up less than five percent of all currently living humans on this planet. That is, less than one in every twenty human beings currently alive, lives in either the USA or Canada. This is a simple statistic, but what is its significance? Perhaps it would help if we had something to compare it to.
The population of China is currently about eighteen and a half percent of the total population, and is the largest country in the world in this regard. India’s population comes in second with just shy of eighteen percent of the total humans currently living. That is, just these two countries (who are also neighbors ironically) make up more than a third of the total world’s population. That is, more than a third (about thirty-six percent) of all currently living human beings are on pretty well the opposite side of the globe from the USA. What I find astonishing is how little I know about the affairs of China and India, when compared to the affairs of the USA, or even Canada.
The first reasonable argument that springs to mind as to why I would be more familiar with the affairs of the USA and Canada are their proximity to me. I live within Canada, and the USA is Canada’s closest neighbor. For this reason alone, it makes sense I should be much more familiar with the affairs of these two countries. It isn’t a question of size or percentage of the world’s population; it is simply a question of the human beings who are closest to me. It makes sense for me to need to know what is going on in these two countries, as opposed to China and India. However, this cannot be said for everyone.
The Internet (and all the various communications mediums that exist on it, including all the various social media channels) spans the whole world. Media channels, such as Reddit or Twitter, exist in Canada and the USA and China and India. So, one might expect that the percentage of material and data and news found on the Internet which is concerned with each of these countries might be proportional to the number of people who exist in each of these countries. One might anticipate that approximately five percent of all news items might be concerned with Canada and the USA, while approximately thirty-six percent would be concerned with China and India. But this clearly is not the case. Why not?
One reason I can think of is that my access to the Internet is not “unmediated.” That is, when I select my source for news, I tend to receive news that is more “relevant” to me. Putting this another way, the news I receive is focused on what is going on closer to where I am. As I am in Canada, I tend to get information and news about the goings-on in Canada. As the USA is Canada’s closest neighbor, I should expect that a significant amount of my information will be about the USA as well. And unfortunately, as China and India are pretty well on the opposite side of the globe from me, practically as far away as possible, their day-to-day goings-on will be less likely to make headlines for me. Thus, proximity seems a significant part of my experience.
But what about for others? What about people who do not live in Canada or the USA, or perhaps not even on the North American continent? Does an Internet user in China receive mostly Chinese news? And Indian mostly Indian news? Honestly, I do not know; I do not reside in those areas. I would like to think so, but seeing posts on Reddit where people are asking for filters to filter out USA news would seem to suggest this is not the case. That perhaps there is a disproportionately larger focus on the USA on media channels on the Internet.
Another possibility, especially with news media, is that more significant events tend to usurp more attention than less significant events. For example, this latest possible coup attempt by Donald Trump likely hit headlines the world over, simply because there was a potential overthrowing of a government in one of the larger countries in the world. One might expect there to be much more attention given in such a spectacular incident like the storming of one of the significant governmental buildings in such a country. Not so much because it is the USA, but simply because a country seems to be in turmoil. However, as the quick Google search suggested, people have been requesting a filter to filter out USA content for some time.
I suggest there is another possibility. Perhaps the issue isn’t with regard to the proportion of human beings in various areas of the world. Perhaps the issue is where the headquarters of the various media channels reside has more to do with the situation. For example, Reddit is “an American social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website,” with a headquarters in San Francisco, California, USA. Similarly, Twitter is “an American microblogging and social networking service” with headquarters in San Francisco as well. In fact, Google is “an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products” with headquarters in Mountain View, California. Even Wikipedia (which I clearly seem to favor) is “hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization” which lists it’s location as being in San Francisco, California once again. All of these media channels are clearly focused not only in the USA, but in a very particular area of the USA, which might suggest something of a bias regarding how those products are delivered.
Another possibility to consider is the sorts of people who have access to the Internet and who are able to present information on the Internet. What I mean by this is what I was suggesting earlier, when I suggest the Chinese might be receiving predominantly Chinese news and the Indians might be receiving predominantly Indian news. Just because there are more humans in China does not automatically suggest that all of those Chinese people have Internet access and are adding material to the Internet. In fact, something that I often have to remind people in my own community is that not everyone in Canada has Internet access either. There are a lot of people in this country who cannot afford Internet access, or who live in locations where Internet access is challenging to offer.
What I am suggesting in this last point is something like a self-selection bias. Those who contribute to the content available on the Internet clearly must have access to the Internet in the first place. Thus, the knowledge and information that is shared on the Internet is already biased toward those who have Internet access. The opinions and ideas of people who do not have Internet access is going to be underrepresented on the Internet.
It reminds me of an old discussion I had with people many years ago regarding which Operating System (OS) on a computer was most user-friendly. That is, which OS was easiest for people to use, and which was more challenging. We were arguing between Microsoft Windows, Apple MacOS, and various distributions of linux. It was generally believed that Windows was the most user-friendly, with MacOS being still pretty friendly but not as friendly as Windows, and linux being entirely unfriendly. What was often dismissed was that all the people we were considering were people who both used computers somewhat regularly, and who had generally been brought up on Microsoft Windows based computers. The significant point is this: if an individual has spent most of their lives using Microsoft Windows, but very little time using either MacOS or linux, we would expect they would be quite familiar with how to use Microsoft Windows products, as they will generally operate in similar ways. A person who used Windows 95 is likely to find Windows 98 to be fairly easy to use, similtarly with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 10. Yes, there have certainly be significant changes throughout the years, but one can generally still expect there to be a little graphic in the lower-left corner of the screen that they can click to present themselves with a menu to select applications to launch.
A similar argument applies if the individual had been brought up using an Apple Macintosh computer. For them, they’d expect to click on the top-left of their screen, instead of the bottom-left. Those who had been brought up in linux tended to be much more versatile in this regard, as linux does tend to be quite flexible and versatile in this regard, with their menu potentially being wherever they want to put it. The point here is not to focus too hard on some sort of absolute trait of “user-friendliness” without first recognizing that an individual’s past history with computers will play a significant role in what they find to be “easy” and what they find to be “challenging.” Or, to formalize this a little, it is all about what Simone de Beauvoir referred to as “situation.”
Bringing this back to the discussion of what sort of content to expect to find on the Internet, if most of the people on the Internet have been brought up with certain tools and data, they are likely to continue to preference those same tools and data as time progresses. Furthermore, if people are constantly bombarded with certain cultural choices constantly, then they are likely to slowly fall into those same choices as time progresses. As the most simple example of this that I myself am guilty of right now, this blog is written in English. (I honestly do apologize to all those out there who speak other languages for forcing you to read this blog in this dreadful language. The fact that it is the only language I happen to speak fluently is not a good excuse either.)
So where does this leave us? Many (perhaps most) of the media channels being used by many people on the Internet are “living” in the USA. These mediums are USA based, were likely predominantly used by Americans in their infancy, and are to this day predominantly controlled by USA interests. As a non-American, I have sometimes found reading the end-user agreements somewhat amusing when they have made reference to American laws, rules, and other regulations which do not apply in the country I reside. There is no “First Amendment” to protect my “Freedom of Speech” in this country, though we do happen to have a “Freedom of Expression” to fall back on. Certainly similar, but not quite the same. And also worth note is that not all countries have such rules.
This all brings us back to the original point. The USA is not the center of the universe. It never has been, nor will it ever be. It is incredibly frustrating for many people (arguably most people in the world) when it is even hinted that such things are true. For me personally, I have to acknowledge a fair bit of prejudice and privilege to the USA as a result of my particular situation, but my situation is not everybody’s situation. I recognize that for someone in China or India, for example, the affairs of the USA may be the furthest thing from significance for them.
One last thing I feel it important to mention in all of this, that I hear being screamed in the back of my head by a familiar audience member: but the USA has “the nukes.” This argument suggests that the reason the Americans hold so much sway and influence over so much of our world is directly related to the fact they happen to have weapons of mass destruction, and arguably more than any other country on this planet. This is an argument of oppression; the USA is somehow justified in oppressing the rest of the world because the rest of the world could be harmed if they do not let the USA do as it pleases. While this may be true (that the USA could deliver great harm upon a great many people if it decided to utilize its weapons of mass destruction), this amounts to bullying. And as even the Americans know very, very well, one of the first strategies of dealing with bullies is to stand up to them.