I think Trump was a, I mean, he was the all-media candidate, but he is a television. He's a figure of American television and the only reason people like us don't intuitively get that is we don't watch enough TV. The notion that it's sort of an American story that's about specific things that's happened here is just clearly not true. This technology we're talking about is global. Social media is global. And again, it's hard to play this causal game. But they ran together. They flowed. These rivers kind of flowed together clearly.
Have clicks, likes, and shares driven media and democracy to the point of disrepair? Sean Illing is joined by Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the author of "Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral." Together, they discuss how newsrooms were transformed by social media and the pursuit of traffic, and what the future of the industry might look like.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Ben Smith (@semaforben), editor-in-chief of Semafor, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
References:
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This episode was made by:
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Engineer: Patrick Boyd
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Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall
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