About me
My name is Bobbi Kate Hewitt, I am a writer and journalist with a particular focus on political and social polarisation. I believe we do not form our values, ideas or opinions in a vacuum but rather that they are a product of our own individual context. It is not until we dig deeper, and understand the person behind the belief and the experiences that lead them there, that we can breakdown polarisation and healthily coexist.
Focusing on our differences takes away from the real challenges we collectively face, such as education, healthcare, housing and existential climate breakdown. Individualism and separatism aren’t going to solve these issues, but collective action and unity will.
Everybody has a story, society is better when we listen.
Why Polarisation ?
There are many causes for the current cultural climate within which we find ourselves. Both the rise of social media; where stories are created to get the most clicks, the rise of identity group politics where both the left and rights’ main conceptual frameworks no longer focus on unifying values but on group identities, the increase in online echo chambers and offline geographical sorting to name but a few. Whatever the reasons are, it’s clear there is a problem. Not in that we have differing opinions – that is vital for a flourishing democracy, but that we let those differences in opinion inhibit our ability to healthily co-exist.
The problem with modern news consumption is that it is almost always lacking in context. We are fed news bites, politically loaded headlines and are often wary of certain publications bias. According to PEW Research centre, in 2021 78% of democrats said they trusted national news organisations compared to only 35% of republicans. Not only are people’s opinions polarised but so are their facts. The inclusion of context - what lead a mother to seek an abortion or why an individual is sceptical of vaccines, is fundamental to being moderate in our reaction to those who hold different views and the only path toward a middle ground.
Why stories?
Because stories influence cultures, cultures influence leaders, leaders influence policy and policy changes the system.