Lee Rainie, a researcher at the Pew Research Center, spoke on Syracuse University’s campus Wednesday night about how technology has been “injecting itself” into every aspect of people’s lives.  

Rainie is the director of internet and technology research at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, where his group examines the social impacts digital life has on modern society. He spoke to more than 50 students in the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications about the impact that technology has on trust, facts and democracy.  

Rainie said during his 20 years at Pew, he has seen the internet’s rise lead to a drop in public trust in large institutions, such as churches, big businesses, banks and the media. 

“Technology is more or less a problem in the context of trust,” he said. “It’s allowing people to create their own realities. It’s allowing people to find others who live in those potentially alternative realities.” 

People are now more reliant on themselves for information because they can find their own facts online, he said. They can pick and choose where they get information, largely from media companies that match their social ideologies, tastes and cultural interests. 

But the declining trust in institutions is much older than the internet, Rainie said. With events like the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War, people questioned powerful institutions. Now other religious and business institutions are facing the same issue of consumer mistrust, he said. 

Rainie previously worked for the New York Daily News and is the former managing editor of the U.S. News and World Report. He looked back on his time in the media and reflected on how media professionals interact with their audience. 

When Rainie wrote stories, he had a vague sense of conversation, he said. He never interacted with his audience during a story, but when he talks to journalists now, he said they have their audiences and critics “at the top of their minds.” 

Journalists have similar requirements to politicians because of the access that the public has to them, he said.  

“Everyone who’s got access to a smartphone or a wireless connection has a chance to be in your grill about something that you’ve done,” he said.  

Roy Gutterman, a Newhouse professor and director of the Tully Center for Free Speech, moderated the discussion. About 15 minutes into the panel Gutterman asked, “Aren’t facts just facts?”

Rainie cited a longstanding debate about whether facts are social constructs. The amount and the speed of information exploded after the printing press was created, and Rainie said that many of the supporters of this information were the “fake news” of the time — those who believed in practices such as witchcraft and alchemy.   

He said today’s society is in a similar situation. This time, he said it’s an environment of “total noise,” a term coined by novelist David Foster Wallace.  

“Everyone has the opportunity to be a publisher,” Rainie said. 

One student asked if Pew would be able to inform the public of how they collect their information. 

Rainie said that the center previously printed the work its researchers were doing and sent it to different journalists. But now, the center releases short videos explaining the same information. He added that the choice is up to the consumer about what they do with the information.

Published on October 31, 2018 at 11:18 pm

Contact Gabe: gkstern@syr.edu | @gabestern326