Chris Bail Interviewed by Mary Hockaday

Sociologist and director of the Polarization Lab Professor Chris Bail argues that social media distorts our identities, empowers extremists, and makes moderates all but invisible and says that the solution to political tribalism lies within ourselves.

Bail explains how stepping out of our echo chambers can make us more polarised rather than less. He offers ways to counter political tribalism, and he suggests what might happen if we redesigned social media from scratch.

Bail is professor of sociology, public policy, and data science at Duke University, where he is director of the Polarization Lab. He is a Guggenheim fellow and a Carnegie fellow. Bail is an expert in the emerging field of computational social science, and his research examines fundamental questions of social psychology using social media data, bots, and the latest advances in machine learning. He is also author of Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Fringe Organizations Became Mainstream, which examined how anti-Muslim organisations entered the American mainstream. Here he talks to Mary Hockaday, former controller of BBC World Service.

This event is part of the festival’s American programme.