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In the age of selfies, snaps, likes and shares, the internet and social media have transformed the way in which people communicate. In early 2019, global internet penetration reached 57 percent, or 4.4 billion users, and the overall number of mobile social media users reached 42 percent, or 3.2 billion people. This means that people are able to share ideas, communicate and interact more rapidly than ever before, including with audiences on the other side of the world. Terrorist groups have certainly leveraged these new mechanisms and platforms for communicating amongst themselves and to potential recruits. Terrorist groups have been known for producing sleek videos circulated on YouTube and Twitter, and have mastered new and emerging technologies and social media platforms, such as Telegram; all to promote its messages in cyberspace. Social media and the internet have accelerated the speed and reduced the cost of sharing information. This has supported the process of many terrorist organisations to reorganise themselves into a network style structure and enhanced the capacity of each cell to operate independently, especially for the dissemination of the organisations messages.

faceless terrorists

The internet is a fertile breeding ground where faceless terrorists communicate hatred and intolerance, which manifests in carnage and death. A survey by the International Journal on Cyber Warfare stated that there were 50 million tweets globally by eight million users with the keywords ISIS and ISIL. The new trend is e-terrorism extending to multidimensional propaganda. ISIS leaders post videos on YouTube glorifying the actions of their cadres worldwide. The internet can be accessed by anyone remotely. There is no need for facial interaction. It is an invisible cyber battleground. Modern terrorist networks typically consist of widely distributed, smaller cells who communicate and coordinate their campaigns in an interweaving fashion.

In our rapidly changing world, it takes a coordinated effort of the public and private sectors to identify new threats on the horizon and ensure both police and society are prepared to face them. The illicit sale of drugs, firearms and explosives; people smuggling; money laundering; terrorist activities; and cybercrime can all be facilitated by these technologies. There has been a growth in the use of technologies which provide anonymity to their users. The Darknet the vast portion of the Internet which can only be accessed using specialised software and virtual crypto currencies have many positive benefits, but the focus on anonymity leaves them open to misuse by criminals.

As a partner in the European-Union funded Project Titanium the INTERPOL assisted in the development of a block chain analytics tool called Graph Sense which supports the tracing of crypto currency transactions. This tool allows investigators to search crypto currency addresses, tags and transactions, to identify clusters related to an address and therefore follow the money in support of their investigations. The Practitioner Manual for ASEAN Countries to Counter Terrorism using the Darknet and Crypto currencies will provide law enforcement users with comprehensive guidelines on investigating terrorist activities on the Darknet, including those involving the use of crypto currencies.

Fake websites

Terror groups will often use fake websites that have the look and feel of a legitimate website. Another way of obtaining your personal data (for identity theft) is by sending fake cloned e-mails which may ask for your full name, bank accounts and mobile numbers. A common trick in cybercrime is the use of misspelt URLs and use of sub-domains to deceive and redirect you elsewhere. A new digital threat was found overseas in the form of ransomware this is a malware that encrypts or locks your valuable digital files and then demands a ransom (cash) to release the locked data. Ransomware can thus infiltrate important computer systems and cripple the nations finances, cause mayhem in the stock markets and create havoc on air traffic flight control systems.

Psychologists agree that terrorists thrive on the oxygen of publicity. Jihadist ideology wants people to show them sympathy and propagates a negative attitude towards those who reject them.

There are 46,000 suspected Twitter accounts (from Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia) that post tweets supporting the ISIS and will also influence radicals following them. Many tweets also originate from the Al-Khansaa Brigade, ISIS All-Women Police Force. Al-Khansaa was a famous Arabian poet decades ago. Social media propaganda can attract viewers as well as present a strong narrative that addresses the push and pull factors of local communities, it is likely to impact the radicalisation process of vulnerable individuals.

Electronic evidence is a component of almost all criminal activities and digital forensics support is crucial for law enforcement investigations. Electronic evidence can be collected from a wide array of sources, such as computers, smart phones, remote storage, unmanned aerial systems, ship borne equipment, and more. Another modern example of high-quality propaganda is that of the video game Salil- al- Sawarem (The Clanging of Swords): a first-person shooter game that was modeled to gain publicity for - and draw attention to ISIS. Trailers for the game were released on multiple websites and platforms across the internet. In this way, these types of sophisticated communications can easily go viral. The modern appearance assists with translating the terrorists violence into a language that is understandable for the average young viewer, thereby increasing the psychological impact on the target audience.

Online radicalisation

In addition to games, videos, and images, several terrorist groups also publish online magazines, and these publications appear to play an important role in online radicalisation. The accessibility and popularity of sleek online magazines has reportedly contributed towards the successful enlargement of several terrorist organisations, including ISIS, through their magazines Dabiq and Rumiyah, Al-Qaeda via Inspire, and Al-Shabaab through Gaidi Mtaani. The inclusion of images that show fighters in militarized clothing has been shown to attract individuals to violence. Additionally, emphasis on masculinity and bravery has been found to appeal to individuals who desire excitement and are attracted to thrill seeking.

The inclusion of religious quotes, the presentation of members as heroic martyrs glorifying their violent (suicide bomber) deaths as a sacrifice, and the portrayal of a common enemy appeal to diverse readers, and leads towards a philosophical discussion. The ability of terrorist organisations to produce inspiring, high quality propaganda that can be shared on social media and the internet has been of critical importance for their brand management and their approach to radicalization, as well as using mainstream social media, such as those mentioned already, it should also be noted that terrorist groups use a wide range of various other social networking sites, including Flickr, Vimeo, Instagram, and Sound Cloud, as well as their own blogs and websites.

The digital domain is rife with terrorism. It must be fully monitored by law enforcement agencies in every nation.

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Extremism and terrorism in the digital domain - Ceylon Daily News

Chris Anyokwu

By Chris Anyokwu

Walter Benjamin, once famously declared in his work, On the Concept of History, that: There is no document of civilisation that is not also a document of barbarism. Man in his restless search for solutions to lifes many imponderables and impedimenta has been able to conquer and harness nature thereby creating culture. Culture in this context designates the sum of humans ways of conducting their day-to-day affairs in their relentless pursuit of felicity and happiness. Even so, it has not always been rosy and smooth-sailing with regard to mans inventions and discoveries. Just like in everything else, there are always unintended consequences.

Take, for instance, motor vehicle technology. The production of vehicles such as cars, lorries, vans and buses has made movement a lot less irksome and has helped in shrinking long distances separating towns and cities, communities and peoples. But the sad obverse is that this modern technological invention has also led to the great loss of life, a curse-blessing which the ancient Greek call pharmakos and a paradoxical quagmire poetised by Wole Soyinka in his mytho-poem, Idanre. Paradisiacal as the carapace cruising on the road might feel, it is often involved in road mishaps due largely to mechanical, electrical or human errors/defects.

Among causes of road accidents include burst tyres, overheating, over-speeding, uneven road surfaces, road craters, freak mal-functioning of auto parts while the vehicle is in motion, etc. Ditto for airplanes, ocean-going vessels, among others. We can make the same argument for social media. Perhaps, its reasonable for us to begin our reflection today by briefly taking a look at how it all started and how we got to where we are today. To that extent, therefore, it is useful to remind ourselves that social media sites such as Facebook are the natural consequence of many centuries of social media development. We are reliably informed that the earliest methods of communicating across great distances used written correspondence delivered by hand from one person to another. We are talking specifically about letters (C.550 B.C.). In 1792, the telegraph was invented which invariably meant the conveyance of information encapsulated in short messages. The telegraphic capsules were a revolutionary way to convey news and information back in the day. Then followed what was referred to as the pneumatic post, developed in 1865. This had created another way for letters to be delivered quickly between recipients. A pneumatic post was said to utilise underground pressurised air tubes to carry capsules from one area to another.

The telephone was invented in 1890 and the radio in 1891, both helped mankind to communicate across great distances instantaneously. Technology, to be sure, changed rapidly in the 20th century. After the first supercomputers were created in the 1940s, scientists and engineers began to develop ways to create networks between those computers, and this would lead as time went by to the birth of the internet.

The first recognisable social media site, Six Degrees, was created in 1997. In 1999, the first blogging sites became popular, creating a social media sensation thats still popular today. These blogging sites include myspace, LinkedIn, Photobucket, and Flickrand they all facilitated online photo sharing. Youtube came out in 2005, creating an entirely new way for people to communicate and share with one another across great distances. By 2006, Facebook and twitterbecame available to users throughout the world and other sites such as Tumblr, Spotify, Foursquare and Pinterest beganpopping up to fill in social media niches. Today, there is a tremendous variety of social networking sites, and many of them can be linked to allow cross-posting. This creates an atmosphere where users can reach the maximum number of people without sacrificing the intimacy of person-to-person communication (see Google.com).

The case of person-to-person communication delivered via social media has been achieved at a stiff price, namely our nakedness. And nakedness must be understood in the broadest sense possible. Im certain the invocation of the word nakedness instinctively brings to mind mans primal Act of Shame at Genesis. According to Scripture, Adam and Eve, our progenitors were both originally naked but they were not ashamed. But after they ate of the Tree of Knowledge, we are told that the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked (Genesis Chapter 2). The consequence of the Original Sin of Disobedience, for the primal pair, was grievous and shameful knowledge of their essential abjection, their nakedness, body and soul. Even we, their latter-day progeny, have inherited their nakedness, the so-called Adamic nature ofsin and corruption. Thus, our inheritance of nakedness is comeuppance for our default mode of disobedience. Contextualised and framed within the tramlines of contemporary experience, our nakedness at present is the fall-out of our idolatrous and obsessive reification of social media.

In the world of social media, content is king, but we ask: what kinds of content are on display for all to see and consume? Without filibustering, let us concede straightaway that social media, as posited above, has revolutionised social discourse, speech acts, communicative events and the all-important act/art of communication. We shall come to that in some detail much later. But our concern, for now, are the harmful effects or functions of social media. Take sex, for example. Growing up, the whole thing about sex was carefully and ritualistically shrouded in vague, coded idioms and para-verbal signs and signals. Never was sex spoken of or practised in plain sight as it is done nowadays. It was (and still is!) sacred and must be contemplated and consummated within elaborate rituals of secrecy, gravity and definite purpose. Is it so now? Have you seen children, aged 4 8, gyrating raunchily in the name of dancing at parties? Christmas is upon us, so you will see such belly-aching sights aplenty. Woe betide that parent who does not fall in line by buying his/her primary or secondary school child a smartphone. Are these cell phones for making and receiving calls only? Never, not on your life! Simply put, every schoolboy and girl wants a phone in order to surf the so-called Super-Highway, the internet. What do these tiny tots seek on the internet? Research material? Never! For them, social media is a veritable detour to fabulous worlds of phantasmagoria, fantasy and nirvana. It is a world of escape that is, escape from our humdrum world of objective reality marked as it is by storm and stress and escape into a meretricious and illusory dimension of dubious bliss. The enchantment and the spell of alternate utopias only bring lasting regrets, sometimes, beyond the grave. Pornography, bullying, body-shaming, stalking, anti-social brain-washing and indoctrination and other deleterious acts are some of the negative effects of social media.

On a daily basis, we are assaulted and assailed by the downright execrable, the incredibly creepy and weird, the heart-stoppingly unprintable on social media as folks put on display the very worst in human deviancy and depravity. The idea is that the more creepy, the more forbidden, the more unprintable the better for social media ventilation. The scandalous is the oxygen of social media Father rapes pre-teen daughter; Mom and son tie the knot, Parents eat their children, etc. Things along those lines.The banal equally trend online: How I share my panties with my mother. How my Dad and I measure our manhood, My Boobs are bigger than yours! In vain do we seek to capture and comprehend the scope and scale of profanity, pejorism, the bizarre that constitute the content of social media. Traditionally, the family, the school, church/mosque, the media (print and electronic) and peer group are considered the main agents of socialisation. But these agents of socialisation have now paled into insignificance compared to the overwhelming influence of social media today. What weight does parental control carry in the face of SM? Doesnt the Man of God sound and look old-fashioned in the eyes of these young ones? Hasnt SM taken away the ethical element from our media, leaving it emptied of meaning and drained of relevance? In this Social Media Age, the youth are a demographic time-bomb waiting to blast civilisation as we know it to smithereens. They have abandoned the terrestrial world to us, old-school types, and have smartly relocated onto virtual space. They are no longer citizens, but netizens! And in their world, vices such as rebellion, subversiveness, violence, vandalism, arson, cannibalism, mischief, fake news, pranking, and radicalism are the currency of conversation. Cultism and the occult also thrive therein.

Also, in this parallel world, mentorship and role-modelling revolve around trolls, spooks, online masters/mistresses, doppelgangers, gods and goddesses. And since language is the vector of culture, netizens have also devised their own unique lingo. Ever heard of the word encryption? That is the essence of their language in their ecosystem. Encryption is the method by which information is converted into secret code that hides the informations true meaning. In computing, unencrypted data is also known as plaintext, and encrypted data is called ciphertext. The formulae used to encode and decode messages are called encryptionalgorithms or ciphers. In the essay entitled Social Media and the English Language, Reuben Abati inimitably and brilliantly explores the use of digital slang by Nigerian youth. He writes: Texting and tweeting is producing a generation of users of English [] who cannot write grammatically successful sentences. Abati notes further that these youths cannot tell the difference between a comma and a colon. They have no regard for punctuation. They mix up pronouns, cannibalise verbs and adverbs, ignore punctuation; and violate all rules of lexis and syntax. They seem to rely more on sound rather than formal meaning. Abati tells us that the domains of choice for our netizens are Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. He vouchsafes and furnishes a few examples of their digital sociolect as follows: For [4], forget [4get] or [4git]; see [c], straight[str8], first[fess], will [wee], help [epp], etc. Abati adds thus: Oftentimes, this special prose arrives amidst a number of other confusing symbols, emoticons, memes, acronyms and abbreviations, looking like a photographic combination of English and hieroglyphics. New words such as bae, boo, finz, famzing, Yaaay, 420 (marijuana) 143(I love you) 182(I hate you) Idaful (wonderful) 53x (sex) PAW(parents are watching), ADIDAS (All Day I Dream About Sex) litter the discursive topography of our netizens. Whilst this unorthodox orthography, according to Abati, implies a fascination with speed, secrecy, and privacy, it equally highlights the disturbing fact that users are increasingly socialised into not knowing the difference between correct and incorrect English grammar and usage. It exemplifies the lack of rigour and propriety and organisation. The point really is: think clearly, write clearly. In this regard, the role of critical thinking and logic cannot be overstated. Netizens spend a lot of time on websites, on apps, giving rise to a rash of pathological issues, some we are already familiar with, others waiting to be discovered to our dismay. Digitally savvy children are, by the same token, moral liabilities to their parents and society. The interface between man and technology has been beneficial to a degree as argued earlier on but its negative effects far outweigh the positive ones. Yes, neologisms such as textspeak, texting, sextexting, twitter troll, tweeps, emoticons, emojis, tweeterati, blogging, tweet, re-tweet, hashtag tendto keep lexicographers happy, but, the fact of the matter is that social media if left unchecked or unregulated will yet set the world on fire.

*Chris Anyokwu writes from the University of Lagos

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Social Media and the Price of Civilisation - The News

Every movement contains a range of viewpoints, from moderate to extreme. Unfortunately, Americans on each side of the political spectrum believeincorrectlythat hard-liners dominate the opposite camp.

After the killing of George Floyd last year, for example, liberal protesters across the nation pushed for criminal-justice reform, and many of the specific changes they sought enjoyed a lot of popular support. Even recent polls have shown that, regardless of political affiliation, most Americans remain in favor of police-accountability measures (such as body cameras and a registry of police misconduct), the banning of choke holds, and tackling racial injustices head on. Some activists went much further, though, demanding the complete elimination of police departments. Conservative pundits noticed. Soon, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson was presenting call after vivid call to abolish or radically defund policing. They would like to eliminate all law enforcement for good, he told viewers.

Read: Americas real wokeness divide

But supporters of police abolition are the exception, not the rule, on the American left, according to research that my colleagues Matthew Feinberg, Alexa Tullett, Anne E. Wilson, and I conducted. In late October 2020, we asked more than 1,000 people in the United States whether they agreed that police departments are irreversibly broken and racist, so the government needs to get rid of them completely. Only 28 percent of the self-described liberals even somewhat agreed, indicating that this was not a solid consensus on the left.

Although far out of step with what most liberals actually thought, Carlsons sampling of liberal views was emblematic of what conservatives believed about liberals. Conservatives in our sample estimated that 61 percent of liberalsmore than twice the actual numberendorsed the abolition of law enforcement. This is a striking example of what plagues our politics: a false polarization in which one side excoriates the other for views that it largely does not hold.

Left-leaning readers might not be surprised that conservatives would accept as widespread a caricature of the radical liberal, given that they are so clearly blinded by racism or pro-police sentiment that they would excuse even the most unjust excesses of force. But waitis this portrayal of conservatives accurate?

No. It isnt.

Just as liberals came to rally around #BlackLivesMatter, conservatives gravitated to #BlueLivesMatter. From the vocal conservatives who made excuses for misconduct or blamed victims, some liberal commentators concluded that the right is dominated by police apologists. In fact, many on the right recognize both the humanity and hardship of police officers and those harmed by them. When we asked conservatives if police were almost always justified in their shootings of Black people, only 31 percent of respondents even somewhat agreed with the sentiment. Liberals, on the other hand, estimated nearly double that number of conservatives57 percentgave police a free pass.

Some caveats: Our research, which is available as a preprint, is under review and subject to change. We drew our large samples of respondents from online survey platforms, not from nationally representative polling. We recognize that this sampleand therefore our estimates of the prevalence of liberal and conservative opinionsis not an exact microcosm of the country. Still, other researchers have concluded that these platforms are reasonably comparable to nationally representative polling.

The gap that we identified between what partisans really think and what their opponents think they think shows up again and againbut only on a particular kind of issue. People have a more accurate view of the other sides position on many standard policy issues, such as taxes or health care. But specifically on culture-war issues, partisans are likely to believe a caricatured version of the opposing sides attitudes. These misconceptions have hardened into enduring stereotypes: liberal snowflakes and free-speech police, conservative racists and deplorables.

In reality, just a third of liberal participants agreed even a little with banning controversial public speakers from college campuses, but conservatives estimated that 63 percent of liberals held that view. Only 22 percent of conservatives expressed hostile and unwelcoming attitudes toward immigrants, but liberals thought that 57 percent of them did. Our data suggest that many people are walking around with an exaggerated mental representation of what other Americans stand for.

Where do these ideas come from? Partisan media outlets have an incentive to stoke their audiences outrage by making extreme views seem commonplace. In our work, we saw that the more people reported consuming partisan news (a category in which, drawing on the work of other researchers, we included Fox News and MSNBC), the more they believed in a caricatured version of the other side.

Conor Friedersdorf: Americas blue and red tribes arent so far apart

Peoples perceptions of others are powerful, even when theyre wrong. We found that people disliked their opponents primarily for the fringe views most opponents didnt actually hold. Worse still, partisans who disliked their opponents most were least willing to engage with them, which likely forecloses the chance to have their misperceptions corrected through real-life personal contact. Instead, an oversimplified, exaggerated version of the other sides views is allowed to live on inside of everyones head.

Whats more, partisans told us they were hesitant to voice their opinions about the most extreme positions expressed by people on the same side of the spectrum. For example, liberals were less keen to talk publicly about the downsides of censoring free speech than they were to talk about the benefits of universal health care. So although a majority of liberals opposed censorship, their reluctance to criticize it openly might have led conservatives to think that most on the left favored it.

So what should politically minded Americans conclude from our researchthat, gosh, their opponents are just like them, and everyone should join hands in the center? Nope. Some policiesand some partisansdeserve forceful opposition, even contempt, from the other side. Vigorous disagreement, both within and between parties, is essential in a functioning democracy. But democracy also requires at least some level of mutual comprehension. No matter where people are on the political spectrum, they ought to know whom theyre fighting with and what theyre even fighting about.

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Conservatives and Liberals Are Wrong About Each Other - The Atlantic

New Years is approaching, and one resolution will help our democracy: Make a friend with opposing political views and be kinder to people you disagree with politically.

Liberal women, this especially means you, given new research from media company Axios showing just how intolerant young leftists, particularly females, are compared with conservatives.

Axios, working with the Generation Lab, found just 5 percent of Republican college students said they wouldnt befriend someone from the opposite party vs. 37 percent of Democrats.

It also determined 30 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans wouldnt work for someone who voted differently from them, while 71 percent of Democrats but only 31 percent of Republicans wouldnt date someone with opposing views.

Researchers found college-age women more likely than men to take strong partisan stances, with 76 percent of women and 86 percent of men saying theyd work for someone who voted for the opposing candidate. Axios reported just 68 percent of women, as opposed to 84 percent of men, would shop at or support the business of someone from the other party.

This new research is sad but not surprising, given how liberal our college campuses are. A 2016 Econ Journal Watch study examining voter registration of economics, history, journalism, law and psychology faculty at 40 leading universities, for example, found Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 12 to 1.

The study, conducted by Brooklyn College business professor Mitchell Langbert, George Mason University economist Daniel B. Klein and FICO economist Anthony J. Quain, noted the liberal ratio among faculty under age 36 was 23 to 1.

Samuel Abrams, a Sarah Lawrence College politics professor, found similar trends in his 2018 survey of 900 university administrators (people who manage professors and campuses). He reported, Only 6 percent of campus administrators identified as conservative to some degree, while 71 percent classified themselves as liberal or very liberal.

This year, student newspaper The Harvard Crimson surveyed 236 arts and sciences faculty members, and a mere 3 percent described themselves as somewhat or very conservative, versus 76 percent who identified as somewhat or very liberal. Thats a ratio of 25 to 1.

While the University has made a concerted effort across the past decade to promote gender and racial diversity among its faculty, Harvard has not made any explicit attempts to bolster representation from across the ideological spectrum, the papers Natalie Kahn wrote in April.

The left frightfully claims our democracy is under attack, but democracys root demos means people. If millions of liberals refuse to speak with and feel concern for millions of conservative people even though liberals claim to be enlightened and tolerant who is the threat to democracy?

Democracy Dies in Darkness, The Washington Post intones. Does that include darkness about half your fellow citizens?

Michael Barone wrote in The Wall Street Journal about how liberals are so immersed in cultural crock pots that they dont realize their ignorance.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues have shown that conservatives are better at understanding liberal views than the converse, Barone noted. Thats not surprising: Whereas liberal views permeate the news media and popular culture, liberals can easily avoid exposure to conservative views. That distorts their view of the world and produces oversensitivity to leftist social-media mobs along with overconfidence in demographic trends.

In a related vein, last summer the Cato Institute released research about political expression and self-censorship. It found 62 percent of Americans say the political climate prevents them from saying what they believe up from 58 percent in 2017.

Majorities of Democrats (52 percent), independents (59 percent) and Republicans (77 percent) feel they cannot express their views. Strong liberals are the only political group comfortable sharing their views (58 percent).

Cato found 31 percent of Americans support firing Donald Trump donors and 22 percent support firing Joe Biden donors; but 50 percent of strong liberals support firing Trump donors and 36 percent of strong conservatives support firing Biden donors.

My colleague Carrie Lukas wrote a whole book about our lopsided anti-conservative cultural bias. In Checking Progressive Privilege, she declared, Progressive privilege isnt just unfair to conservatives; it has warped our entire political environment and made our country more divided. Recognizing progressive privilege is the first step to ending it, so that we can have a fairer, more truly inclusive society.

To strengthen democracy, we need stronger civic fabric, which means speaking with and humanizing people with whom you disagree. Heres hoping for a brighter new year in which we do just that.

Carrie Sheffield is a senior policy analyst at Independent Womens Voice.

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Liberals should resolve to be more tolerant in 2022 our democracy depends on it - New York Post

Putting a bunch of Deep South conservatives and New England liberals together sounds like a recipe for fireworks. But a funny thing happened when that potentially combustible combination met online this fall.

Understanding. Civility. Maybe even friendship.

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute programs at LSU and the University of Southern Maine offered an eight-session opportunity for political opposites to talk with each other. When all was said, the participants found out they weren't quite as opposite as they expected.

That gives hope to the participants.

I had lunch with one of my fellow OLLI students just yesterday, and I asked him: 'Am I overstating the case here that most of us, the liberals and the conservatives, agreed on most issues most of the time at least to some extent much more than we disagreed? said Bud Snowden, of Baton Rouge. And he said thats absolutely right.

How can this be if, as pundits say, Americans are as divided as any time since the Civil War? The programs creator thinks the pundits have it wrong.

Mike Berkowitz, of Saco, Maine, organized and moderated the program. He says both traditional and social media have distorted Americans actual political and social differences, hyping the disagreements and obscuring areas of common ground to create the impression of an unbridgeable divide.

He said he believes if liberals and conservatives take the time to understand each other's beliefs and talked to instead of at each other, theyd be surprised.

So, Berkowitz started the Conservatives and Liberals; Not Conservatives vs. Liberals course.

The Louisiana-Maine program had participants meet on the Zoom video conferencing site for two hours weekly for eight weeks to explore the different philosophies on hot-button topics like abortion and gun control and to discuss their individual views. Berkowitz moderated the meetings and encouraged them to keep the discussions respectful.

Thats not to say the participants didnt come in with preconceived notions.

I didnt see compassion with conservatives, said Dorry French, of Falmouth, Maine, when asked about her stereotypes. Redneck, uninformed maybe I should quit while Im a little bit ahead.

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My stereotype of liberal northerners: rude, arrogant and condescending, Snowden said. That stereotype was dispelled. It really was.

The process of dispelling such stereotypes involved more than just conversation.

Berkowitz led participants through the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, which explores why liberals and conservatives have different intuitions about right and wrong.

That established a way for the students in the class to see how those who profoundly disagree about things like abortion based their beliefs in something both sides valued.

Both conservatives and liberals have a lot of compassion, said Keith Fleeman, of Auburn, Maine. Liberals have compassion, it seems to me, toward the person who is carrying the child, and conservatives have more compassion, I think, for the fetus itself that it comes to term. Ive learned to see the compassion on both sides.

It made the point that it was about differences in values, not 'these people are stupid' or 'these people are wrong, said John Kovich, of Baton Rouge. The training helped a lot.

No one changed their political views, Berkowitz said, but that wasnt the point.

Rather, they discovered that they were more like their political adversaries than they suspected. They said their discussions were more productive than ones they attempted with family and friends and much better than those that take place online.

Those who participated said they enjoyed it so much that theyve discussed continuing the virtual meetings.

It made a huge difference to be able to look people in the eye, even on a screen, and feel like you were getting to know a person rather than just a set of opinions, Snowden said. That made a huge difference to me in terms of saying what I needed to say and to hear what I needed to hear. That wouldnt have happened in a purely digital exchange, I dont believe.

But being around Yankee liberals was a new experience. What I came to understand is these are just people like I am.

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Peace on Earth? Program shows how conservatives and liberals just might get along - The Advocate