We'll skip this rabbit hole and just see what a market analysis has to say about landscape changes.
MARKET ANALYSIS
A market-based analysis is likely to show a big gap in the provision of authority-mediated communication. Religion certainly doesn't fill this role anymore. Rule of law has supplanted much of its functional (evolutionary) role. Neither does politics. There is no existential crisis unifying the populace. We're devolving into tribes rather than unifying. For politics to function as a broad-based trusted informational arbiter, it needs new-religious-movement momentum and dynamics.The media has become tribabilized & hence delegitimized as a source of authority. While it still functions as a conveyer of interesting information, the way the left thinks of Fox news is the way the right thinks of all mainstream news - solidly in the tank for their political and ideological "group". Restraining tendencies are gone. There are no cross-platform authorities.
Or are there?
FILLING THE GAP
I'd suggest that popular "scientists" are on the verge of filling this market gap.For example, look at the way Jordan Peterson has been popularized. 550,000 youtube subscribers and millions of interview views! It's not because he is a great orator nor a charismatic person. He tends to the aspergery side of academic inquiry. In other words, his perspective tends to be on technical concerns. He also come across as leaving any and all offence as a listener's duty to "get over". This affect & approach is extremely off putting for many liberal minded folk - like Sam Harris. But the same "tell it like it is" affect is extremely attractive for many Trumpers. His affect is a leverage for both sides. They both use it to validate or reject the academic research he cites and the inferences he draws from it.
One group uses his affect to disavow that socially objectionable ideas should have a place in open discourse. One group uses his affect to justify that bigotry can't be bigotry if it is based upon objective research. Obviously both groups talk past each other.*
Jonathon Haidt, another popular social scientist, tends towards more of a "harm" paradigm. Implications and nuance matter. This assumes not everyone is up on the technicalities of what is being discussed, and therefore potential misapplications and the enabling of erroneous conclusions matter. Energy is spent on what basically amounts to interfaith dialogue dialectics.
Critical theorists (inter sectionalists) appear as Peterson's foil. Just switch the autistic focus on objectivity for an autistic focus on social "justice".
Twitter and youtube has raised the profile of popular scientists. Major players I know about include:
- Noam Chomsky
- Richard Dawkins
- Sam Harris
- Nicholas Christakis
- Jonathon Haidt
- Steven Pinker
- Bret Weinstein
- Claire Lehmann
- Clay Routledge
- Peter Boghassian
- Razib Khan
- Michael Shermer
- Lee Jussim
- Christina Sommers
- Gad Saad
- Jordan Peterson
- Sargon of Akkad
- Dennis Prager
Judging from their net twitter subscribers and net youtube views, these folk play a noticeable role. While their popularity does not yet approach that of journalists, I suspect things are changing.
In the cold culture war, having science on your side is the ultimate Trump card. Both political sides have their anti-science flanks. The right has climate change and environmentalism. The left has blank slatism and GMO's. The legitimacy of each "side's" scientists is a major battle zone.**
Any position gains protection and legitimization via science's seal of authority. If your group's position doesn't have a scientific backing, you're at a significant rhetorical disadvantage. Further than this though, your whole worldview may need a coherent defensible position. It is not enough to cite random articles. To survive today's rhetorical environment you must link to a robust paradigmiacal defence. And this paradigm may also need a moral and ethical underpinning and explicit purpose (e.g. protecting blasphemous objectivity or promoting social justice equity)
I suspect this is part of the reason there is so much fight over Critical Theory departments. The imprimatur of scientific legitimacy for highly subjective and potentially unfalsifiable lines of reason create a nuclear bomb that has the potential to sidestep the restraints imposed by falsifiable scientific methods.
The weaponization of pure subjectivity is something to worry about. Jonathan Haidt has confronted this issue if his"two teloses" interpretation of post-secondary trajectories.
SUMMARY
More relevant though, is how far lay people will be able to push association with hard science's imprimatur via association with "pop scientists". In many ways Sam Harris' hyper-rational anti-religionists aren't much different from Jordan Peterson's anti-PC in-groupers. Both use proximity to a well-spoken and knowledgeable figurehead to authorize and legitimize their own world views. While many years ago people's theological bonfides were authorized by which protestant sect and theology they followed, today people may be doing the same by latching on to well known scientific figureheads. You don't have to figure out a whole rational scientific paradigm, you just need to latch onto someone who is able to defend their own in a popular way which also connotes enough "authority" to buffer you from outside attacks.The field is indeed weaponizing.
Notes
* What's funny here is that both groups are using hypocritical based tools. Intersectionalists who deny that punch-up racism is possible are a mirror image of academic libertarians who disavow that objective measures should ever be silenced. Current differences are largely based on how far each approach has penetrated our larger sociality. At one time "feminist" critical inquiries were an academic exercise within the confines of academia. This is the same position rational objectivists take. Un-PC objective inquiry is a key component of bounded academic spaces. There needs to be a safe space where such ideas can be discussed. It is easy to see both groups as dopplegangers who are just at a different evolutionary stage.**Data suggests novices and experts tend to be the most dogmatic and inflexible with respect to their sacred values (here's a somewhat related paper on discrimination being equal across political spectrums - it just differs according to who you see as the out-group. And another similar paper).
For some more on the latest Jordan Peterson brouhaha....
http://quillette.com/2017/12/01/defence-jordan-b-peterson/
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