How poetry can help to fight polarisation and misinformation

Escape the restrictive echo chambers of social media by losing yourself in some inspiring verse, writes Alex Hubbard

- Alex Hubbard

PEOPLE are becoming more divided and ill-informed. In January 2024, a report by the World Economic Forum identified misinformation and disinformation as “the most severe global risk anticipated over the next two years”.

As a result, it predicted “perceptions of reality are likely to also become polarised” - and that unrest resulting from unreliable information may cause “violent protests ... hate crimes ... civil confrontation and terrorism’. Many people would agree that something is needed to bridge the ever-widening gaps between ourselves.

In my view, this is not just a problem of alternative sets of facts, but a failure to perceive and empathise with that which is outside of our own experiences.

While the smartphone, with its capacity to provide users with sources from across the world, can provide endless opportunity to learn about other perspectives and experiences, research suggests social media increasingly cocoons users within their own interests.

This algorithmically encouraged selfimportance means we are stuck in a feedback loop - the echo chamber - where our own experiences, values and desires are seen as the norm.

In contrast, by encouraging people to imagine beyond their own experience, reading poetry can serve as an exercise in seeing things from a different perspective.

Poetry has always been political. The writer and civil rights activist Audre Lorde argued it produces “a revelatory distillation of experience” In other words, by distilling aspects of an experience, poetry can reveal powerful truths about reality.