Peter Pomerantsev visited Penn State at the end of March, when he was just back from a trip to Ukraine. He joins "Democracy Works" to discuss what he saw there, as well as how American media is covering the war. He also talked about the similarities between Ukraine and the United States when it comes to being vulnerable to Russian disinformation — and how both countries can strengthen democratic media.
Since the development of American mass media culture in the mid-20th century, numerous examples of entertainment media have tried to improve attitudes towards those who have traditionally held little power.
Entertainment has been used for decades to improve attitudes toward other groups, both in the U.S. and abroad. One can think of movies like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, helping change attitudes toward Black Americans, or TV shows like Rosanne, helping humanize the White working class. Efforts internationally show that media can sometimes improve attitudes toward two groups concurrently.
Substantial research shows that Americans now hold overly negative views of those across the political spectrum. Let's now learn from decades of experience using entertainment to improve attitudes of those in other groups—but also from counter-examples that have reinforced stereotypes and whose techniques should generally be avoided—in order to improve attitudes toward fellow Americans across politics. This entertainment can allow Americans across the political spectrum to have more accurate views of each other while realizing that successful cross-ideological friendships and collaborations are possible.
In this article, we document a brief history of entertainment used to improve the attitudes of other groups (along with some misfires, including when trying to portray White, working-class men). We then highlight those in the Arts and a few organizations including our own, More Like US, working to use entertainment to reduce perceived U.S. political divides. Despite promising initial work, many more groups and individuals are needed to contribute across many entertainment platforms.
Numerous successful U.S. entertainment efforts to improve attitudes toward groups with little historical power
Since the development of American mass media culture in the mid-20th century, allowing most Americans access to the same media, numerous examples of entertainment media have tried to improve attitudes towards those who have traditionally held little power. In this case, we mean any group other than straight, white men. This said, some entertainment media reinforced stereotypes, but at least there are many fairly successful examples that challenged stereotypes and likely changed attitudes among many in the American public.
This is perhaps most evident in the work of screenwriter Norman Lear, who was instrumental in improving misperceptions of these traditionally less-powerful groups, specifically women and Black Americans. Maude was centered around a woman, unique for sitcoms in the 1970s, and portrayed Maude as opinionated, strongly advocating for women’s liberation and civil rights, dispelling notions that women could not be politically involved or opinionated. Additionally, The Jeffersons, another Norman Lear sitcom from a similar era (1975-1985), was revolutionary in portraying a Black family as wealthy business owners, helping dispel common negative stereotypes of Black Americans.
Another example goes farther back in time to WWII. Beginning with a 1942 song, the Rosie the Riveter propaganda campaign, mainly remembered for its posters, worked to dispel notions that women could only be homemakers. Through its portrayal of Rosie, this campaign encouraged women to take part in the war effort in less traditionally feminine roles such as factory work.
In the late 1960s, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner portrayed an interracial couple in a positive light, at a time when only around 20% of Americans approved of interracial relationships and there was significant stigma around the presence of Black Americans in “White” society.
Will & Grace, a sitcom that began airing shortly before the turn of the 21st century, was deeply impactful on a different front. The show’s portrayal of Will as a gay man who seemed relatable and non-threatening helped to improve negative perceptions of gay men in contemporary America. Straight viewers without contact with gay people in real life saw straight characters positively interact with gay characters. As a result, 60% of viewers reported that “watching the show led to positive perceptions of gay people,” and 71% of viewers rejected the statement that “heterosexual relationships are the only ‘normal’ relationships,” compared with 45% of non-viewers, according to research cited by Bridge Entertainment Labs.
More recently, Marvel’s Black Panther franchise is notable for its unique portrayal of a Black society that was incredibly wealthy, powerful, and technologically advanced. The TV show Modern Family (2009-2020), meanwhile, positively portrayed non-traditional families and members of the LGBTQ+ community, winning over 20 Emmys for its work.
Despite all these generally positive portrayals of groups who have historically held less power, it would be a stretch to say that these groups have always been portrayed well or sufficiently. A reality show like Cops or scripted shows like The Wire often showed ethnically minority men as criminals, and movements like #OscarsSoWhite showed that non-White representation on film proceeded fairly slowly.
But thankfully, there are many portrayals in entertainment of historically less powerful communities that challenge dangerous misperceptions and help create more positive views of them.
Entertainment portrayals of white, working-class men have been pretty bad, though not uniformly terrible
In addition to looking at portrayals of groups historically without much power, we analyze portrayals of those historically with power, namely straight, white men. Because this is such a broad category, and we care about politics, we focus our attention on working-class white men. This group is defined as those without a college degree, often portrayed as working blue-collar jobs. According to 2024 NBC exit polls in 10 key states, white men without a college degree voted for Trump over Harris 69% to 29%, representing almost a fifth of the electorate in those states.
Many of these portrayals also inaccurately represent members of this traditionally more powerful group (though many in this group have experienced and/or felt loss of economic power and social status in recent decades). American media has consistently not been sufficient in portraying the struggles and humanity of working-class white men.
A clear example of this comes from a screenwriter praised earlier in this piece, Norman Lear. All in The Family (1971-1979) is one of the most well-known sitcoms of all time. Yet the main character, Archie Bunker, while humanized to some extent, is portrayed as uneducated and stereotypically bigoted, creating a mostly unflattering and one-sided picture of working-class white men.
Thinking of the cartoon sitcom The Simpsons, which is still running after more than 35 years, Homer never went to college, and he is largely portrayed as a stupid oaf, with infrequent bright spots in his character. On the same show, Cletus is portrayed even worse as a “slack-jawed yokel.”
A variety of reality shows do portray white, working-class men, but usually more as rural or brawny stereotypes than particularly well-rounded characters. This includes the Robertson family from Duck Dynasty (2012-2017) or those in reality shows including Ice Road Truckers (2007-2017) and the ongoing 20-year run of Deadliest Catch about Alaskan crab fishermen.
One of the few arguable bright spots in terms of portrayals of white, working-class men just went off the air. The character of blue-collar Dan Conner first appeared as the male lead in the TV show Roseanne (1988-1997) and then its spin-off The Conners, which aired its last episode in April after seven years on broadcast TV. Negative stereotypes are distinctly less pronounced in Dan Conner than in All in the Family’s Archie Bunker. Dan is portrayed as relatively traditional and hesitant about social change in both the original show and its spinoff, but he also shows vulnerability and commitment to family life in many cases, challenging some stereotypes of white, working-class men. Writer and Executive Producer of The Conners Dave Caplan has thought deeply about the importance of portrayals in entertainment and even has a graduate degree in media psychology.
In all, while sometimes functioning to humanize working-class white men, much entertainment misrepresents working-class white men as overwhelmingly bigoted and/or unintelligent in basically anything other than blue-collar skills, perpetuating harmful stereotypes. This largely has the opposite effect of many of the shows noted earlier in the article, many of which actively work to correct harmful stereotypes of those with traditionally less power.
International efforts show how attitudes toward two groups can be improved simultaneously
There does not need to be a negative portrayal of one group to create positive portrayals of another group. This is apparent in international efforts to improve negative portrayals of certain demographics.
One example is Radio La Benevolencija (RLB), which has worked in various countries, especially in Africa. We will focus on its work in Rwanda, which was created to reconcile differences, heal from the Rwandan Genocide, and prevent another genocide from happening. The programs within the project were created to be entertaining but informative and appeal to a wide variety of audiences.
In RLB’s main Rwandan program, New Dawn, two communities directly paralleling the Hutus and Tutsis lived side by side and were in conflict over a land shortage. The show directly parallels the lead-up to the genocide, as well as the aftermath, without directly referencing the genocide.
In a research paper on RLB, Elizabeth Levy Paluck argued that the program “did not change listeners’ personal beliefs but did substantially influence listeners’ perceptions of social norms.” These norms actually influenced behavior, as listeners changed their behaviors in terms of “active negotiation, open expression about sensitive topics, and cooperation.”
Radio La Benevolencija has made significant strides in healing misperceptions of different ethnic groups, proving the effectiveness of entertainment in concurrently reducing harmful stereotypes of more than one group. Another organization, Search for Common Ground, also has pursued similar efforts in countries including Yemen, Sierra Leone, and Nepal.
Current initial efforts to use entertainment to improve cross-partisan attitudes in the U.S.
To a certain extent, entertainment is already being used to reduce political misperceptions and subsequent divides in the U.S. An upcoming romantic comedy, The Elephant in The Room, tells the story of a progressive and a Trump supporter who try to bridge the gap between their worldviews as they date.
There is also an abundance of short-form content with this aim. In the YouTube video “Cats, Anyone? Finding What We Have in Common When Ideology Divides Us” from NationSwell, two Americans of opposing political viewpoints bond over a shared love for cats. And in the Heineken advertisement “Worlds Apart,” people with contradictory views on different topics find common ground before discussing their differences over a shared beer.
Several organizations are also using entertainment to bridge the gap between those of different viewpoints. Bridge Entertainment Labs, cited earlier for their research into the connection between entertainment media and misperceptions, is working to tell the stories of real Americans of a wide variety of backgrounds in order to contribute to national unity and create a sense of connections between Americans of different political affiliations. The work of Bridge Entertainment Labs, specifically in its whitepaper, aligns closely with the claims made in this article.
PopShift works with major Hollywood studios to connect producers and writers with experts in order to facilitate more accurate representations of those of diverse backgrounds and reduce misperceptions towards certain groups of Americans. Part of the work of Resetting the Table involves training those in Hollywood to have storylines with characters that have “investigated their differences openly and come out the other side,” using tools most influenced by Transformative Mediation, in order to ultimately create a more cohesive America. Braver Angels Music, meanwhile, trains songwriters and musicians to write songs that can bridge political divides, while also providing a space for songwriters to develop material and get to know each other.
The organizations listed above do essential work in bridging the gap between the perceptions Americans hold of those of different political affiliations and the true situations and beliefs of Americans of varying political affiliations. This work aligns with our organization’s, More Like US, initiative to re-CAST fellow Americans in a positive light as more complex, admirable, similar, and worthy of togetherness than expected.
Nevertheless, these efforts are currently small and scattered. Much more of this work is needed in such a large country as the U.S. In today’s decentralized and balkanized media environment, content that improves attitudes toward each other across politics needs to appear not only in TV and movies but in all sorts of entertainment, including social media videos, music, books, plays, and visual art.
Conclusion: Let’s learn from history to create entertainment that improves attitudes of each other across politics
There is a long history of entertainment being used to correct misperceptions of groups that have historically held less power. Entertainment media has proven time and time again its capacity to debunk harmful stereotypes and bridge gaps between people of different backgrounds. Entertainment has unfortunately also reinforced or exacerbated stereotypes in many cases, but these instances can be used as counter-examples of what to generally avoid going forward.
This history serves as an essential guide to fixing modern problems. Americans hold exaggerated negative views of those of different political affiliations. Entertainment media is essential in closing the gap between the truth and these exaggerated negative views. Initial efforts are going in the right direction, but many more people across many entertainment mediums need to create vastly more content. By correcting misperceptions and promoting connection and collaboration between those of different viewpoints, entertainment has the potential to reduce perceived partisan divides and create a more unified America.
James Coan is the co-founder and executive director of More Like US. Coan can be contacted at James@morelikeus.org
Sara Weinstein is a current intern at More Like US.
A cornerstone of conservative philosophy is that policy decisions should generally be left to the states. Apparently, this does not apply when the topic is artificial intelligence (AI).
In the name of promoting innovation, and at the urging of the tech industry, Congress quietly included in a 1,000-page bill a single sentence that has the power to undermine efforts to protect against the dangers of unfettered AI development. The sentence imposes a ten-year ban on state regulation of AI, including prohibiting the enforcement of laws already on the books. This brazen approach crossed the line even for conservative U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who remarked, “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years, and giving it free rein and tying states' hands is potentially dangerous.” She’s right. And it is especially dangerous for children.
We are already beginning to see the consequences for our children of the uninhibited, rapid, and expansive growth of AI. One clear example is the proliferation of deepfake nudes— AI-generated images that depict real people in sexually explicit scenarios. Too often, these “real people” are children. A recent survey revealed that 1 in 8 teens report knowing a peer who has been the target of deepfake nudes. The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that these child victims can experience emotional distress, bullying, and harassment, leading to self-harm and suicidal ideation.
AI is also being used to create pornographic images of real children to share in pedophilic forums or exploit children in “sextortion” schemes. In 2024, the national CyberTipline received more than 20.5 million reports of online child exploitation, representing 29.2 million separate incidents. Each of these incidents involves images that can be shared over and over. The initial harm can be devastating, and the continued trauma unbearable.
Chatbots present another alarming threat. From a 9-year-old child exposed to “hypersexualized content” to a 17-year-old encouraged to consider killing his parents, these AI-powered companions are emotionally entangling children at the expense of their mental health and safety. The American Psychological Association (APA) has expressed “grave concerns” about these unregulated technologies. The APA cites the case of a fourteen-year-old Florida boy who had developed an “emotionally and sexually abusive relationship” with an AI chatbot. In February 2024, he shot himself following a conversation in which the bot pleaded with him to “come home to me as soon as possible.” The current lack of safeguards around AI has life-and-death consequences.
Despite widespread concern about the risks of AI, there is still no comprehensive federal framework governing it. While the technology evolves at breakneck speed, federal policymakers are moving at a glacial pace. That is why much of the work to protect children has been done by state legislatures. Many states—both red and blue—have stepped up. California and Utah have passed laws to limit algorithmic abuse, require transparency, and provide innovative legal tools to protect children online. This year, states as diverse as Montana, Massachusetts, Maine, and Arizona have introduced, and in some cases already enacted, provisions to protect children from AI-related harms. These are not fringe efforts. They are practical, bipartisan attempts to regulate an industry that has demonstrated, time and again, that it will not effectively police itself.
Despite these bipartisan state efforts, Congress appears poised to halt and undo all progress aimed at keeping children safe. On June 5, Senate Republicans, recognizing that the original ban likely wouldn’t survive Senate rules, got creative. Instead of an outright moratorium, their version ties access to critical broadband funding to a state's willingness to halt any regulation of AI. That means states trying to shield children from AI-driven harm could lose out on the infrastructure dollars needed to connect underserved communities, like low-income and rural communities, to high-speed internet. It’s a cynical use of power: forcing states to choose between protecting children and connecting their most vulnerable communities to a vital resource.
Congress must abandon its pursuit of pleasing tech companies at the cost of child safety. At a minimum, Congress should strike this harmful, deeply flawed provision from the reconciliation bill. Children’s lives depend on it. If Congress wishes to play a constructive role, it should work toward setting a federal floor of protection while preserving states’ authority to go further. Very often, the best solutions to national problems come from experimentation and innovation within states. This is especially likely to be true in the complex and often confounding realm of emerging and rapidly developing technology. Allowing states—the “laboratories of democracy”—to take bold action to address the concerns of parents, children, and their communities may be the most efficient and effective way to make progress. We need Congress to work alongside and learn from state lawmakers in this endeavor, rather than standing in their way.
Jessica K. Heldman is a Fellmeth-Peterson associate professor in child rights and Melanie Delgado is a senior staff attorney at the Children’s Advocacy Institute at the University of San Diego School of Law.
Many people inside and outside of the podcasting world are working to use the medium as a way to promote democracy and civic engagement.
After the 2024 election was deemed the “podcast election,” many people inside and outside of the podcasting world were left wondering how to capitalize on the medium as a way to promote democracy and civic engagement to audiences who are either burned out by or distrustful of traditional or mainstream news sources.
The Democracy Group podcast network has been working through this question since its founding in 2020—long before presidential candidates appeared on some of the most popular podcasts to appeal to specific demographics. Our members recently met in Washington, D.C., for our first convening to learn from each other and from high-profile podcasters like Jessica Tarlov, host of Raging Moderates, and Ben Rhodes, host of Pod Save the World.
Rhodes was part of a public conversation with Democracy Group members Kamy Akhavan of the USC Center for the Political Future and Stephanie Gerber Wilson of Freedom Over Fascism. He’s hosted Pod Save the World since 2019 and is also a contributor to MSNBC.
Rhodes spoke about the difference between the two mediums in reaching and building trust with audiences—where podcasts provide the intimacy that younger people often expect from their media, traditional evening news might be broader and less curated.
“My ability to have a conversation about what's happening in a two-minute interjection on MSNBC is so minimal compared to being able to unpack issues, draw connections, and make light of something, while also being very serious on the podcast,” he said.
From 2009-2017, Rhodes served as a speechwriter and deputy national security advisor to former President Obama. In that role, he led the secret negotiations with the Cuban government that resulted in the effort to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba.
Much of the conversation focused on how the world order has changed since President Donald Trump took office in 2016 and how it will continue to change throughout the rest of his term. Rhodes acknowledged that Trump has been an agent for chaos but also said there’s an opportunity for realignment amid changes in technology.
“We have to reimagine an economy with AI poised to do massive job displacement, and we have to reimagine a social safety net that can exist in a world in which people can’t expect to work one job their whole lives,” Rhodes said, emphasizing a “degree of risk” global citizens are tolerating from political conflicts across the world. “The question is not whether that will happen, it's whether that will only happen after it gets much, much worse, or whether we can kind of be on a plane that's going through a bunch of turbulence until we kind of hit like some clear air.”
As a writer, speaker, and consultant, Rhodes travels around the world and talks with people who are frustrated with the political status quo. He said the next generation of political leaders will need to understand this frustration and address it to be successful.
“If you think about every election since George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, somebody running and saying the whole system was totally broken and we need change. That was Obama in 2008 and 2012 and it was Trump in 2016,” Rhodes said. “One consistent message American voters delivered was that they don’t like this system. I don’t think Trump is the answer to that, but it is a hopeful point in terms of the system.”
The full recording with Rhodes is available on The Democracy Group’s network-wide podcast. The convening, including the live recording with Rhodes, was supported by the McCourtney Institute for Democracy at Penn State and the Louie Rankin Foundation.
Jenna Spinelle is the founder of The Democracy Group and Jessie Nguyen is the network’s content specialist.
A few years ago, I would have agreed with the argument that the most important AI regulatory issue is mitigating the low probability of catastrophic risks. Today, I’d think nearly the opposite. My primary concern is that we will fail to realize the already feasible and significant benefits of AI. What changed and why do I think my own evolution matters?
Discussion of my personal path from a more “safety” oriented perspective to one that some would label as an “accelerationist” view isn’t important because I, Kevin Frazier, have altered my views. The point of walking through my pivot is instead valuable because it may help those unsure of how to think about these critical issues navigate a complex and, increasingly, heated debate. By sharing my own change in thought, I hope others will feel welcomed to do two things: first, reject unproductive, static labels that are misaligned with a dynamic technology; and, second, adjust their own views in light of the wide variety of shifting variables at play when it comes to AI regulation. More generally, I believe that calling myself out for a so-called “flip-flop” may give others more leeway to do so without feeling like they’ve committed some wrong.
This discussion also matters because everyone should have a viewpoint on AI policy. This is no longer an issue that we can leave to San Francisco house parties and whispered conversations in the quiet car of an Acela train. I know that folks are tired of all the ink spilled about AI, all the podcasts that frame new model releases as the end of the world or the beginning of a utopian future, and all the speculation about whether AI will take your job today or tomorrow. It’s exhausting and, in many cases, not productive. Yet, absent more general participation in these debates, only a handful of people will shape how AI is developed and adopted across the country. You may be tired of it but you cannot opt out of knowing about AI and having a reasoned stance on its regulation.
Congress is actively considering a ten-year moratorium on a wide range of state AI regulation. So the stakes are set for an ongoing conversation about the nation’s medium-term approach to AI. I have come out in support of a federal-first approach to AI governance, preventing states from adopting the sort of AI strict safety measures I may have endorsed a few years back. So what gives? Why have I flipped?
First, I’ve learned more about the positive use cases of AI. For unsurprising reasons, media outlets that profit from sensationalistic headlines tend to focus on reports of AI bias, discrimination, and hallucinations. These stories draw clicks and align well with social media-induced techlash that’s still a driving force in technology governance conversations. Through attending Meta’s Open Source AI Summit, however, I realized that AI is already being deployed in highly sensitive and highly consequential contexts and delivering meaningful results. I learned about neurosurgeons leveraging AI tools to restore a paralyzed woman’s voice, material science researchers being able to make certain predictions 10,000 times faster thanks to AI, and conservation groups leaning on AI to improve deforestation tracking. If scaled, these sorts of use cases could positively transform society.
Second, I’ve thoroughly engaged with leading research on the importance of technological diffusion to national security and economic prosperity. In short, as outlined by Jeffrey Ding, and others, the country that dominates a certain technological era is not the one that innovates first but rather the one that spreads the technology across society first. The latter country is better able to economically, politically, and culturally adjust to the chaos introduced by massive jumps in technology. Those who insist on a negative framing of AI threaten to undermine AI adoption by the American public.
Third, I’ve spent some time questioning the historical role of lawyers in stifling progress. As noted by Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, and others across the ideological spectrum who have embraced some version of the Abundance agenda, lawyers erected much of the bureaucratic barriers that have prevented us from building housing, completing public transit projects, and otherwise responding to public concerns in the 21st Century. Many of the safety-focused policy proposals being evaluated at the state and federal levels threaten to do the same with respect to AI—these lawyer-subsidization bills set vague “reasonableness” standards, mandate annual audits, and, more generally, increase the need for lawyers to litigate and adjudicate whether a certain model adheres to each state’s interpretation of “responsible” AI development.
Adherents to that safety perspective will rightly point out that I'm downplaying legitimate concerns about extreme AI risks. They might remind me that though they too acknowledge catastrophic scenarios have low probabilities, they nevertheless warrant substantial regulatory intervention because of the magnitude of the potential harm. This is the classic precautionary principle argument: when the potential downside is civilization-ending, shouldn't we err on the side of caution?
I continue to acknowledge this concern but believe it misunderstands both the nature of risk and the trade-offs we face. The “low probability, high impact” framing obscures the fact that many proposed AI safety regulations would impose certain, immediate costs on society while addressing speculative future harms. We're not comparing a small chance of catastrophe against no cost—we're comparing it against the guaranteed opportunity costs of delayed medical breakthroughs, slowed scientific research, and reduced economic productivity. When a child dies from a disease that could have been cured with AI-accelerated drug discovery, that’s not a hypothetical cost. It's a real consequence of regulatory delay.
My evolution reflects not an abandonment of caution but a more holistic understanding of where the real risks lie. The greatest threat isn't that AI will develop too quickly but that beneficial AI will develop too slowly—or in the wrong places, under the wrong governance structures.
Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and Author of the Appleseed AI substack.
Combating disinformation at home and abroad
