One day, an American journalist asked 25 Clinton supporters in California. What do you think the Trump supporters are, the 'image' of them? Then the answer was:

"Conservative, rustic, stupid people."
"I have a Confederate flag in my yard, and I'm insensitive to racism or sexism and ignorant."
"Would you just walk barefoot and have babies on the dirty roadside?"

The image of Trump supporters that Clinton supporters think was largely 'low'. That's why no Clinton supporters believed they could talk to each other at all.
This time, I asked 25 Trump supporters in the state of Alabama in the southeastern United States. What do you think about Clinton supporters?

"I'm too smart and I'm in Eliteism. Wouldn't they have patriotism?"
"I'm a selfish person who puts his career first rather than sacrificing for his family."
"I pay organic money or buy organic food."
"On the outside, I'm a intellectual, but in my head I'll only think unrealistically."

Trump supporters tended to think of Clinton supporters as elites. Likewise, no Trump supporters thought they would communicate with each other. Clearly, the walls of mutual prejudice between the groups were so strong that they had never met each other.

So why do these "side-by-side" phenomena occur?

The most commonly accepted theory is the social psychologist Taspel's theory of social identity. People recognize that there is an 'ingroup' that they believe I belong to and an 'outgroup' that is different from me, and that my bias is to favor my group and to reject it.

As the out-group rejection tends to grow, the perceptions of me and other groups appear as extreme demons and horror images. This trend is especially pronounced in today's IT media technology. There are various factors such as the media that encourages the section to be stimulating articles, and the content recommendation algorithm that shows the user only what they want to see and falls into 'affirmative bias'.

So should the two groups live forever rejecting each other with zero communication?
In fact, some journalists have tried to bring the two groups together and have a serious conversation. Her name is Eve Perlman. Watching the US presidential election in 2016, when Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton smashed, she came up with an experimental idea after seeing two other camps swearing and blaspheming each other too much.

She created a community called 'Spaceship Media' with the intention of breaking down the wasted debate and enabling conversational dialogue. In January 2017, screening participants from various classes and races selected 25 people from California, which had strong Democratic support, and 25 people from Alabama, the Republican Table.

After two months of pre-work, their first meeting took place. The feelings the participants felt were very shocking. I thought it was a poser, but I wasn't a poser.

The two groups first explained who they were and where they came from, and then began to question each other on social topics. As time went by, participants began to nod their heads, naturally nodded, expressed empathy, and asked more questions and asked why. He also admired the other person's point of view, saying, "Wow."
An important change was that participants thought once more when expressing their opinions. I started taking time to reflect on what the other person said. Relying on your prejudices in the past, your opinions have changed significantly from what you have ignored without hearing.

Eve Perlman said, "It is the beginning of a real conversation that starts with curiosity, not confrontation with the realization that you have a preconceived idea and why the other person has the behavior, words, and ideas." And the experimental attempt to bridge the communication between the two groups was called 'dialog journalism'.

Did participants change through this experiment? In this regard, Swaicha Chanduri, a California public school teacher who participated in the experiment, later wrote:

"After the experiment, when I came out and talked to someone else, I still screamed at my computer, got angry, stopped and wrote, erased it, screamed, and then thought deeply about what I was going to do. It's hard, of course, but if you take the time to express your thoughts, you'll think deeper about what you've heard from the other party, and it's always worth it. , my process is to usually yell at my computer, furiously type, stop, erase, furiously type, stop, yell, calm down and then think more deeply about my words.As difficult as this is to do, when I take the time to think more deeply about the words I write, I tend to also think more deeply about the words I hear.And that is always worthwhile. "

Eve Perlman's experiment teaches meaningful lessons in that, even in the current social climate where group confrontation is intensifying, you can learn how to acknowledge the difference itself instead of thinking of yourself and your other opponent as 'enemy'. Giving. Democracy depends on our ability to discuss and empathize with them.

Yves Perlman, who will be speaking at the SBS D Forum this year, will highlight the importance of dialogue beyond the differences and address practical issues such as what is needed and how to approach it. We also look for alternatives to how the media and the media should go to overcome the age of conflict.

This year's theme of the SBS D Forum, a knowledge sharing project with world-class speakers every year, is 'Start of change-is it really my idea?' As political and social conflicts are growing around the world, it is a place to diagnose Korean society and seek solutions from various perspectives such as technology, society, politics, and culture. It will start at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in Seoul on the 31st.