Welcome to the 20th year of Hearts and Minds Film! This year, we will examine digital media and open a dialogue about how to harness its power to preserve our fragile, imperfect union.

In 2005, iPhones did not exist, Facebook was barely a year old, and George W. Bush was in the early days of his second term. It makes you miss Myspace a little bit, doesn’t it? Drastic changes have shaken the media landscape in the decades since. While we may feel like the proverbial frog who does not know it is being boiled alive because the water is only heated by a few degrees at a time, if we stop and look around, we will notice that advances in digital communications and technology have been nothing short of revolutionary.

Legacy media is dying. Digital media is exploding. During the runup to the 2024 election, a single podcast from the online influencer Joe Rogan featuring the republican candidate reached 33 million viewers, while the democratic candidate’s appearance on the podcast “Call Her Daddy” reached more young women than her appearances on “60 Minutes” and “The View” combined. But misinformation, propaganda, and nefarious actors abound. Artificial intelligence advances at astounding speeds. Truth and fact are sacrificed at the altar of spectacle.

How can we make sense of it all? How can we be better digital citizens, by developing our media literacy skills, resisting propaganda from allies of autocracy at home and abroad? How can we use the ubiquitous tools of digital media to become creators ourselves, and to strengthen the digital dialogue that is drastically reshaping our ailing democracy?

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