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How much effort should a person be reasonably expected to carry out if they want to be politically informed?
On one extreme, no effort should be required. It's hard to know what this looks like, but one could imagine a world in which chips in your brain automatically feed you current news and political events from a raw and unfiltered pool of sources. You would just have the knowledge, and if anything wasn't listed, you have the right to be outraged.
On the other, serious and substantial effort. Basically, you'd have to devote much time to knowing the current political scene and all perspectives and facts. Think of watching both CNN or Fox as mandatory activities to ensure you hear both perspectives, or read articles about the same thing from both sides, etc. Do your own research every time and come to your own conclusions.
This is assuming, of course, that whatever your line is, external parties must meet their end of the deal. So if you say that a person should be able to watch CNN and be informed, then CNN must report all things that are relevant without partisan slant.
My own thought is that the bar for being informed currently seems rather high. The avenues for uncovering relevant facts and knowledge requires much more than "I know what I was taught in school" because that stuff got outdated before you even graduated. Twitter, paywalled news institutions, academic meta-reviews, etc. are all things you would have to learn to read and discover.
But maybe individuals should invest hours into researching at least one topic a week. What say you?
Isn't the point of representative democracy to get an agent that is informed politically on your behalf? This is the simplest idea ever, since it takes a bunch of time, energy and resources to be informed you pay money(taxes) to a person to represent you and you keep informed of what (s)he does and if that truly represents you. If it doesn't you communicate with that person that you think it is wrong... and if they don't listen you don't vote for them next time.
It looks naive when you try to put it succintly. But that is the problem with the modern political landscape, that everything is corrupt to the core including the people that are supposed to expose the corruption.
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