recently traveled to cedar rapids, iowa to learn about its rich history. learn more about cedar rapids and other stops that c-span.org/cities tour. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. *-* >> princeton university professor kevin kruse talks of historians on social media and what he feels context duty to provide to issues. he also discusses how media changed since the 1970s. this 13-minute interview was ecorded in chicago at the annual american historic association meeting. kruse is a professor at princeton university, out with a the ook this movement title, fault lines, a history of america since 1974. the premise behind it? >> it comes from a course we years.for a couple of

post 1974 in history is distinct. historians need to treat at its own thing rather than a postscript. a discreet area that we need to dig into on its own terms. the resignation of richard nixon in 1974. the first and only appointed ford, and the d cold war that was at its peak. >> that's right. cold war in some ways, it goes into de taunt, and that in a period of flux but global affairs are in a real state of turmoil. ou've got the end of the vietnam war. really taking place. 1973 to 1975. opec oil crisis. there is a great deal of chaos a it seemed to us to be moment that was right for seeing the start of the unmaking of the war order that governed not just the u.s. but the entire think about , and new trends that came about. >> what did you learn? >> i learned a lot.

we learned in this book is that -- at first it was a real adventure because we were about the history of our own lives. i was born in 1972. was born a couple of years earlier. t was a process of rediscovering things we thought we knew. you, as you ised look back at the presidencies of reagan, rter, ronald george h.w. bush? us, thereally surprised it's been bush eras talked about as appeared of conservative dominance. comes in and sweeps everything aside. there was a real stickiness to iberal ideas and institution that is survives the reagan revolution and there is a real of those on of some old values and old policies so -- it'shan conservative a conservative versus liberal type of war.

social media with more than 240,000 followers on twitter. about?d that come >> i have no idea. i think it's because i had a willingness, and i'm not alone a willingness not just to provide historical antidotes but to take on people who were propagating falsehoods, whether knowingly or unknowingly spreading mistruths about american history. >> so give us the history of social media. when did it really begin and where are we today? we talk something about in this book fault lines. t really begins with the rise of the internet in the 1990s, very crude forms of interaction. off in the early 2000s, with sites like -- later on facebook and it comes into the know today with the rise of twitter. the o, over these periods, country has become the -- the

much more tied together, intertwined, much more good ways and bad. >> teddy roosevelt called the pulpit.cy the pulley how would you view donald trump? it as ink you would see the new bully trump pet and he's put it to use. what surprises you about how he's used social media? >> the total lack of filter. so when roosevelt or other presidents would use the bully very it was done with a carefully prepared, carefully crafted message behind that. tradition, trong especially through the modern period. if luke at presidents like a team behind him who really crafted a very important message and they were careful to shape every detail, they would pick photos.nds for they would have key words of the day that they stressed the day, and that they hammered home one theme and it was all very carefully

out by a team of experts the trump does it on the fly. you know, seemingly on a whim. i guess on a phone perhaps. there are typos. there are plenty of inaccuracies. filter out without a and that's really unusual. usually the bully pulpit has a of structure. this is him out there on his own. >> as we go through so many uestions about the trump presidency and democrats saying it's time to impeach the president have you ever thought about what richard nixon would in terms of twitter if he had that capability in the early 1970s? a great is actually witter account as someone who poses as nixon, dick nixon. capturing ood job of his voice. what we see in that account as he would do,d what nixon would have, i think, instinct that we see in trump, but he would be more restrained.

careful about what he said so we have all of these examples of nixon flying off the using colorful language, attacking opponents. it's behind the scenes. instead, with trump it's all right out there in the public sphere. > if you could go back to the 1990s, start of social media, do ou think the pioneers of, you know, social media and technology really understood where they were heading? no, i don't think so. i don't think they thought about it that much. real movement in the mid-1990s where they see the nternet is going to be this free and open space and self-regulate, self-govern. impact the real world. it will be a separate -- a separate place. the real ink they saw impact it would have on day-to-day life, the way in shape political discussions as it does today. >> as you know people now say have their silos. they are in this tribe or that to e and they don't tend

gravitate to the other side which has created a discourse in our politics today. agree or disagree? >> i would agree completely. we talk about that in fault which -- this in begins, we would argue with the changes in television. effects start to happen with cable television in advocate behind what people call narrow casting. they will reach a specific small segment of society. reach out to rock fans or sports fans or news junkies or that or that. see it across the cable spectrum today. the internet picks it up and it, social media, it's the exact effect where you can have this sealed off eco-system you only get information from sources you lready trust and it becomes reinforced by other sources, and you have this echo chamber that oesn't get penetrate by anything outside it g. is that an underlying factor in where we see the political discourse country? the >> i think it absolutely is. reinforces es is it

the political siloing that realm, in the political too. so things like jerry man derring polarization of the two parties are reinforced by that because the media voters then these pick up on, reaffirm what's going on in the political sphere. curious, as you look at this topic and you're teaching to a group of students that have facebook, ounts, instagram and other social media do they fully understand what up with and how different it was for your generation or mine? them.try to explain it to like, you know, it's like a fish in water. their ve lived in it whole life and they don't understand what's really novel a decent ut we do do job, trying to explain what it walt when someone like the ite came out against vietnam war that his shifting opinion didn't really matter for the country and that's something

don't quite have today but it's something that we do try to re-create. probably more sources of information today than ever before. is that a good thing or a bad thing? a good thing. the problem is people need help we've had a at, so movement in the country, a kind of revolt against the elites, elitism is a bad thing. that's also thrown out the role it.experts with and i think we need experts to help guide us in our daily help us figure out which of these sources is actually trustworthy. book you're putting this together. who surprised you the most what intrigued you the most, what was thing that you learned that you didn't know going into the project? >> that's a great question. we've been at it for so long i'm trying to remember what i didn't know at the start. impressed mereally the most, and what was new to me as the revolution in communications. i'm a political historian by training so the politics were

things that i knew fairly well but the media side was aware ng i wasn't quite of. i had a vague sense, having grown up in the 1980s what mtv like or what cnn was like when it started but i was 8 when started, i didn't quite remember that. to have a sense of where these institutions came from, where c-span came from and what that did to politics had a real impact. toething that was really new me and really a revelation. >> i guess a follow-up question s where are we head something what's the next big thing? >> i'm a historian so my training is in hindsight. trying to make predictions about the future, i would say that into another period of reckoning. in a lot of ways, that book tarts in the aftermath of watergate with the ways in which the country has to pick up the aftermath of that scandal. i think we're heading into that moment again. >> really? >> yeah. what do you want people to take away from reading your book?

away an them to take understanding of the way in they themselves understand their world. ault lines, we mean in two senses, one, the division across american society, in terms of olitics, economics, race, gender and sexuality. but also the lines people believe about who is at fault. that comes through the way in which they receive their information, through media, hrough social media, through traditional media. i hope people would start to question the way in which they form their opinions about the world. >> so before i let you go, as omebody who studies social media, how are historians using it and what are some of the lessons we can take away from others? >> i think historians are using social media to really provide act checking that only historians can provide. there is a certain duty that historians have, same duty that have to push back against climate change or doctors have to push back -- fight against the role of vaccines, historians expertise, a

special knowledge about our past. and there are a lot of mistruths being spoken about that in both the popular media and among social media. to step in and correct those. >> how do you use or apply that in your own craft? a lot of it happens reactively, so when i see the resident or another politician or a cable host or cable guest ake a misstatement about the american past which i know well i can offer a correction on twitter. one which is read, not just by the people who follow me but hopefully can be spread by some journalists who follow me corrective to that. >> how do you do that there is 24-7 ch coming in our social, cable and news environment. how do you keep track of it all? drinkingn't, it's like from a fire hose. it comes incredibly fast so what to y to do is to limit it the things that i know best. i'm an expert in the civil

era, southern politics. when things like that come up that's where i step in. lots ofi know there are other historians on twitter who are doing the same thing i'm doing. hey have different areas of expertise and they will step forward when it's their topic on the table. >> making a difference? are. think, they again, i would like to think making a huge difference. but there are so many on twitter, journalists looking for the truth and looking for experts to these issueseak to the fact that historians are on there providing this expertise them excellent source for to correct the record themselves. >> kevin kruse, professor at princeton university, thank you much. >> thank you for having me. >> interested in american tv, visit our website, c-span.org/history. schedule, w our tv preview upcoming programs, and atch college lectures, museum tours, archival films and more. american history tv at

/history.g tonight, on afterwards, professor university ngela -- examines russia foreign policy. putin's world, russia against rest.st and with the she's interviewed by a woman who serves on the house foreign affairs committee. more you a little optimistic that if we find some common ground like you mention, we can beontrol, that a good partner with russia? has fallenpopularity by about 40 points since he was reelected last year as opinion , and public data in russia shows the majority of russians now don't want stability. they want change. they want a better economic ituation, and many of those people understand that having this very antagonistic relationship to the west is if theyot the way to go want to have greater economic growth. > watch afterwards tonight at

9:00 eastern on c-span 2. announcer: next on american history tv, a conversation with lonnie bunch, founding director of the smithsonian national museum of african-american history and culture. mr. bunch talks about the challenges he faced creating the museum and the importance of presenting african-american history to the public. the bipartisan policy center hosted this 50 minute event as part of the bob and elizabeth dole series on leadership. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2019] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> good morning. welcome to the bipartisan policy center for another discussion in our bob and elizabeth dole series about leadership.