Assymetric polarization of the US media

[CharonY]

Came across this article from the Columbia Journalism Review. They looked at partisanship in media and associated (deliberate) disinformation. The major finding is that while traditional and for the most part left leaning media were interconnected in terms of attention. Right-wing media, including Breitbart on the other hand created their own sphere of news and influence.Thus there seems to be a distinct right-wing infosphere that deliberately isolates itself from the general media landscape.

On the left wing end this is far less pronounced and the extremes tend to be isolated more than anything else (instead of self-reinforcing that is).

 

Or in other words partisanship seems to be skewed when it comes to media attention.

[tkadm30]

Information warfare is a controversial US national security issue.

 

Also, don't forget that extremism (aka tyranny) take roots in the deliberate disinformation of the public.

[Velocity_Boy]

Came across this article from the Columbia Journalism Review. They looked at partisanship in media and associated (deliberate) disinformation. The major finding is that while traditional and for the most part left leaning media were interconnected in terms of attention. Right-wing media, including Breitbart on the other hand created their own sphere of news and influence.Thus there seems to be a distinct right-wing infosphere that deliberately isolates itself from the general media landscape.

On the left wing end this is far less pronounced and the extremes tend to be isolated more than anything else (instead of self-reinforcing that is).

 

Or in other words partisanship seems to be skewed when it comes to media attention.

the reason for this is that, for the most part, with exceptions aside, your typical Far Right Reactionary tends to feel more compelled to find or create a Soapbox (media outlet) for which to disseminate his rantings, then does a typical Lefty Liberal. Those sorts are more apt to work through deeds and actions and civil disobedience, even. As in Direct Actions...If you're familiar with that term.

So, like, to use a example, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are more likely to tell in a microphone then take to the streets like a PETA member outside a PetSmart. Or a tree hugger spiking a pine in Oregon. LOL.

 

Hope this helps!

 

VB

[CharonY]

the reason for this is that, for the most part, with exceptions aside, your typical Far Right Reactionary tends to feel more compelled to find or create a Soapbox (media outlet) for which to disseminate his rantings, then does a typical Lefty Liberal. Those sorts are more apt to work through deeds and actions and civil disobedience, even. As in Direct Actions...If you're familiar with that term.

So, like, to use a example, Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are more likely to tell in a microphone then take to the streets like a PETA member outside a PetSmart. Or a tree hugger spiking a pine in Oregon. LOL.

 

Hope this helps!

 

VB

 

Actually that is neither what the report looked at nor is it the mechanism they described. It not about the left or right oriented people, but rather how the media landscape connects and builds up self-reinforcing narratives withing a limited cycle. That creates a serious weight on issues that they themselves can determine independent from other regular media.

[iNow]

Sounds similar to astroturfing. Always suspected it was asymmetric. Is nice (for lack of a better term) that empiricism supports that.

 

Either way, it's a bit like the old saying, "reality has a well-known liberal bias."

[MigL]

Not having read the Columbia article, what I get from CharonY's post is that media is, for the most part, SLIGHTLY left-leaning, while a small section of it is STRONGLY right leaning.

 

No judgement on the ideologies, but that's no surprise to anyone.

Remember the good old days when W Cronkite just presented the news without the political opinion.

[iNow]

This is less about which way organizations "lean" and is more about the bubble... how some create single kernels of falsehood which then spin up, get endlessly shared/repeated with no validation and often in the face of outright contradiction or debunking... how these lies and untruths cascade and oftentimes tsunami... and how this happens far more consistently and frequently among right leaning orgs.

[CharonY]

Not having read the Columbia article, what I get from CharonY's post is that media is, for the most part, SLIGHTLY left-leaning, while a small section of it is STRONGLY right leaning.

 

No judgement on the ideologies, but that's no surprise to anyone.

Remember the good old days when W Cronkite just presented the news without the political opinion.

 

I may have summarized it incorrectly. The idea is that news circulate and are note isolated (usually). I.e. if one reports something it gets picked up and diffuses through the whole media landscape. However in a partisan media landscape it is possible that the left only circulates a subset and the right circulates another subset. With a partisan readership you would then have attention from the lefts exclusively on the left outlets and vice versa.

 

So what the authors did is looking at the landscape from different metrices. E.g. they looked at journals and looked at the proportion of Trump and Clinton supporter. Wall Street journal, for example draws in slightly more Trump than Clinton supporters (based on Twitter shares). What they saw is that there are few Center-right websites i.e. it drops fairly quickly to the partisan only (i.e. mostly or Trump, few Clinto supporters). On the left it declines much slower and there are more strong partisan right sites than the opposite. So these far right elements seem to create a bit of a bubble.

 

So instead of a strong partisan left and right, we see a slow partisan increase on the left, but a steep drop in the right. Another way to look at it are interconnections in which it can be seen that those reading far left outlets also frequent what is assumed to be traditional media as well as those found to be slightly right (including WSJ). However, on the right the news landscape is massively dominated by Breitbart and to a lesser extent Fox news. And those reading those outlets rarely venture outside that particular bubble. Does it make sense?

 

There are severe limitations, of course as they use twitter and facebook as source. But then both seem to have impacted significantly (and I feel old).

[Ten oz]

It will only get worse. Groups are now creating personality profiles of people via social media and using their personalized feeds to micro target them with unique news.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.amp.html

 

Trump's campaign used this during the Election. They would run stories on people's Facebook pages micro targeting them personally with ads tailor made for their personality profile. Ads other people didn't see. That is partly why he is able to say crazy made up this GS that leave most scratching our heads but his supporters cheering. They got the memo and we didn't.

 

All media is ala carte now. The majority of society use to all watch the same handful of TV stations. Even when cable tv came with hundreds of channels most people in any given area had similar service. Not today. Now some people have cable while others just use Netflix's, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and etc. For news it is worse. Some people what CNN or FoxNews while other just read alerts sent by Facebook, Google, or Yahoo, etc. Very little continuity out there between users. People are creating their own spheres and as a result we all don't have a true north for reality.

 

As for which way different media's "lean", I find that discussion passe. People set their alerts to the news they want, set their smart TVs to the shows they want, and only consume what they choose. No one is watching Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity because they are the only thing on and as a result being indoctrinated by left or right leaning programs. How a person leans determines what they consume.

[Delta1212]

It will only get worse. Groups are now creating personality profiles of people via social media and using their personalized feeds to micro target them with unique news.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/the-secret-agenda-of-a-facebook-quiz.amp.html

 

Trump's campaign used this during the Election. They would run stories on people's Facebook pages micro targeting them personally with ads tailor made for their personality profile. Ads other people didn't see. That is partly why he is able to say crazy made up this GS that leave most scratching our heads but his supporters cheering. They got the memo and we didn't.

 

All media is ala carte now. The majority of society use to all watch the same handful of TV stations. Even when cable tv came with hundreds of channels most people in any given area had similar service. Not today. Now some people have cable while others just use Netflix's, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, and etc. For news it is worse. Some people what CNN or FoxNews while other just read alerts sent by Facebook, Google, or Yahoo, etc. Very little continuity out there between users. People are creating their own spheres and as a result we all don't have a true north for reality.

 

As for which way different media's "lean", I find that discussion passe. People set their alerts to the news they want, set their smart TVs to the shows they want, and only consume what they choose. No one is watching Rachel Maddow or Sean Hannity because they are the only thing on and as a result being indoctrinated by left or right leaning programs. How a person leans determines what they consume.

 

There is a bit of a feedback loop there, though. Consume what you want from a source you trust because they are telling you what you want to hear, and you'll start taking the things they say more seriously regardless of whether you initially agreed with it, especially when the overall theme is fitting all of the parts together into a cohesive narrative that makes the perspectives that are new to you dovetail nicely with the pet causes or ideas that drove you to those venues in the first place.

 

This is why you have large blocs of people who are both pro-choice and believe climate change is a hoax, despite those two issues having ostensibly nothing to do with each other.

 

The hard split on a majority of issues means that if you gravitate toward one "side" because of one particular view on one or two issues, you are likely to be exposed more to information that supports all of the other issues of that "side", reinforcing identification with that side as a whole and driving polarization as there are fewer and fewer common issues that people can reach across the aisle to work together on and fewer and fewer people who are in the middle agreeing with some issues presented by one party and other issues presented by the other party.

[Ten oz]

 

 

This is why you have large blocs of people who are both pro-choice and believe climate change is a hoax, despite those two issues having ostensibly nothing to do with each other.

 

 

I am of the belief that it is sport. Most Deniers, the anti abortion crowd, and etc are knowing just arguing for the sake of gamesmanship. Trump is a perfect example. Do you believe any of his supporters by the line "no one loves the Bible more than me"? They don't care. Many of them are closet athiests too.

 

It is about cultural identity for many of them. Remember the poster in this thread, Tar. He know climate change was real, wasn't particularly religious, and understood Trump was a liar but voted Trump anyway. He made no bones about. Proud said he was voted Trump cause he was voting his team.

They are lonesome people in my opinion.

[Airbrush]

According to Trump ALL the news media is "the enemy of the people" with the exception of Fox News and a few others. Then he relies on a Fox News story as rock solid to trigger his infamous "Obama wire tapped Trump Tower". Then he says to blame it on Fox News, and Fox News says blame it on the news report.

 

Trump: Well, because the New York Times wrote about it. Not that I respect the New York Times. I call it the failing New York Times. But they did write on Jan. 20th using the word wiretap.

Carlson: Why not wait to tweet about it until you can prove it? Don’t you devalue your words when you can’t provide evidence? You’re the president. You have the ability to gather all the evidence you want.

Trump: I do. I do. But I think that frankly we have a lot right now. And I think if you watch—if you watched the Bret Baier and what he was saying and what he was talking about and how he mentioned the word “wiretap,” you would feel very confident that you could mention the name. He mentioned it. And other people have mentioned it. But if you take a look at some of the things written about wiretapping and eavesdropping… and don’t forget I say wiretapping, those words were in quotes. That really covers—because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff—but that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that’s a very important thing. But wire tape covers a lot of different things. I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks.

 

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/15/trump_talks_to_fox_news_tucker_carlson_about_obama_wiretap_claim.html

 

"The New York Times report does use the word "wiretap;" the print headline was "Wiretapped Data Used in Inquiry of Trump Aides." It doesn’t appear that Trump read the article closely, however, because it does not say Obama personally ordered a tap on his phones during the election, as Trump claimed in his tweet."

 

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/mar/16/donald-trump/donald-trump-says-he-learned-obama-tapped-his-phon/

 

How long can we be safe with a CLOWN FOR PRESIDENT?

Edited March 19, 2017 by Airbrush