Politics Thread: Silicon Valley Edition

[Malcador]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2018/01/11/trump-lauded-delivery-of-f-52s-to-norway-the-planes-only-exist-in-call-of-duty

One of those light hearted goofs

[Gromnir]

two articles worth reading regarding the ideological impact of cable and internet news since 2000.

 

https://web.stanford.edu/~ayurukog/cable_news.pdf

 

https://pcl.stanford.edu/research/2009/iyengar-redmedia-bluemedia.pdf

 

am knowing they is longer than typical internet infobytes, but will at least post the conclusions.

 

This paper provides estimates of both the influence of slanted news on voting behavior and the

taste for like-minded news in the context of cable television news in the U.S. The key ingredient

in the analysis is the use of channel positions as instrumental variables to estimate a model

of viewership, voting, and ideology evolution. We show instrumental variables estimates that

watching FNC increases the probability of voting Republican in presidential elections. We

probe the instrumental variables assumption by correlating channel positions with observables:

demographics which predict FNC viewership, demographics which predict partisan vote shares,

pre-FNC partisan vote shares, pre-FNC partisan donations, and local satellite viewership of

FNC.

 

We estimate a model of consumer-viewer-voters who choose cable subscriptions, allocate

time to watching news channels, and vote in elections. The tastes for news channels are partly

determined by the closeness of the news channels’ estimated ideology to the individuals. Individual

ideology evolves towards the estimated ideologies of the news channels that a consumer

watches. We use the estimated model to characterize the degree of polarization that one can

attribute to slanted cable news consumption, to measure effects of cable news on elections, and

to assess the positioning strategies of the cable news channels. Our estimates imply increasing

effects of FNC on the Republican vote share in presidential elections over time, from 0.46

points in 2000 to 6.34 points in 2008. Furthermore, we estimate that cable news can increase

polarization and explain about two-thirds of the increase among the public in the US, and

that this increase depends on both a persuasive effect of cable news and the existence of tastes

for like-minded news. Finally, we find that an influence-maximizing owner of the cable news

channels could have large effects on vote shares, but would have to sacrifice some levels of

viewership to maximize influence.

 

Future research could go in a number of directions. The use of channel positions as instrumental

variable could be useful in other studies of how media consumption affects behavior.

One could also use channel position variation to study the cable news channels in more detail

by examining specific programs, e.g. “The O’Reilly Factor,” and specific issues like abortion,

gay marriage, or government spending. In a different direction, studying the causes and consequences

of the divergence in estimated ideologies seems fruitful.40 It would also be useful to

test, refine, or expand the specific model we employ for belief updating after media consumption.

For example, one could allow for a joint distribution of influence parameters and tastes

for like-minded news in the population.

 

and

 

No matter how we sliced the data—either at the level of individuals or news stories—

the results demonstrate that Fox News is the dominant news source for conservatives

(the results presented above are equally strong if we substitute party identification for

ideology). Although Fox’s brand advantage for conservatives is especially strong

when the news deals with politicized subjects, it also applies to subject matter typically

not associated with partisan division. Indeed, the most surprising of our findings

is the substantial level of polarization in exposure to soft news.

 

The emergence of Fox News as the cable ratings leader suggests that in a competitive

market, politically slanted news programming allows a new organization to

create a niche for itself. Recent theoretical work in economics shows that under

competition and diversity of opinion, newspapers will provide content that is more

biased: ‘‘Competition forces newspapers to cater to the prejudices of their readers,

and greater competition typically results in more aggressive catering to such prejudices

as competitors strive to divide the market’’ (Mullainathan & Schleifer, 2005, p. 18).

 

Thus, as the audience become polarized over matters of politics and public policy,

rational media owners stand to gain market share by injecting more rather than less

political bias into the news (Gentzkow & Shapiro, 2006). The recent experience of

MSNBC is revealing. The network’s most popular evening Countdown with Keith

Olbermann—conveys an unabashedly anti-Bush Administration perspective. The

network now plans to ‘‘to showcase its nighttime lineup as a welcome haven for

viewers of a similar mind’’ (Steinberg, 2007). When the audience is polarized, ‘‘news

with an edge’’ makes for market success.

 

A further implication of voters’ increased exposure to one-sided news coverage is

an ‘‘echo chamber’’ effect—the news serves to reinforce existing beliefs and attitudes.

During periods of Republican governance, for instance, criticisms of the incumbent

administration conveyed by mainstream news organizations can be dismissed as

evidence of ‘‘liberal bias’’ thus further increasing partisan polarization. After the

revelations in the news media that the Bush Administration’s prewar intelligence

claims were erroneous, Democrats (when asked whether the U.S. had found weapons

of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq), switched to the ‘‘no WMD’’ response by

a factor of more than 30%. Independents also switched, by more than 10 percentage

points. But Republicans remained steadfast in their beliefs affirming the presence of

WMD—between June 2003 and October 2004 the percentage of Republicans

acknowledging that the United States had not found WMD increased by less than

five points (Iyengar & McGrady, 2007; Kull, Ramsay, & Lewis, 2003).

 

The importance of source cues to news exposure and the resulting ‘‘reinforcement

of priors’’ effect will only grow as technology diffuses and consumers increasingly

customize their online news menus. Our results are consistent with the

argument that Internet technology will, in practice, narrow rather than widen users’

political horizons. Although an infinite variety of information is available, individuals

may well limit their exposure to news or sources that they expect to find agreeable.

Over time, this behavior is likely to become habituated so that users turn to

their preferred sources automatically no matter what the subject matter. The

observed behavior of Republicans in this study may be attributed, in part, to their

20 years of experience with a favored news provider, thus reinforcing their informationseeking

behavior. As Democrats and politically inclined independents also begin to

establish media preferences, consumers will be able to ‘‘wall themselves off from

topics and opinions that they would prefer to avoid’’ (Sunstein, 2001, pp. 201–202).

The end result is likely to be a less informed and more polarized electorate.

 

Selective exposure is especially likely in the new media environment because of

information overload. New forms of communication not only deliver much larger

chunks of campaign information, but they also facilitate consumers’ ability to attend

to the information selectively. The audience for conventional news programs is hard

pressed to avoid coverage of the candidate they dislike because news reports typically

assign equal coverage to each. But when browsing the web, users can filter or search

through masses of text more easily. Thus, as candidates, interest groups, and voters

all converge on the Internet, the possibility of selective exposure to political

information increases. As we have found, people prefer to encounter information

that they find supportive or consistent with their existing beliefs.

 

end 

 

as hard as it may be to believe, fox and msnbc were much more ideological centric when they got their start, but fox's rating/commercial success from polarizing their content led to others following suit, albeit to a lesser degree. msnbc actual were more conservative than cnn 'till 2004 when they threw in the towel with their efforts to out-conservative fox. 'course fox arguable created the polarization we is now seeing as endemic, and as more sources such as breitbart offer increasing narrow news offerings, voters as a whole has become more polarized as well.  the polarization trend only appears to be increasing. 

 

cable news and the internet really is making you dumber.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

[Valsuelm]

 

Missed that somehow, sorry.

 

Theres probably an updated one running around somewhere given that theres a whole bunch of renewed interest after 2016.

I also think it's interesting that even before the fake news era conservatives already distrusted the majority of news sources

 

 

In the 90's CNN was oft referred to as the Clinton News Network, largely because Wolf and co. would often spend time figuratively doing on the air what Monica did in the office.

Edited January 11, 2018 by Valsuelm

[Gromnir]

 

 

Missed that somehow, sorry.

 

Theres probably an updated one running around somewhere given that theres a whole bunch of renewed interest after 2016.

I also think it's interesting that even before the fake news era conservatives already distrusted the majority of news sources

 

 

In the 90's CNN was oft referred to as the Clinton News Network, largely because Wolf and co. would often spend time figuratively doing on the air what Monica did in the office.

 

myth

 

as one can see from our linked articles, in the 90s and into 2000 cnn were 'bout as ideologically neutral as possible. 

 

HA! Good Fun! 

[smjjames]

 

 

Missed that somehow, sorry.

 

Theres probably an updated one running around somewhere given that theres a whole bunch of renewed interest after 2016.

I also think it's interesting that even before the fake news era conservatives already distrusted the majority of news sources

 

 

In the 90's CNN was oft referred to as the Clinton News Network, largely because Wolf and co. would often spend time figuratively doing on the air what Monica did in the office.

 

 

Never heard of that.

 

Conservatives and Trump supporters did use that during the campaign as an opportunistic way to mock Clinton or CNN.

Edited January 11, 2018 by smjjames

[Valsuelm]

 

 

 

Missed that somehow, sorry.

 

Theres probably an updated one running around somewhere given that theres a whole bunch of renewed interest after 2016.

I also think it's interesting that even before the fake news era conservatives already distrusted the majority of news sources

 

 

In the 90's CNN was oft referred to as the Clinton News Network, largely because Wolf and co. would often spend time figuratively doing on the air what Monica did in the office.

 

 

Never heard of that.

 

Conservatives and Trump supporters did use that during the campaign as an opportunistic way to mock Clinton or CNN.

 

 

Aye. A resurrection of an old trope.

 

CNN was considered bias by many back then. One wouldn't know this of course if one only ever watched CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc, but if one had conversations with actual people with working brains....

 

That said, the bias wasn't near as blatant as it is now. Back in the day CNN et al were much better at pretending to report news objectively. The emperor's clothes came completely off during this last election. For anyone with eyes and a functional brain to compute what they saw (if they were looking), they will not forget.

[Guard Dog]

Personally I see nothing wrong with bias in news. There has never been a time in our country where unbiased journalism was the norm. Don't believe me? Go on over to google for a few minutes. I'll be here when you get back. News reporting is a commodity just like any other. It's like fried chicken. Some places sell spicy, some sell original recipes, some use buttermilk and cornbread batter (mmmm) some tastes better than others, some places are cheaper than others, but it's all still fried chicken. If you want fried chicken you should be able to pick who you get it from. 

 

And of course if you want real news there are places to get that too. The point I'm getting to (maybe I am taking the long way around the barn to get to it) is that the angst I hear over the effects of "biased journalism"  and "fake news" is presented as begging the question "what are we going to do about it?" The answer is of course nothing. The idea that there is something to be done about it leads someone to think they know what people SHOULD be watching. And leads to someone MAKING people watch what that someone thinks they should. 

 

Freedom means watching other people do things you don't like. Whether that's watching Fox or MSNBC, or smoking a cigarette or whatever. No one is making anyone watch.

[Malcador]

Shame no one is saying on TV that there is little reason for a Norwegian to immigrate into the US.

[Valsuelm]

Shame no one is saying on TV that there is little reason for a Norwegian to immigrate into the US.

 

Is anyone agreeing with Trump that poophole nation X is a poophole nation? Or is it all 'he's a racist!' madness?

Edited January 12, 2018 by Valsuelm

[Malcador]

Well, apparently he included the continent, but I'll check later. Countries get immigrants from worse off ones, a bit suspect to think that a ****hole country is entirely ****hole people - brain drain is a thing, after all. As for Haiti, well the US should take them in, based on their past with that country (France too I guess)

[smjjames]

 

Shame no one is saying on TV that there is little reason for a Norwegian to immigrate into the US.

 

Is anyone agreeing with Trump that poophole nation X is a poophole nation? Or is it all 'he's a racist!' madness?

 

 

 

Well, apparently he included the continent, but I'll check later. Countries get immigrants from worse off ones, a bit suspect to think that a ****hole country is entirely ****hole people - brain drain is a thing, after all. As for Haiti, well the US should take them in, based on their past with that country (France too I guess)

 

He did indeed call Africa a country.

 

@val: Theres no question that there are countries where things are pretty dang bad, Haiti for example is one of the poorest countries in the world and they're still trying to recover from a devastating quake. But its the context here, he slammed countries with black people and referred to Norway, a largely white country. I'm sure i don't have to explain to you what that might look like.

 

On top of that, it's not a one-off, it's part of a pattern. He might not be a raging racist, but he's pretty dang insensitive and inconsiderate.

[HoonDing]

He tells it like it is!

[Guard Dog]

This is why the Supreme Court matters. About 20 years the Court rendered a decision on a case called Kelo vs New London CT. That case is right up there with Dred Scott, Hans vs Louisiana, US vs Cruikshank, & NFIB vs Sebilus in the Hall of Fame of worst Supreme Court decisions. 

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, every justice that sided with the City of New London should have been dragged from the building at the end of a rope and hung in the street from the street lights. Because this is what has come of it: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/east-harlem-dry-cleaner-city-forcing-business-article-1.3742125

 

If the government wants what you have, they can just take it. For all you people who think the government is your goddamed mother or some idiocy, or think it exists to take care of you in any way let me disabuse of that notion right now. Government exists for on purpose only: self perpetuation. It loves only one thing: money.

[Gromnir]

 

 

 

 

Missed that somehow, sorry.

 

Theres probably an updated one running around somewhere given that theres a whole bunch of renewed interest after 2016.

I also think it's interesting that even before the fake news era conservatives already distrusted the majority of news sources

 

 

In the 90's CNN was oft referred to as the Clinton News Network, largely because Wolf and co. would often spend time figuratively doing on the air what Monica did in the office.

 

 

Never heard of that.

 

Conservatives and Trump supporters did use that during the campaign as an opportunistic way to mock Clinton or CNN.

 

 

Aye. A resurrection of an old trope.

 

CNN was considered bias by many back then. One wouldn't know this of course if one only ever watched CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, etc, but if one had conversations with actual people with working brains....

 

That said, the bias wasn't near as blatant as it is now. Back in the day CNN et al were much better at pretending to report news objectively. The emperor's clothes came completely off during this last election. For anyone with eyes and a functional brain to compute what they saw (if they were looking), they will not forget.

 

so, one couldn't tell cnn were biased by watching cnn or other networks?  however, if folks "had conversations with actual people with working brains" (i.e. fellow tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists) then the bias sudden became obvious?

 

this kinda nonsense is why val is so darn funny. 

 

again, check our linked articles.   cnn did not evidence any kind o' measurable or discernable ideological lean 'til somewheres 'tween 2006-2008.  makes sense 'cause at the time mass market tv news polarization were a new phenomenon and cnn were largely competing with the big three networks who were also ideological neutral.  fox's post 2000 success were the apparent driver for other cable news outlets to begin attempting to find an ideological niche.  msnbc, as noted already, initial tried to compete with fox for conservative viewership, but after a few years they surrendered and shifted left.  

 

the reason why ordinary folks wouldn't see a cnn bias in the 90s is 'cause there were no significant bias.

 

am personal agreeing with gd 'bout our lack o' sympathy regarding news bias. virtual every US president has complained 'bout press bias... thank goodness. lincoln's battles with the press were legendary and while trump has threatened to change libel laws (HA!) or even jail journalists, lincoln actual carried out midnight raids 'gainst the press and journalists, raids which were reminiscent o' scenes from the movie V.  reporters got no duty to be neutral or unbiased.  we don't lament the non existent good old days when individual reporters were neutral.  we want reporters to be passionate and invested.  

 

the thing is, the internet has changed the equation and am admitting we were wrong 'bout cause v. effect.  linked articles show how the abundance o' news options now make it increasingly possible for viewers/readers to ignore alternative viewpoints and opinions. bias has always been part o' reporting, but the widespread alternative FACTS nonsense is new and so too is the ability o' news consumers to voluntarily encase themselves in a functional news echobox.  we assumed polarization were news outlets responding to increasing polarized populations. particular during times o' social upheaval, news outlets natural respond to consumer desire for news which reflects their ideological leaning.  more recent it has been the media which actual created the polarization rather than responding to it.  the change is disturbing even if we do not advocate government interference to alter the dynamic.  

 

regardless, val is wrong.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Katphood]

Meanwhile in France:

 

[injurai]

Seems like it has functional use if it's protecting an artisan trade.

[Gfted1]

I didn't watch that video so I may have come to the wrong conclusion based on the title, but the French do that with lots of products. The Protection of Champagne Wine. The second paragraph lists several categories.

[Raithe]

[Guard Dog]

Today's lesson: Stick to what you're good at!    http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/15/naacp-says-mlks-vision-cant-be-achieved-without-fighting-global-warming/

 

It's kind of like this:

 

[Valsuelm]

Eh?

 

The hateful NAACP have been masters of vehemently fighting imaginary ghouls for decades. It's only natural that they'd take up arms against 'global warming'. An organization without real legitimate purpose needs to keep making up enemies to fight.

 

That pizza however, looks decent. Alas that McDonald's 'food' is never as good as it looks in pictures.

 

 

[Malcador]

NAACP is hateful ?

[smjjames]

I think that was a bit of sarcasm or tongue in cheek.

[Valsuelm]

I think that was a bit of sarcasm or tongue in cheek.

 

Sarcasm? While I do tend to dish out sarcastic remarks from time to time, that is absolutely not the case here.

 

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is a blatantly racist organization. Fomenting and fostering racism, division, and hatred is at the heart of what it does.

 

If I called the NAACP a caring or loving organization, now that would be sarcasm!   

[Valsuelm]

In other news, here's some food for thought:
 




https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democrats-werent-always-super-liberal-on-immigration/

Edited January 15, 2018 by Valsuelm

[Guard Dog]

Yeah, I'd say this one is likely true. They don't actually care about these folks other than how they can be exploited politically. Pretty much like everyone else in politics.