Browsed by
Category: In Practice

TV news focuses on political outrage and selling eyeballs to advertisers

TV news focuses on political outrage and selling eyeballs to advertisers

TV audiences can’t get enough news coverage of Donald Trump. Reporting on pretty much anything else is ratings poison. Source: Broadcast News Misses Ratings Bonanza With Too Little Trump – Bloomberg This year I had a chance to travel to several U.S. states. Among all the people I met, politics was avoided. Most seem fed up with politics and the purveyors of politics and definitely fed up with the culture of perpetual outrage. Media targets a narrow demographic of the…

Read More Read More

Social media outrage mob falsely accuses professor of racism, calls for his firing

Social media outrage mob falsely accuses professor of racism, calls for his firing

Social media outrage led to amateurs falsely identifying a University professor as participating in the Charlottesville, VA mob, leading to people publicly calling him a racist and calling upon the university to fire the professor of engineering. He was verified and confirmed at University event 1,100 miles away at the time of the riot. Imagine if this happened to any of us – and we did not happen to be at an event providing us with an alibi. Social media…

Read More Read More

Eating too much protein will kill you? No, but it grabs the emotions and gets shared on #socialmedia!

Eating too much protein will kill you? No, but it grabs the emotions and gets shared on #socialmedia!

Eating too much protein will kill you? That’s the message left by hundreds of headlines and news stories earlier this week. But the statement was misleading at best and untrue in regards to the individual who died. Yet most stories ran with quotes like this: Meegan Hefford, a mother of two and bodybuilder, died after an overconsumption of protein shakes, supplements and protein-rich foods. Source: Bodybuilder mom dies from too much protein before competition | New York Post or “That…

Read More Read More

Rent A Crowd “Crowds on Demand” – and How Absolutely Everything is Fake

Rent A Crowd “Crowds on Demand” – and How Absolutely Everything is Fake

A local politician came out to speak to an enthusiastic audience? Could be an entirely fake audience of paid participants.[1] A local protest takes to the streets to demand ACTION over whatever – and gets extensive media coverage? Could be a fake group of paid participants. Or sometimes, it is a mix of paid actors plus others who think its an organic, grass roots event. But its fake too. There are “public relations” firms (a.k.a. propaganda firms) that specialize in…

Read More Read More

The remarkable power of propaganda

The remarkable power of propaganda

I just scanned Twitter for items about the Affordable Care Act. I estimate 99% of the Tweets were lies, contained significant errors, left out key information, or significantly exaggerated points. This included linked news stories at mainstream news services such as the Los Angeles Times and NPR and others, which contained significant inaccuracies or left out crucial information and data that refuted the thrust of the article. How many read the ACA? Probably a number approaching zero. How many researched…

Read More Read More

Montana is a Democratic Party state, not Republican, contrary to news reporting

Montana is a Democratic Party state, not Republican, contrary to news reporting

(Note – this post is about the media – not about the candidates or the political parties). Actual headlines: And so on. There are more headlines implying Montana is a Republican state. Except Montana has a long history of electing Democrats 3 to 1 over Republicans for Federal office: The assertions made by the headlines are false. The media has invented a fictional meme either to create controversy or heightened emotions or is trying to offer a crude explanation as…

Read More Read More

Solar eclipse will increase fire danger?

Solar eclipse will increase fire danger?

“Drought over, but eclipse event will raise fire danger” That is the odd headline of a KATU local TV news report about Oregon State. Authorities think more people will visit Oregon in the summer of 2017 because of a solar eclipse. Since humans cause wild fires, this will increase the wild fire risk. To strengthen the claim, the local news story emphasizes: “According to the National Park Service, 90 percent of wildfires in the United States are caused by humans,…

Read More Read More

Most car crashes caused by cellular phone usage?

Most car crashes caused by cellular phone usage?

I saw an item on a Facebook group where the general meme was that everyone knows cellular phone usage while driving is the cause of most vehicle crashes. The data, however, paints a remarkably different picture. Cellular phone usage, per the government’s own data, is a minor causative factor in vehicle crashes. There are many causative factors in car crashes: one category of causative factors is “distracted driving”. Cellular phone usage is a subset of “distracted driving”. The U.S.government’s National…

Read More Read More

More “Look at me!” propaganda memes

More “Look at me!” propaganda memes

I am not the only one noticing this peculiar form of propaganda, now prevalent on Instagram and Youtube social media: There is an undeniable aesthetic and demographic conformity in the vanlife world. Nearly all of the most popular accounts belong to young, attractive, white, heterosexual couples. “There’s the pretty van girl and the woodsy van guy,” Smith said. “That’s what people want to see.” …. King clicked on the account’s most successful post, which has more than eight thousand likes….

Read More Read More

If you have lots of friends, social media can make you feel better

If you have lots of friends, social media can make you feel better

When individuals post photos of their wonderful lives on social media, we do not typically think of this as propaganda – but literally, these are propaganda messages that say “I have a cool life” and you should follow and Like my posts. A new paper comes up with the remarkable (not really) finding that if you have a lot of friends, social media can make you feel better about yourself. Buried at the end: if you do not have a…

Read More Read More