Browsed by
Category: Social Media

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

Photo said to be from August 12 – Charlottesville, VA, circulating on social media is not from August 12

Photo said to be from August 12 – Charlottesville, VA, circulating on social media is not from August 12

The following photo is now circulating widely on social media as shown in this screen capture from Twitter:  The image used here appears, currently, in Google Image search results spanning an astounding 15 pages. The above tweet has alone been shared 227,000 times on social media. This is not the only social media copy, either. It is likely this has now been shared tens of millions of times on social media. The photo, while from Charlottesville, is of a different…

Read More Read More

News media creates entirely fictional cause for couple’s suicide deaths

News media creates entirely fictional cause for couple’s suicide deaths

Here is how the story appeared: A New York couple upset over their rising health care costs jumped to their deaths this week, leaving a note that they could no longer pay to treat their medical issues.   The suicide took place in New York City’s Murray Hill neighborhood early on Friday, the New York Post reported. The couple was both in their 50s, the report noted, and they were found dead after having jumped from a building between Park…

Read More Read More

Social media fake propaganda poster

Social media fake propaganda poster

This is a photograph of an animal crossing bridge in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. This bridge has nothing to do with the Netherlands. The photo was stolen from Joel Sartore, a professional photographer for the National Geographic Society, Geo, Smithsonian and others, and the photo is featured on his own page: https://www.joelsartore.com/keyword/greatest-hit/page/3/ Why do people create these garbage posters? And why do people share them? Why do people then add supportive comments to these posts? And why are people…

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

Should you make political posts on Facebook? No, you should not.

Should you make political posts on Facebook? No, you should not.

This is a MUST READ item – see the link below. Should you share political posts? The first question you should ask before sharing anything to social media, political posts in particular, is “Why? “Why are you sharing this post? What do you hope to accomplish?” We sometimes think that our Facebook shares are so brilliant, insightful, and righteous that people of opposing opinions can’t help but be swayed and won over by our argument. Nothing could be further from…

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