Sunday, October 8, 2017

Are You Brain Washing Yourself?

This discussion is continued from GOP and DEMs See Things Differently The summary of the discussion is that Laurie believes that...

"most liberals rely on sources like wapo and regional newspapers while conservatives are getting their news from Breitbart." 
"the left and the right are not equivalent in terms of information / misinformation they get from the news sources they use." 
My argument is that people who truly are on both the far Left and far Right tend to read sources that support their perspective of reality, thereby reinforcing it. (in essence brain washing themselves) And though Breitbart is somewhat relevant and it did trigger other outlets to react, overall few Conservatives read it.

I think that Laurie is standing on her high horse and looking down on the irredeemable lying deplorables just as Hillary did. The sad part of this is that for every Laurie there is a far right Conservative looking down on a Liberal as an irrational naive socialist seeking to destroy our country. Hopefully someday we can start respecting those who have different views from our own. 

Ironically I was asked earlier how I know I am somewhat of a moderate?  I explained to the individual that as long as my Father calls me a socialist and Laurie says I am too Conservative...  I will know I am somewhere in the middle.  :-)

One more thought... If many of Trump's voters are old white folks and irredeemable deplorables, how many of them even know how to retweet?  Or is the CJR info just noting that the Trump twitter followers are more active?  There are a lot of questions in the links below.

Relevant Links
WAPO Political Polarization Is Mainly A Right-Wing Phenomenon
CJR Breitbart led right wing media ecosystem altered broader media agenda
PEW Voters Divided on News Source
All Sides Bias Ratings
Most Trusted News Outlets
Breitbart Bleeding Readers and Advertisers
CJR Info




PEW Info

9 comments:

  1. I get my news from wapo and am not at all brainwashed. I also have no difficulty accepting the findings about how conservative media world differs from liberal media world. Why are the conclusions from this study so hard for you to accept. The left and right are not mirror images of each other.

    Move on and find some other way to criticize the left. Lastly, this whole subtopic is not about what I believe. Have I mentioned you should be arguing with the data (as summarized below) This topic is starting to annoy me and I am just going to keep posting this research summary, which is based on data - so stop stating that this is my belief that you are arguing against.


    "Our own study of over 1.25 million stories published online between April 1, 2015 and Election Day shows that a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-partisan perspective to the world. This pro-Trump media sphere appears to have not only successfully set the agenda for the conservative media sphere, but also strongly influenced the broader media agenda, in particular coverage of Hillary Clinton.

    While concerns about political and media polarization online are longstanding, our study suggests that polarization was asymmetric. Pro-Clinton audiences were highly attentive to traditional media outlets, which continued to be the most prominent outlets across the public sphere, alongside more left-oriented online sites. But pro-Trump audiences paid the majority of their attention to polarized outlets that have developed recently, many of them only since the 2008 election season."

    ReplyDelete
  2. Laurie,
    Please feel free to continue standing by those 2 vague paragraphs.

    I disagree with the summary above in part because of this silly sentence. "But pro-Trump audiences paid the majority of their attention to polarized outlets that have developed recently, many of them only since the 2008 election season."

    Even you must agree that Fox and Rush Limbaugh rule the Conservative world and both of them were around way before 2008.

    Their whole study was about who retweeted what from where, which of course in no explains who got their news from where?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I am imagining my favorite older family members saying... Maybe more correctly yelling!!! :-)

    "I get my news from FOX and am not at all brainwashed."

    Now let's step back and think about this... If one is brain washed by their environment from early childhood, how would one know if they had been brain washed?

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here is an interesting fact from the images above....

    WAPO was the most retweeted source for Clinton supporters...

    WAPO didn't even make the PEW list of where Clinton supporters got their news.

    Interesting...

    ReplyDelete
  5. By the way, I am not trying to bash WAPO, often they have great articles. I am just noting that one must remember to consider the source when they read something.

    If you want a somewhat Liberal spin, read the Washington Post... If you want a somewhat Conservative spin read the Washington Times. Just be aware that you are being spun somewhat and adjust your analysis accordingly.

    ReplyDelete
  6. did they not teach you how to evaluate sources in high school and college? Washington Post and Washington Times are not equally reputable papers.

    ReplyDelete
  7. did they not teach you how to evaluate sources in high school and college? Washington Post and Washington Times are not equally reputable papers.

    10 Journalism Brands Where You Find Real Facts Rather Than Alternative Facts

    Washington Times did not make the list.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Maybe / Maybe Not. But giving me an opinion piece from a NY Prof who has worked for the Washington Post certainly is no way to convince me.


    Paul Glader is an associate professor of journalism at The King's College in New York City, a media scholar at The Berlin School of Creative Leadership and is on Twitter @PaulGlader.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Here are some interesting comparisons

    Washington Times
    Washington Post

    Both received a... Factual Reporting: HIGH

    ReplyDelete