
‘Duck Dynasty’ vs. ‘Modern Family’: 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide - dpflan
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/26/upshot/duck-dynasty-vs-modern-family-television-maps.html
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24gttghh
I really dislike these county maps. Darker color is shown as more fans, when
in reality some of the largest, more intensely shaded counties have relatively
few people in them. I believe it imparts a false impression of whatever the
map is trying to inform the viewer on.

edit: douche points out that these maps are not purely based on county lines.

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thomashusa
But if you don't normalize by population, you just end up with a map of the
most populous locations instead of a map of the highest popularity

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evgen
I think you don't understand what that word 'popularity' means...

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gmu3
I guess you don't believe something can be popular in a small community.

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evgen
It can be, that doesn't make it popular in general. Duck Dynasty has zero
viewers in my living room, does that make it an unpopular show? Having a small
number of absolute fans in isolated clumps does not make something popular
unless you specifically scope the definition to make it appear so.

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VLM
Many of the shows are based on affinity or identity politics so the results
are not terribly interesting.

Unsurprisingly a TV show based on affinity for Louisiana or affinity for LA
will have by far the strongest signal be predictable affinity for either LA
area. Likewise the identity politics, its very hard to express surprise that a
TV show carefully engineered to appeal to black people, successfully sells to
black people, therefore the map of viewers extremely strongly resembles a
population map of black people.

If they had corrected for those effects THEN they would have had interesting
data.

I did find it interesting that "deadliest catch" correlates more strongly with
latitude than distance from the coasts. I've never watched, but I'd assume its
mostly set on a boat?

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landryraccoon
I think the point is that the urban vs rural divide has not been the dominant
conflict in America up until now. In the past other identity politics such as
black and white or north vs south have dominated. Every state has rural and
urban areas - why is it just now, in the early 2000s, that the urban vs rural
cultural divide now dominates the cultural discourse?

Duck Dynasty and Modern Family is just one more symptom of the cultural
divide. It's interesting because it's a small part of a much larger conflict
with major political and economic implications that have already been felt
(most obviously, the recent US election).

Also for me it's personally very interesting. I'm going to start watching
shows that it would not have occured to me to watch, because it's one way to
escape my own cultural bubble. Normally Duck Dynasty and Empire wouldn't be on
my list, now they are - because it's a way to understand a culture that would
normally be somewhat alien to me.

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protomyth
> I think the point is that the urban vs rural divide has not been the
> dominant conflict in America up until now

Given the Connecticut Compromise at the start of the union, urban vs rural
have been a part of the USA since the beginning.

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LyndsySimon
It was also basically the conflict that began the Civil War. The South was
predominately agrarian/rural and the North was mostly industrial/urban.

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landryraccoon
Oddly enough, this map makes me think Trump is more intelligent than I
thought. Educated urbanites made fun of the GOP for having a Duck Dynasty cast
member as a convention speaker. In reality, that speaker probably had more
appeal to the average Trump voter than any of the parade of elites that the
Dems brought out for their convention.

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Maascamp
How come the millionaire Duck Dynasty cast member isn't an "elite," but
everyone brought in by the Democrats was?

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Dan_Nguyen
To me, something also worth noting is that prior to the Duck Dynasty show,
none of the people behind the company had their well known "bearded
outdoorsman" looks. There's a widely circulated photo where they look like
your average upper middle class suburbanite.

The point on the Democrats celebrity endorsement is true, but I'd argue that
the GOP celebrities, including the Duck Dynasty people, are of the same vein
and aren't the rural everyman they portray on the show.

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LyndsySimon
I would actually argue that the opposite is true - that their previous
personas were an act put on to meet social norms. They are certainly something
of a caricature of themselves today, but is likely a lot closer to how they
see themselves.

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pklausler
The maps are somewhat (ok, a lot) misleading because they show land area, not
population. Duck Dynasty looks like a giant hit in Harney County, Oregon, but
come on, there's only 7,146 people living there (2013).

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rubyfan
But if almost everyone that lived there loved it the the the label is
accurate. You think it's misleading because it doesn't convey a population
density component?

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pklausler
Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. That map, at least at first glance, makes
Duck Dynasty look like a giant hit in Oregon. You have to read the fine print
to find out that it's essentially just because a bar in Burns has a satellite
dish.

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pkaeding
> That map, at least at first glance, makes Duck Dynasty look like a giant hit
> in Oregon

Well, it makes it look like a big hit in Harney County, OR, and a flop in
Portland. Which appears to be accurate-- of the people in Harney County, lots
of them watch Duck Dynasty. There isn't much fine print there.

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Tempest1981
Watching late night TV, it's interesting how political Seth Meyers' show has
become -- on par with Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah. Colbert is slightly less
biting. Then Fallon, very gentle.

Yet Fallon's ratings are still weak in the Duck Dynasty areas. (Being gentle
doesn't buy him much?)

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danielweber
People know when you're making fun of them and tune out.

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vowelless
I am a liberal and even I have tuned out of these late night shows as I got
sick of the low quality mockery of "the other side". I initially had high
hopes from Trevor Noah but his race baiting approach to mockery (and I say
this as a "person of color" if that means anything) just put me off.

I've had a year without late night TV or "mainstream news" and frankly, I feel
a lot better. I've been able to focus a lot on furthering my knowledge and
experience in technical and scientific things.

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JPKab
My issue with Trevor Noah and his ilk is they peddle the false, shallow
version of "diversity" which is anything but. As long as a bunch of
socioeconomically identical, young, childless, professional, and urban people
have enough variance in the melanin content of their skin, they are a diverse
group.

Former military? Drive a pick-up truck? Grew up in a trailer? Yeah, nobody
wants THAT kind of diversity.

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minimaxir
> When we looked at how many active Facebook users in a given ZIP code “liked”
> certain TV shows

How are they getting Like data from Facebook Pages that granular from
Facebook?

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untog
By asking them for it. IIRC, they did the same with various sports fandoms a
while back.

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kolbe
They didn't mention it in the article, but a cursory glance makes Tosh.0 look
like the battle ground map.

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golemotron
Odd that they chose African-American as a singled out demographic in addition
to the urban/rural split. They could have selected Hispanic. It's a larger
demographic.

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LyndsySimon
Hispanic people tend to be more politically divided than those of African
ancestry, who have historically voted as a bloc.

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bostonpete
Given the direct comparison to the result of the election in the opening
paragraph, I was disappointed that they didn't quantify the similarity of each
show's map to the electoral (county-by-county) map.

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pitt1980
Tosh.0 (#10) has an interesting map

seem not especially urban, but with a pretty sharp drop off right at the Mason
Dixon line

seems like maybe it perceived as too much making fun of southern culture? I
haven't watched a ton of Ridiculousness (#13)

but my impression of it is that it's a less snarky show with highly similar
clip content

and it seems to appeal to a much broader area of the country

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phantarch
I'd be more interested to know which of the areas has the highest median
fanbase of all the shows. Based on the conclusions this article wants us to
draw, certainly that would be the "least culturally polarized" place in the
U.S? Or is this just more data noise with very little signal value...

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marme
So it is confirmed watching videos of guys getting hit in the balls is
universally funny among all groups. "Ow My Balls!" being most popular show in
2505 is looking like a very prophetic right now.

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racl101
Nothing surprising here.

