
People Choose News That Fits Their Views - toni
http://www.livescience.com/culture/090608-media-message.html
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lucraft
Yes. To have all my beliefs challenged by every piece of news I read would be
exhausting. Most of the time I want to read news written by someone who shares
my basic worldview.

In fact, the perfect news item is one that is indistinguishable from the one
that would have been written by me, had I been there. That's the perspective I
want.

That's not to say I don't welcome learning about opposing viewpoints, but for
something that challenges me deep, I'd prefer to read a book, than a bunch of
news items.

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mdasen
And with the advent of the internet, that has become so much easier. We can
find whatever niche we want and create our own echo chamber.

Before the internet, newspapers had to operate somewhat similarly to how our
political parties operated. You had to offer enough to all people in your area
that you'd be financially sustainable. Jonathan Sarna (a professor at
Brandeis) has talked about this as to why US politics doesn't have the fringes
that Europe does. Because American politicians are elected locally (for the
most part), it becomes suicidal to be fringe. Sure, maybe 10% of the country
agrees with you, but never 50% in any given area - no matter how liberal or
conservative. By contrast European countries generally give a party
representation in proportion to their take at the polls - even if they don't
win a single district.

The internet is like that European system. There might not be enough in one
area to support niches, but there are across a larger population.

And, to be honest, I find this a little troubling. On the positive side, there
are more beliefs able to be published and heard. But really, what seems to
happen is that the beliefs aren't heard wider - just more often by a sub
group. And there are such things as wrong beliefs. Things that are
scientifically inaccurate or something we might deem terrible for society (for
example, I fell very comfortable saying that Nazism is a wrong belief). Before
such echo chambers, there were at least buffers where one would have to hear
wider (one could criticize, mainstream) views and wouldn't have people backing
up their view constantly (or at least not exclusively).

It's quite the double-edged sword. I can understand why people like reading
HuffPo or Fox News, but it can be somewhat dangerous. There's a great sorting
trend happening in America where we surround ourselves with those who think
only like us. Lack of contact with people who think differently both makes us
demonize them (even if it's only to the "how could they think that" extent)
and makes us very vulnerable. The second part needs some explanation. This
makes us vulnerable in the same way that genetic engineering (or lack of bio
diversity) would. Are we so arrogant (on all sides) to think that we have
_the_ answer (to life, the universe, and everything) that it wouldn't be good
to hedge our bets?

I'm not saying that it's terrible or anything, just that one has to be careful
about only thinking one way. If we aren't careful, we'll become people
analogous to hammers and miss the solutions that aren't nails.

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fortunado
I wonder if there's a potential web app here. Something like Crossfire was for
TV, just less "fueling the argument" and more "getting both sides of the
story."

~~~
anigbrowl
Microsoft Research has developed an interesting experiment along those lines,
which unfortunately remains offline, although someone has registered the
domain: <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/blews/>

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gb
I can't say I'm surprised really, surely it's just another example of
confirmation bias?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias>

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TomOfTTB
I think this study is flawed based on their sample which was college students.
Anyone who has read something they don't agree with realizes it creates an
emotional response. At the same time people tend to be more emotional when
they are younger. Paticularly in College where most people see politics as a
way to "change the world"

So a conclusion based on college students doesn't really impress me. Of course
very emotional people are going to avoid things that cause a negative
emotional response

I guess it does tell us that the emotional side of us seeks out like minded
people but that seems like common sense to me. Part of being an adult is
realizing your emotions shouldn't dictate what you do and seeking out thoughts
you might not agree with. Not every adult does it but every adult should.

~~~
rw
We can use our emotions as a shortcut to save on processing time. Whether or
not that shortcut leads us to the correct answer is a different question.
Emotions are not _bad_ , they are just often dangerous when dealing with
situations outside of our evolutionary context (groups of at most 160 hunter-
gatherers, etc.).

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arrrg
I’ve just read “The People’s Choice” by Lazarsfeld et al. which was published
in 1948. It’s about the US presidential election of 1944 – really old and a
social science classic.

By repeatedly interviewing 600 people in Erie County, Ohio, they wanted to
find out how and why opinions change (and don’t) during a presidential
campaign. What they found out was surprising: mass media had very little
influence and generally didn’t change opinions. It activated voters (with
predispositions). It reinforced them (after they made up their mind). If
anything changed votes then it was interpersonal communication.

If such a old study already looked at whether people pick media according to
their views I find it very hard to imagine that this is really news.

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sak84
A more quantitative look at this same thing. Basically saying that people pick
what interests them. This is pretty technical, but by some pretty smart
people:

<http://home.uchicago.edu/~jmshapir/bias.pdf>

And, my own experiment with media influence. This counteracts both the master
link and the link above. My short experiment has correlation to show that the
media has more influence on public perception. Though, this was just a proof-
of-concept and not a vetted research project:

<http://publicthoughts.com/media-affects-opinion/>

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tezza
The Economist had a feature article a while back, which cheekily said _IIRC_

"[The British] like newspapers, especially those they agree with"

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jganetsk
If this article is true, than what kind of people would choose to read this
article?

~~~
anigbrowl
Elitist jerks who like to believe they're superior to the great mass of
people. I, on the other hand, didn't bother because in my infinite wisdom I
already knew this fact to be true :-)

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natmaster
This just in, the sky is blue!

