> Studies that can't be verified and may be untrue are much more likely to be cited in the media because they tend to be more interesting
"Interesting" -- ha!
A media business knows its clientele and shovels useful fodder to fill the clients' daily trough. The difference today is that people carry a portable trough with them everywhere.
What is "interesting" to people varies, but what is profitable to media business is clear: purveying ignorance is more lucrative and sustains marketshare.
This may be the biggest socio-political problem of the era. Democracy depends on the success of education and social discourse. I think people _do_ want education and healthy discourse... but their worse impulses are being nourished.
Even old-style media companies knew how to turn nonsense into profit. There is a clientele for prepackaged, facile ignorance. It's the art of propaganda.
Social media has revealed that significant numbers of people proudly maintain and propagate brutish thinking. The modern educational system seems helpless to counteract this phenomenon.
Using modern portable tools, it has become easier than ever to propagate ignorance. It's not just the people, though. It's the people and the "corporate citizens" who are looting civilisation.
> Studies that can't be verified and may be untrue are much more likely to be cited in the media because they tend to be more interesting
"Interesting" -- ha!
A media business knows its clientele and shovels useful fodder to fill the clients' daily trough. The difference today is that people carry a portable trough with them everywhere.
What is "interesting" to people varies, but what is profitable to media business is clear: purveying ignorance is more lucrative and sustains marketshare.
This may be the biggest socio-political problem of the era. Democracy depends on the success of education and social discourse. I think people _do_ want education and healthy discourse... but their worse impulses are being nourished.
Even old-style media companies knew how to turn nonsense into profit. There is a clientele for prepackaged, facile ignorance. It's the art of propaganda.
Social media has revealed that significant numbers of people proudly maintain and propagate brutish thinking. The modern educational system seems helpless to counteract this phenomenon.
Using modern portable tools, it has become easier than ever to propagate ignorance. It's not just the people, though. It's the people and the "corporate citizens" who are looting civilisation.