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‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

theguardian.com

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Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#421

Post by stale2002 »

jacobion wrote: post #52
zozbot234 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeremy Corbyn has praised Karl Marx as "a great economist", FWIW.

Karl Marx WAS a great economist. Is this something one is no longer allowed to say without being smeared as an extremist?

> Karl Marx WAS a great economist.

He really was not. He was great at politics. He was great at taping into things that workers cared about.

But his actual economics that he laid out, in Das Kapital? The actual mathmatical equations in it, and falsifiable predictions in that book? The labor theory of value?

All pretty worthless. Basically no serious academic takes the labor theory of value seriously. It is non-sense.

Heterodox economic theories are heterodox for a reason. That reason being that they are not reflective of reality.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#422

Post by ardy42 »

klipt wrote: post #404
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention.

The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year.

> The Google trends for "black lives matter" searches peak in 2016 and 2020. The media only brings it up in election years, even though police brutality happens every year.

That's correlation, not causation. Even if there's a connection to election years, the causality could very well be reversed (e.g. activists increase their efforts to get attention when it matters most). However, I'm inclined to think your observation is just coincidence or misses a critical factor.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#423

Post by liveoneggs »

another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

"news" about tweets is the most ridiculous thing to happen in the last decade.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#424

Post by ardy42 »

jimbokun wrote: post #176
alex_c wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wish I had a way to block Twitter from my life completely. I don't even use it, but I wish for an AdBlock-like tool that would: - block Twitter content in news articles - block links to articles with Twitter content from ever being shown to me in the first place Most news articles provide little value to my life anyway, but I don't think I've ever read an article referencing Twitter quotes that was worthw…

One of the absolute laziest ways to write a "news" article is the "here are a list of things people tweeted about this topic" compilation.

> One of the absolute laziest ways to write a "news" article is the "here are a list of things people tweeted about this topic" compilation.

It's definitely less work that investigative journalism, but to the extent that twitter is influential, it's a topic that should be covered.

IMHO, the media has (at least) two important jobs: 1) conduct novel investigations and 2) summarize the firehose of events and ideas into a form concise enough for someone to read on a daily/weekly basis. "What people are saying on social media" falls squarely into the second category.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#426

Post by Barrin92 »

shadowgovt wrote: post #238

That's not particularly surprising. The core of the US Revolutionary movement was very small relative to the total population

I was about to say, isn't virtually everything fought over by a tiny minority? Like was there ever a point in history when culture wasn't determined by either elites or revolutionary groups? The indifferent, amorphous general population just swings wherever successful opinion-making moves, that's not news, and also not really relevant.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#427

Post by ardy42 »

sokoloff wrote: post #419
ardy42 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the US, it seems these 13% receive outsize political attention as well. I recall at the run up to the 2016 election, one of the main issues was gender and public bathroom usage. I couldn't help wondering at the time why that issue received so much attention vs. the 42,000 opioid overdose fatalities that year alone, which got virtually zero attention. One factor in that is America is a pretty unequal society, and…

Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy? Because I sure don't see opiate abuse or ODs as a problem disproportionately affecting the poor. Sure, it affects a lot of poor people, but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias migh…

> Is bathroom choice a problem of the relatively wealthy?

Your rephrase lost an important nuance. I said "problems the relatively wealthy face." Bathroom choice is a problem wealth can't really solve or mitigate, so it's one they still face (either directly or through their children or peers).

> but it also affects a fair number of the wealthy, quite possibly in numbers greater than their proportion in the population. (It's hard to judge because every celebrity overdose will be widely reported, so availability bias might be affecting my perception.)

IMO, celebrity drug abuse is kinda a different thing, because celebrities are a special, tiny class that's easy to hold yourself apart from.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#428

Post by Viliam1234 »

zests wrote: post #258
another-dave wrote: post #56

I think the main culprit exacerbating this is the main stream media. "Vox pops" have formed part of filling air-time or column inches for a long while, but this is largely replaced now by journalists looking at Twitter and either a) using that as a stand-in for 'this is what the public think' or b) making it the story itself. Social media is no longer just "second screen" below-the-line commenting on events, it's hel…

Read the Economist or probably any "content is paid by subscriptions and not advertisements" news sources.

It is possible to collect money from both subscriptions and advertisers. Arguably, people willing to pay for subscriptions are a more interesting target for the advertisers.

Re: ‘Culture wars’ are fought by tiny minority – UK study

#430

Post by rjkennedy98 »

readarticle wrote: post #296
rjkennedy98 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I've honestly never hear of "Western" ethnicity, but I get what you are trying to say. Hispanics tend to self-identify as white, especially after a few generations. I think the rest of your analysis is just wrong. First there was no "English" America. America from the start had European immigrants. New York was a Dutch colony. The early censuses used "white" and it always meant the same it means today. This id…

I’m not arguing whiteness will progress, I’m arguing against the idea there will be little shared ethnic background in California or Texas, and their “minority majorities”. That ~20% figure is repeated in California and Texas, while the Hispanic and Non-Hispanic white populations are almost perfectly equal in size. These populations intermix at very high rates powered on one side at least by very strong social forces…

Today, in California the percentage of white babies is ~27%. Today.

How on earth can you possibly say that in 2098 that "a huge percentage of white babies ... will be white"? Are there any demographic studies that say this? Where are you getting this info from? Rarely do projections even go that far.

Even US Census predictions have been off by huge margins within a few years because of unexpected declines in longevity, birth rates, ect.

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