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Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

economist.com

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Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#231

Post by stevenicr »

oarsinsync wrote: post #172
nickelpro wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who engage with social media do so freely. If the content wasn't what they wanted or sought out, it wouldn't be popular and successful. Would you rather have it policed? A grand council that determines which algorithms you may enjoy and which are verboten?

> People who engage with social media do so freely. If the content wasn't what they wanted or sought out, it wouldn't be popular and successful. My local tennis club only publishes to Twitter. They do not operate a mailing list anymore. I want to play tennis, be notified of same day court cancellations, be notified when new classes are available to book. I don’t want to use social media. What do I do? Give up tennis?…

I have a couple 'twitter to rss' things saved in my recent bookmarks - anyone know if / how these work?

I've seen that fbook recently made it 'possible' to export your posts to wordpress..

We need to have data export options - and any 'public' page / group - should have export auto-enabled so that regular people can easily pull in via rss or rss-to-email - or similar type of accessibility imho.

Not sure if this sort of thing is in the 'kitchen sink against tech valley' that the house is putting together, but it should be.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#232

Post by stevenicr »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #230
systemvoltage wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The weak willed company management is weakened because of the mob. It's a full circle. Company management would be on the chopping block of they try to disagree with the mob. It would destroy the company into absolute dust. So, they comply.

> It would destroy the company into absolute dust. I honestly don’t think it would. The Twitter mob is a bunch of loud voices, that’s all. A bunch of people using online. I doubt they could arrange an actual effective boycott.

I believe this mostly as well - I'm sure there could be a few exceptions - but generally I don't see major impact on real world sales from twitter mobs of the week being a thing -

I do wonder if anyone has put together stats on this to show that once [any-twitter-outrage]-reaches X number of tweets/retweets - then some companies act, with y number os tweets/retweets Y number of companies react..

To discern, how many people you need to become a twitter mob for thing Z - to get a public statement/apology.. firing.. whatever cancelling.

I started to research this a bit some time ago and have not found a memorable chart or anything - surely someone has done this (?)

I've been seeing some trends of vocal minority cause change - even when majority don't even know there is a discussion of said changes - and it's often more powerful than it should be imho.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#233

Post by goldenchrome »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #214
ehnto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians knew more about American politics day to day during Trumps presidency than we did our own politics. It was surreal.

As an American, I am sorry. It is sad that our wealth is used to export such media and indoctrination.

Speak for yourself. As someone who’s lived in Australia and America, I find Australians (and I imagine people in other countries too) love to consume American politics instead of their own politics because America is more interesting than their own relatively stable politics. Then many of them delight in looking down on Americans because of how “crazy” it seems. I tell people to worry about their own countries. It’s not like they’re forced to care about America on a day-to-day basis They choose it.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#234

Post by wolverine876 »

acituan wrote: post #226
wolverine876 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a conceptual question but doesn't call into question the practical reality: People clearly have some identity as a group, and act against other perceived groups. In the last few years it's gone from subtle to brazenly, proudly advocated, as evidenced by ethnic nationalism. Arguably, much of the worst in human history was born from discrimination against a group: Armenians, Tutsis, Jews, African-Americans, Musl…

I'll start with your second question. > How do you reconcile what you say with the fact that people do have group identities - not as their complete identity, but part of it - and act as a group and treat others as members of groups? This has evolutionary roots in kin selection ; we as primates do have some machinery that makes us favor the survival of individuals that fulfill some definition of kin. I want to make i…

Very well written, and I agree completely. Usually I don't bother going that far on HN (and I didn't know the theory so clearly) because I wonder who else is as interested as I am. I'm glad you are.

To give an example of what you describe, many white Americans used to choose identities over where they emigrated from: Italian vs Irish vs Polish, etc. Now many identify around being white Americans, against people with other skin color and against immigrants.

> Is this because the flexibility of categorical identity was (ab)used by those who wouldn't find discussions around class identity favorable, or because there was a true essence to those initial categories? My vote; it is more #1 than not.

There's no true essence to it; that's an assertion by people trying to protect their power against the inevitable flexibility of groups. But also, some of it is not intentional either - it can be just incidental - and I suspect much is the artifact of prior intention: Their grandparents refused to associate with black-skinned people, and so now they don't know any black-skinned people, so they don't identify with them, and black-skinned people become the unknown.

> To sum up; group identities are self-fulfilling, overly flexible and most importantly purpose built constructs. Wrongly choosing the category could as well ossify the problems it is trying to solve than to help people break free of them. I'll even one up; the meta-group of "belonging to a group" is even bigger of a problem; to convince people that the fact that they can be group-things is more important than them being individuals creates a greater host of framing issues for them.

While I agree, we must still solve the present(and past) harm done to people for being identified with certain groups. I'd always work to leave the door open to what you are saying, but that doesn't help black people (and LGBTQ and others) who are threatened and harmed today.

But generally, I'm with you. ;)

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#235

Post by mensetmanusman »

goldenchrome wrote: post #233
mensetmanusman wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American, I am sorry. It is sad that our wealth is used to export such media and indoctrination.

Speak for yourself. As someone who’s lived in Australia and America, I find Australians (and I imagine people in other countries too) love to consume American politics instead of their own politics because America is more interesting than their own relatively stable politics. Then many of them delight in looking down on Americans because of how “crazy” it seems. I tell people to worry about their own countries. It’s…

I did mean to only speak for myself, sorry if that wasn’t clear.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#236

Post by fomine3 »

coliveira wrote: post #96
mc32 wrote: post #14

What's a bit ironic to me is that this extension of US cultural hegemony used to be derided as cultural imperialism back a few decades ago before other cultural exports became vogue (Anime, K-Pop, etc.) when it was the US vs everyone else. But now, many of the people who would have decried this kind of hegemonic influence delight in it. They delight in the fact we can establish norms for communication and discourse n…

It is clearly imperialism pure and simple. The US uses its financial stronghold on internet companies to essentially dictate what is allowed or not in public discuss. You don't need to be very smart to see that Google, FB, Twitter are bound to US norms and regulations (and its surveillance state) and give very little thought to what other countries need/want. If you think this is normal, just think again.

This is more serious on AppStore / Google Play / Kindle. American companies effectively censor worldwide expression.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#237

Post by fomine3 »

Popegaf wrote: post #144

The rest of the world should be aggressively promoting their culture, values and language, just like the US. Japan is doing a very good job of that with the proliferation of weebs, but others are not. Europe barely exports any culture or media - especially in their own languages. Most things EU are regionally locked and if they aren't, they are behind paywalls or accessible through American networks. Were I to try an…

For Japan, government won't do good things to export our recent culture like Game, Manga, Anime. They has been exported well without government's support, but maybe thanks to company and community's effort. (Traditional culture is different story)

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#238

Post by refurb »

lainga wrote: post #30
ehnto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians knew more about American politics day to day during Trumps presidency than we did our own politics. It was surreal.

Same in Canada. The CBC was particularly egregious. The "World" section was just the "US Politics" section. I stopped reading; but, of course, like all Canadians, I have kept funding it.

Yup. I was up in Canada visiting friends last year and the first 20 min (out of 30 min) of the CBC national news was Trump coverage or coverage of US politics in general.

The last 10 minutes were domestic issues.

Really amazing.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#239

Post by refurb »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #214
ehnto wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australians knew more about American politics day to day during Trumps presidency than we did our own politics. It was surreal.

As an American, I am sorry. It is sad that our wealth is used to export such media and indoctrination.

As an American I’m not sorry. People can choose to consume whatever media they want. Don’t like American politics? Stop clicking articles about it.

Re: Social media are turbocharging the export of America’s political culture

#240

Post by refurb »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #47
Jcowell wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure the First Nations people would also agree.

Nice baiting there Jcowell, well played. No country in the world is perfect. Canada is still near the top of the list when it comes to safety and quality of life. It's true that many first nations people struggle. Canada is taking steps to help them (see accelerated vaccination of native communities) and I sincerely wish them all the best. However, dismantling the police probably isn't going to undo things that happe…

Saying Canada is “close to utopia as any country” and then when someone points out a group that repressed for centuries is not a “gotcha”.
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