Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 964 posts

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#81

Post by enraged_camel »

api wrote: post #7
ProjectArcturis wrote: post #4

I identify pretty closely with one side. But certainly there are Outrage Machines on both sides, a network of media and personalities hyping up the latest calumny that the other side committed, for views and clicks. These machines can't slow down -- even if the other side has been quiet lately, all those people need something to do and talk about. They'll find something.

One thing a lot of people miss is that there is a profit motive here. You can make money, sometimes a lot of money, by building a huge social media following being a political outrage merchant. You can find examples of people doing this on all sides, especially at the extremes where outrage and other powerful negative emotions can most easily be stirred up. All the outrage over "cancel culture" is not about censorshi…

Yep. Look at it this way: the same Republicans who whine about cancel culture went ahead and stripped one of their own, Liz Cheney, of her committee positions merely for the crime of daring to oppose Trump. That should tell you all you need to know about their hypocrisy.

edit: I guess I hit a nerve, lol

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#82

Post by andreygrehov »

I worked at a large US news agency for several years. It's a for-profit shit show.

After watching CNN's technical director saying on spy cam that their publication is entirely driven by propaganda, I lost trust in all the news agencies out there. Quote:

> Yeah. I mean like Trump, we did it, like when Trump was, I don't know, like his hand was shaking or whatever I think. We brought in like so many medical people to like all tell a story that like, it was all speculation, that he was neurologically damaged, that he was losing it. He's unfit to, you know, whatever. We were... we were creating a story there that we didn't know anything about, you know? That's what -- I think that's propaganda, you know? We had nothing else to run with at that time. We were like, just taking shots off the bow just hoping something would hit, you know?

I'm a massive centrist, not a US citizen, trying to be as objective as possible. A shit and for-profit/power propaganda is flowing from both ends.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#83

Post by Miner49er »

benzible wrote: post #42

AllSides buys wholesale into right-wing framing. By what measure is CNN's news coverage on the leftmost side of the spectrum? Is MSNBC really the equivalent of Jacobin or Mother Jones, especially when it devotes 3 hours each morning to center-right Morning Joe? https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings

I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. It doesn't make sense to put a socialist website like Jacobin in the same category as liberal sites. It's two very different and opposing political philosophies.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#84

Post by bigbob2 »

mrfusion wrote: post #68
vsskanth wrote: post #8

I tried this experiment: read nytimes, wapo, fox, national review and politico. I wanted to get different perspectives. However, I encountered a bunch of issues: They dont talk about or even cover the same things, which makes it hard to compare liberal vs conservative perspectives. This is the most common form of bias I've come across. In the rare case they do cover the same thing, many articles either simply do not…

IMO Comparing viewpoints isn’t as important as simply popping you out of the bubble. The key is to distrust the media more than you distrust the “other side”.

Exactly. The reality is there almost always exists more than two viewpoints. Maybe it's not done deliberately, but this false dilemma may be a big reason the echo chamber effect is so powerful. I'll also acknowledge it's difficult to find reputable sources which present more than two viewpoints.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#85

Post by Impassionata »

Noos wrote: post #57

Nah, the echo chambers are tightening into dominant and submissive; it seems like people are because they are reacting to patently extreme behavior, but in reality modern culture is very much a leftist dominant narrative with a submissive conservative boogeyman narrative. The issue to me is more that the extremes are so extreme as to be unworkable; you have people being unironic nazis, monarchists, and marxist-commun…

>submissive conservative boogeyman narrative.

The Republican party is engaged in a fascist lie about the validity of our elections. Wake up.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#86

Post by dandellion »

nkingsy wrote: post #64
throwaway894345 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how only 1% of American film characters are identifiably Muslim ; however, nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious…

American media is a global industry and is serving a customer base of much more than the US population.

As a non-american, american media does a terrible job of representing anything outside america, so if that's the reason I would really appreciate if they could stop it...

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#87

Post by ggggtez »

The problem of course is that not every issue needs a "both sides" treatment. Sometimes there are questions of objective facts that reading lies from alternative sources do not actually help you in understanding the truth of the world.

The person who desperately tries to cite "50/50" liberal and conservative sources in the article is the worst kind of fence sitter. Sometimes, one side or the other is just wrong, or their position is disingenuous. It doesn't make sense to provide a fair and balanced view when the other view is that maybe there are literal demons running the government.

One of these sites outright says they offer a "conspiracy theorist" feed. While there is some educational benefit to understanding what those people are reading, in the context of getting a balanced perspective, we should acknowledge it's useless information to most people, if not downright harmful.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#89

Post by slumdev »

XorNot wrote: post #59
Noos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Like a recent cancel attempt was Scott Cawthon, creator of the game series Five Nights at Freddy's. His crime? Voting for trump. No really, that's it. His games weren't political, and while he was open about who he was, he pretty much seemed to be inoffensive in practice. But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so, and as far as i know he was definitely not trolling them…

> But since his fanbase has a lot of LGBT, they felt betrayed because he did so The LGBT community was [1] and still are violently attacked for the mere act of existing. The idea that people's political beliefs, what, don't affect other people who live in that country? Is insane. Voting is a political act which affects others. If someone votes for a politician who gives cover and support to a group which - as an exam…

Running a gay bar in New York City wasn't illegal in 1969.

The Stonewall Inn was effectively a brothel with mafia protection, not a gay version of Cheers.

Re: Some Americans are breaking out of political echo chambers

#90

Post by mc32 »

nkingsy wrote: post #64
throwaway894345 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do the same thing, and I've noticed that this "they don't present the other side" thing is getting worse with time. I recently read [this HuffPo article][0] about how only 1% of American film characters are identifiably Muslim ; however, nowhere in the article does it even mention the share of Americans who are Muslim, nor the share of movie characters that are of other religions. These things are certainly obvious…

American media is a global industry and is serving a customer base of much more than the US population.

Isn’t all feature film global at this point? Are there producers in Japan or China who’d say, no I do not want my film exported.
Post reply on HN