Negativity drives online news consumption • Hacker News Board

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#161

Post by bawolff » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:00 PM UTC

claytongulick wrote: post #134

ar-nelson wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, news serves three purposes: --- 1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you. 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions. 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or…

State sponsored media generally hasn't worked out too well.

CBC (in canada) is decent enough. I wouldn't call it amazing, but its not a failure (or propaganda) either.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#162

Post by tootie » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:01 PM UTC

gwbrooks wrote: post #154

paulmd wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BBC is one of the best news sources around. For a long time, Al Jazeera was great on anything that didn't directly impact Qatari domestic politics. PBS is pretty fantastic overall and serves a lot of niches that aren't served by commercialized media and really shouldn't be . Like yes if you set out to make a state-sponsored propaganda agency then that's what you get (see: Voice of America, etc), but state sponsorship…

PBS is essentially corporate media, getting ~15% of its budget from government. NPR is even less at ~2%. Corporate vs. public ownership matters a lot less than institutional standards and the org's cultural commitment to a rigorous journalistic mission. BBC has a relatively strong commitment; NPR (my favorite whipping boy for bad journalism packaged as Thinky Stuff) does not.

That's a pretty facile analysis. PBS and NPR both have affiliate models where the dozens of local public radio and tv operate independently and are funded separately utilizing the affiliate network to buy and sell content. They are mostly funded by membership, by government indirectly via CPB grants, and sponsorship.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#163

Post by oblib » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:01 PM UTC

Back in the late `70s early `80s I lived in Los Angeles and I'd grab some fast food after work and go home and sit down and watch the "News". There was only one channel we could get using an antenna. They had 3 half hour news programs back to back. They started out with local news, then National news, then World news.

Basically they scraped up every bit of "Bad News" they could find. Murders, robberies, car wrecks and natural disasters. After a few months of that I noticed I was getting depressed after consuming all that. I'd wake up feeling fine, go to work and get done and still feeling fine. But after that hour and a half I felt like life sucked.

So I quit watching it and the depression went with it. Since then I've made a point monitor the news and learned to keep that in perspective with what's going on close to me.

BTW, that News station was one of the very 1st to be bought up by "FOX". Since then they pivoted from focusing on tragedy to political outrage, but the effect on ones view of life is obviously very much connected to the "news" they consume, and a great many are attracted to gloom and doom and outrage.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#164

Post by bawolff » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

attemptone wrote: post #22

Gare wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, we are primed as animals that we are to be scared and vigilant. Because that ensured survival.

We were also primed to seek comfort and stability. Because that ensured survival. Like OOP said, that was a surface level thought. Finding evidence in evolutionary psychology seems like a big leap from that.

I don't really think that's a good counterexample

News of bad event could directly impinge survival. News of a good thing happening to someone far away does not really improve comfort and stability.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#165

Post by tayo42 » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #120

warner25 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've moved towards this too, for better or worse. Between 18-25, I was very passionate about national politics and macroeconomics and consumed by following political news and fiery debates, as many young people are. As my adult responsibilities grew, I realized that the national political stuff was either irrelevant to my day-to-day life experience and / or not something that I could affect much (not actionable, as y…

Do these fiery debates help? I say as someone who also was like this in my late teens. I do local advocacy for transit and civic planning related purposes in a US city. A lot of the "work" is really boring, just going to long public meetings and listening to SMEs drone about very specific issues. But that's where the sausage gets made. Our local transportation department is very receptive to the public's urban concer…

There's a reddit post that pointed out how much of an outlier your personality has to be to be someone that actively posts online. These online discussions are almost never worth the effort and don't really represent average people.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#166

Post by suzumer » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

t12hrow wrote: post #139

ar-nelson wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, news serves three purposes: --- 1. To let you know about local or world events that could affect you and those close to you. 2. To let you know about world events that affect others far away, in order to judge the effectiveness of political decisions and the necessity of future political decisions. 3. As a form of entertainment derived from the ongoing story of world history (or celebrity gossip, or…

> perhaps government-funded I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement. Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by u…

I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum, with many people posting content, not because they think it is the best thing to post, but because they think it will get a reaction.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#167

Post by agumonkey » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:14 PM UTC

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

Do you think it's always been the case ? I have a strange belief that people before the 60s, through harsher lives, were a lot more resilient and thus less interested by petty news cycles.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#168

Post by Merad » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:22 PM UTC

nonethewiser wrote: post #121

joegahona wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at a food/recipe publication and had a similar experience -- users constantly complained that they wanted more healthy recipes, but those types of recipes always performed poorly. Meatloaf and other comfort foods dominated traffic. This has been a good opening for niche creators on Youtube and such -- i.e., there are plenty of people out there interested in vegan, oil-free recipes, and that audience ca…

Is meatloaf really unhealthy?

I wouldn't call it unhealthy, unless you're of the mindset that red meat is inherently unhealthy. It does retain most of the fat from the ground beef which would cook out of normal burgers or hamburger steak. But it's also more filling than either of those due the fat and the inclusion of bread crumbs or oatmeal as filler.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#169

Post by csharpminor » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:25 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #167

gwbrooks wrote: post #10

Former newspaper city editor here. With few exceptions, positive stories -- although readers clamored for them in surveys -- never drove newsrack sales the way negative stories did. That's why we had a whole section for feel-good features but they didn't usually get prime front-page real estate. In the age of infinite content, headlines have become a sort of drama arms race. But the basic dynamic of what works and wh…

Do you think it's always been the case ? I have a strange belief that people before the 60s, through harsher lives, were a lot more resilient and thus less interested by petty news cycles.

I highly recommend reading old press clippings from your area. Reading headlines from 100 years ago personally made me feel as though not much has changed.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#170

Post by t12hrow » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:27 PM UTC

suzumer wrote: post #166

t12hrow wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps government-funded I suggest the opposite. I'd like a proof that there is no government involvement. Believe it or not, I think the closest to this is ideal is 4chan /pol/. It's not backed by any major corporation (unlike HN which is backed by Y Combinator), it's not partly owned by Tencent/China (unlike Reddit), and so on. There's no algorithm, there's no karma, there's no blue badge, it barely scrapes by u…

I wouldn't describe 4chan as karmaless. While the site bemoans the idea of upvotes (updoots), they'll also be the first to tell you how much they crave replies (which they call "you"s). We can see how much this affects the forum, with many people posting content, not because they think it is the best thing to post, but because they think it will get a reaction.

Yes, I've thought about that. In my opinion, the difference is that "you(s)" often reward controversial/contrarian takes. 4chan is already contrarian so what I mean here is going the opposite way. That is, you can go and post something that's completely against the culture of the forum and you'll get plenty of reactions. Even if it's just insults or slurs.

In a funny way, this incentivises swiming against the current, so there's never a consensus.

Karma on the other hand only creates a chilling effect, beacuse you're either banned or shadowbanned or somehow silenced. Take HN for example, if you post something controversial here not only it doesn't get more visibility, but it's grey-ed out and thrown to the bottom.