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(Social) media manipulation in one image
21–30 of 57 posts
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#22While the image itself is interesting, and indeed points out one of the reasons I don’t watch/read the news from mass media, there are two problems I find with the (clickbait) title:
1. “Manipulation” suggests that outlets are leading people to believe these ratios of causes of deaths, when in fact, they’re just reporting on what they think viewers find more interesting (basically unnatural over natural causes of death).
2. The “(social)” feels misplaced. “Social” media, to me, always represents media shared by others, not by news, via sites and apps like TikTok, FB, Instagram, etc. The image only shows news media (though I’m sure this isn’t far from what the distribution also looks like on actual social media).
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#23When I meet my friends and tell them about my last vacation instead of my work, how I slept, and how often I brush my teeth, is that also “manipulation”?
If your friend then believes that work, sleep, and hygiene are not things you did at all because you don't talk about them, then your analogy would be comparable. People believe homicide and terrorism are significantly more common than they are, and vote accordingly. It's affecting all of our lives. Let me know when your vacation stories change public policy, and then I'll start complaining about those.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#24The news should be reporting abnormal causes of death. So I don't think the narrative here is correct.
Maybe take the derivative over time, draw new graphs, and then we're talking.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#25While the image itself is interesting, and indeed points out one of the reasons I don’t watch/read the news from mass media, there are two problems I find with the (clickbait) title: 1. “Manipulation” suggests that outlets are leading people to believe these ratios of causes of deaths, when in fact, they’re just reporting on what they think viewers find more interesting (basically unnatural over natural causes of dea…
It becomes social because inevitably it will be shared. They are the source material.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#26This kind of graph always irks me as it almost seems to imply that "unbiased" or "objective" (and therefore ideal) news reporting would just be some kind of daily feed with coverage of randomly sampled events.
I don't think it's implying that at all. Especially with the accompanying sentence. The implication is that hyper focusing on news is distorting our perception of normal.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#27The problem is that everyone dies some day so there's never going to be equality between causes of death and reporting rates. You might expect some correlation between preventable causes and reporting, and in-part that's what's being seen here.
Why does inevitable death mean there’s never going to be reporting equality on the causes? I don’t understand your logic. The image in the article includes a summary of the top causes, so… it is possible?
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#28The world has changed a lot in the past hundred years. People don't really die violent deaths at the hands of others much any more. Journalism has failed to keep up, and images like this show that very clearly.
It’s a chicken-and-egg problem. News content, just like all other content, is tracked and analyzed for engagement. Publishers want to create content that people want to engage with, and we see over and over again that people prefer content that elicits a reaction. Also, news subscriptions are now seen as a luxury good and not an essential need. Who wants to pay $15/month for a report on how many people died of heart…
It might be worth paying to get good information free of "engagement farming". But even someone who does pay such a subscription, probably would not read it.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#29The first leftmost column of most common causes of death (heart disease, etc) ... would be a "dog bites man" story. The rightmost columns of media coverage (homicides, terrorism, plane crashes, etc) ... are "man bites dog" stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog It's just the nature of journalism and headlines. E.g. A frequent story that hits the front page of HN is "I'm quitting social media..." But the…
yesss! this x 1000
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#30The first leftmost column of most common causes of death (heart disease, etc) ... would be a "dog bites man" story. The rightmost columns of media coverage (homicides, terrorism, plane crashes, etc) ... are "man bites dog" stories. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog It's just the nature of journalism and headlines. E.g. A frequent story that hits the front page of HN is "I'm quitting social media..." But the…
> It's just the nature of journalism and headlines.
It's incumbent on these organizations, which want to be seen as purveyors of truth, to make sure their readers end up with the proper understanding. If lots of people end up thinking men biting dogs is a bigger problem than dogs biting men, they've failed at that.
They really ought to put up some kind of corrective explanation (sort of like the NYT's disclosures of their lawsuit with OpenAI) in a prominent place of most articles that could leave a wrong impression on readers. That shouldn't be much of a problem for the NYT (which I'm most familiar), because its articles tend to be longer with much more background and context than those of its competitor the Wall Street Journal.