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Negativity drives online news consumption

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Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#301

Post by timeon »

whitemary wrote: post #272
hot_gril wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they're equally bad, only equally silly. They use the same scare tactics every time, and it helps to look past that. Yes I care about the issues. But how I vote is different: just straight down for whatever is the minority party in my state. Only battleground states get the pandering, and I'll stop doing this if I ever live in a battleground state or they change how voting works. State propositions are…

Same but I just don't vote at all, unless there are any strong trustworthy pro-worker candidates which basically doesn't happen. I will also show up to vote against anti-worker ballot measures, which are more frequent.

There are barely any Left-wing policies because there are no Left-wing voters anyway.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#302

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

wolverine876 wrote: post #293
Merad wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> unless you're of the mindset that red meat is inherently unhealthy It's not a mindset, any more than gravity is a mindset.

Too binary. Red meat is "unhealthy" like spinach is unhealthy, using your logic.

A moderate amount, especially lean, is considered a net health positive by the vast majority of the relevant professionals.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#303

Post by Wolfenstein98k »

warner25 wrote: post #111
KoftaBob wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What got me to break out of this habit is realizing that the vast majority of what news sites/tv report on isn't remotely actionable or relevant for the average viewer. It's basically something that scratches the itch of human curiosity, but with manipulative and lowest common denominator garbage. We'd all be better off if we scratched that curiosity itch by reading about things we're interested in, rather than curre…

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…

I think you incorrectly assume that "paying attention" makes your vote more informed.

News generally doesn't "educate" (eg add knowledge to your views that then updates them), it confirms biases.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#304

Post by wanderingmind »

dhab wrote: post #241
bpm140 wrote: post #186

About a year ago, I stopped consuming news cold turkey (save technology and movie news [the former work-necessary and the latter a personal vice]). I took the extra step of banning Twitter and Memeorandum at the router level, so that I couldn't revert easily. I didn't read a single political news story in the ensuing six months. Some of the happiest months of my life. These days I will read the section headlines on M…

I think it's a bit extreme. I have developed some heurisitics, which so far are (living in Australia): * news.com.au = clickbait * government funded ones = abc, sbs are free and ok * 9 news, 7 news = negative * google news = aggregator of mostly negative news * AFR, Sydney Morning Herald, .. few others = ok My experience with twitter has been the following: * I look at some content I subscribed for (humor, or tech re…

The most interesting news website for down under is theconversation. The quality is much much higher than any other general news website I have ever read.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#305

Post by ianai »

LoganDark wrote: post #196
Dalewyn wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the most common bit of wisdom I've heard from older folks is to ignore the news. Don't read the newspaper, don't watch TV news, don't listen to radio news, etc.; they all say nothing in them is worth our time. It's among the most useful piece of advice I've ever had.

Going too far in the other direction can be pretty annoying, too, though. I'm autistic and vehemently ignore and reject most pieces of news, especially political, and that causes tons of terrible things to happen whenever some sort of spoiler gets out and I happen to see it. It's like I'm proud of my great ignorance and having that threatened with mere knowledge sends me into a panic of some sort. It's not just news.…

Reply with a response that will get the response you want. If you want them to leave the topic, say something non-engaging like “ok”.

You’re likely to come across not entirely socially acceptable in either case, but that’s probably impossible to counter.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#306

Post by endominus »

wolverine876 wrote: post #292
coldtea wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work Citizens that are active and care, is what's necessary for democracy to work, that is, citizens which actively monitor, and participate in, political developments. Mere "informed voters" just voting once every 4-5 years do not really make democracy, even if we were to be generous and assume that the elections-very-X-years model and the existing representation hierarchie…

> the number one source of information of citizens should be real life experience with other citizens that they're actively learning from (their issues, grievances, etc with laws, political decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate with. Not the media. How can the real life experiences of people I know possibly inform me about Ukraine, Chinese foreign policy, the SVB bailout, pandemic issues, etc. etc. etc.?

In what way are you allowed to change state level policy on those issues? Should you (and by extension, everyone in your democratic society) be allowed to do so?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#307

Post by vasco »

ar-nelson wrote: post #132
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…

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…

> it will inspire constant anxiety

Realize that while they might make it more likely for some, this is not the default. You should not feel anxious just consuming regular news. If you do you should probably talk to a doctor as this seems like an unhealthy thing.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#308

Post by h2odragon »

specproc wrote: post #7

We've got huge quantities of multilingual news data with social metrics (e.g. newsapi.ai), classification models, research APIs for Twitter. But Nature's running Upworthy and dictionary-based classification? It's almost low-N by today's standards. This is the sort of paper that could have been written a couple of decades ago.

There was no need to reach for more sophisticated tools; these were sufficient to give them the results they wanted.

I suspect you wanted research where people look at the world and discover what it means. This is the other kind, where people decide what they want the world to look like, then paint their data to reflect that.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#309

Post by attemptone »

bawolff wrote: post #164
attemptone wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

News of a bad thing happening to someone far away does not really impact survival as well.

The point was not about providing a good counter-example. I wanted to show that when one hand-waves away a behavoiur to an abstract selection criteria, one can easily come up with criteria that contradicts that notion.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#310

Post by coldtea »

wolverine876 wrote: post #292
coldtea wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #2 is perhaps necessary for democracy to work Citizens that are active and care, is what's necessary for democracy to work, that is, citizens which actively monitor, and participate in, political developments. Mere "informed voters" just voting once every 4-5 years do not really make democracy, even if we were to be generous and assume that the elections-very-X-years model and the existing representation hierarchie…

> the number one source of information of citizens should be real life experience with other citizens that they're actively learning from (their issues, grievances, etc with laws, political decisions, officials, etc) and collaborate with. Not the media. How can the real life experiences of people I know possibly inform me about Ukraine, Chinese foreign policy, the SVB bailout, pandemic issues, etc. etc. etc.?

Democracy begins at home. If there's no active citizenry with real-world knowledge from discussion, colloboration, and participation in domestic issues, then there's just individuals being governed like cattle, and they being informed on whatever foreign issue doesn't matter: they'll just be listening to whatever those in power will be doing, like they do in domestic issues.

Also notice how I said "the number one source of information" and not "the sole source of information".

And it's not just about "people you know". When far more citizens were far more politically active, e.g. in the sixties and seventies for example, you could learn about developments in any part of the US, and actual perspectives and experiences of people involved, be it workers, blacks, gays, student, veterans, and so on - without reading an establishment print media once.

People and citizens movements were networked and exchanging experiences and perspectives, and they didn't even have internet, they had to do it by mouth, snail mail, real world gatherings, indie press, and so on.

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