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Negativity drives online news consumption

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Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#311
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Reply with a response that will get the response you want.

This is something that I understand, but unfortunately can't really perform for some reason. I always have to be... "honest", for lack of a better word. I will always say something that makes things worse for me because it's... just how I feel.

I used to be a pathological liar, and from a young age I had this one friend who was a living lie detector, and they trained it out of me so hard that I now obsessively tell the truth in all situations even when it would be detrimental. ;-;

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#312
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.

Are you implying PBS does not have a commitment to a "rigorous journalistic mission"? It seems quite disingenuous to lump PBS and NPR as "corporate media" in the same light as corporate media entities like Fox News, CNN, et al.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#313

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…

I only recently discovered PBS news. I thought it was great to have #1, #2 without much entertainment. Realistically I stopped watching after a few weeks as it was kinda boring. There needs to be some #3 in any offering.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the reason people indoctrinate isn't because they want them to be negative, but to realize that being pessimistic is actually going to be a more reliable way to have a plan for life when no one is able to help I take it you are a conservative. This is a perennial city people (liberal) versus rural folk (conservative) discussion that will never have a resolution. Liberals generally don’t believe in the idea that "no…

Urban living is more anonymous and alienating than rural living. There are too many people in a city to form relationships with everyone, you don't know 99.9% of the people you see in daily life because there are so many moving around. On the other hand in a small village, most times you see another person it's a repeated interaction and you have met that person before. So the rural conservative view and values on so…

Do you have evidence of this? Survey or something?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#315

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…

sometime around the 2016 US Presidential elections, when outragebait headlines had arguably achieved a local maximum, I will now never forget how I overcame headline rage forever. I saw some headline about how students at some school, Berkeley I believe, had joined arms and surrounded the front entrance to the school, and would only allow non-white students to go through, forcing white students to go around and enter…

> and how, once I was made consciously aware of this phenomenon, it was really on me to consent to this blatant emotional manipulation—which, I then realized, I had totally been doing for years at that point!

Welcome to the equanimity of Stoicism.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#316
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I actually get more annoyed when "my own" political side does this. They take the worst possible example of the other side and make outragous article about them. Yet I know most people on the other side are actually good people, with good intentions, we just disagree on a few points. Yet all I ever see in the media are ridiculous parodies of the other side. I've basically stopped almost all politics reading at…

I have less of a side as I age. The opposing side would probably have a convert if they weren’t dominated by raving lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage. I have a feeling a lot of people across the political spectrum feel the same. Some day one of the parties is going to find not pandering to the emotional appeals of their brand of extremists is actually a huge political gain. I hope for that day, but not much.

> The opposing side would probably have a convert if they weren’t dominated by raving lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage.

It's telling that I literally can't tell which side you're referring to, as both sides seem dominated by raving lunatics obsessed with offensive garbage. I guess amplifying that garbage is exactly what sells, which is why reporting of each side focuses on that.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the sense that you think I'm saying more here than I actually am. I'm not proposing that this is the only kind of news that should exist, only that it would be nice if it existed for the kind of people that want to read (only) this kind of news. And I'm generally in agreement that most attempts to quantify 'truth' in media are hopelessly dependent on personal bias---but this mostly shows up in category #2 in my…

> …a government news service's commitment to the principles I listed could be defined by enforceable laws. The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws. You want to see suppression of “fake news”, aka anything that makes the ruling party look bad, then look no further than government run media services. I think they thought long and hard before they add freed…

> The problem is whoever controls the government and controls the news is also the one enforcing the laws.

I know that it is not as applicable today, but you should really look into the whole 'separation of powers' thing.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See you in 5 years! Though I almost agree with ChatGPT not revolutionalizing anything.

Depends how loosely we interpret this. Do we mean online AI language models which are part of a continuous lineage tracing back to the present chatGPT will not have revolutionized anything, or do we mean that OpenAI and their product line known as chatGPT in particular will not have revolutionized anything? Let's disambiguate now so no one says we are equivocating in 5 years. I'm understanding it to mean the former.

I mean the latter. Science progresses with big steps every now and then so it would be crazy for me to claim "AI will never exist". It's clear that eventually we'll get there.

It's a fact that somebody somewhere thought of making better bearings for their horse-pulled carriages centuries ago. That person does not get credit for modern cars' suspension systems however.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#320

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…

Just choose better news sources. Plenty are serious and high-consequence information - much more than I have time to read, in fact.

Interesting, got any examples?
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