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

Negativity drives online news consumption

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 375 posts

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#331

Post by gwbrooks »

gnz11 wrote: post #312
gwbrooks wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Two different issues, right? Reasonable people can disagree with her PBS and NPR are corporate media.

But I am very comfortable critiquing the consistently low quality of NPR journalism.

That doesn't mean that they're in the same league with the worst of cable news. However, some of the dynamics are similar:

* Journalists interviewing other journalists;

* Stories with no balance from opposing-view sources; and

* Facts regularly asserted by the journalist rather than a credible source.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#332

Post by UncleEntity »

Eisenstein wrote: post #317
UncleEntity wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …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.

The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws and is also traditionally the leader of the party.

Congress can pass all the laws it wants but they have no power to ensure they are being acted upon. And sometimes have no power to stop them from being violated like the whole Trail of Tears thing where a sitting president blatantly violated the law with no repercussions.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#333

Post by Eisenstein »

UncleEntity wrote: post #332
Eisenstein wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws and is also traditionally the leader of the party. Congress can pass all the laws it wants but they have no power to ensure they are being acted upon. And sometimes have no power to stop them from being violated like the whole Trail of Tears thing where a sitting president blatantly violated the law with no repercussions.

> The executive branch is in charge of enforcing the laws

What does the Judicial branch do again?

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#334

Post by TorontoTheGood »

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…

You sort of get to see this in real time on Reddit, upvotes generally goes to stuff that upsets people.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#335

Post by thomastjeffery »

I think the situation is a bit more complex than this; or at least that it can be.

The thing driving consumption is engagement. So what can news provide that drives engagement?

Incomplete narrative.

Conflict is probably the most familiar place to find an incomplete narrative. The easiest way to present conflict is from a negative perspective. A problem that is missing a solution is very easy to engage with.

Mystery is another. What really happened? What will happen next? Speculate!

These are broadly considered "lazy journalism", and for good reason. Controversial narratives are trivial to construct, even when the controversy itself is fake. Mystery is either an incomplete story or speculative fiction.

---

The best works of journalism present a complete story, but that doesn't leave much to engage with. It might be interesting. It might be complicated. It might be important. Is that enough? Sometimes.

Stories that good don't get written every day. If they did, they would become relatively mundane. The news does get published every day. What can we do except to fill the days in between with conflict and mystery?

What kinds of engagement are actually positive? Can they compete?

---

I visit hacker news because it is thriving with examples of positive engagement.

New tools, educational exposition, open questions, historical exploration, etc. Many of the posts here aren't news per se, but they are better than vain controversy.

I think that news organizations should diversify their content and presentation formats. Find more alternatives to "new" than opinion and speculation. Present opportunities for objectivity instead of neatly wrapped conclusions.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#336

Post by t12hrow »

dahart wrote: post #325
t12hrow wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (a) they're reasonably likely to materially affect some significant portion of readers sometime in the next 6 months, and (b) there's something they can do about it or in response to it. That's the entire point. Who are you to decide that? How can you quantify 'likelyhood to be materially affected'? How can you empirically determine if 'someone can do something about X'? Your opinion is worth the same as the next g…

> Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better [...] the opposite is much much worse. Why do you think this? What is your basis for this claim? Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda, so your claim that the only problem is distinguishing signal from noise is false by your own stated standards. Agenda in reporting is a problem, ther…

> 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information.

Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes.

If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible reporting, your probability of finding truth about important questions in society is extremely low, while they tout it to be really high -- extremely disingenuous. And yes, in all of these places the Opinion section has adquired so much relevance that they are no longer newspapers in the traditional sense.

On the other hand, if you want actual truth, you'll have to read through tons of bullshit, slurs, memes, jokes, fake news, fake tweets, CIA narratives, Mossad/JIDF narratives, but it will be there... buried somewhere deep in a 4chan thread. The great thing about this is that there's no pretense, it's: come at your own risk, use common sense, take everything with a grain of salt, "everything said here is satire".

> Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda

That's definitely true, there's even specific slurs for those pushing propaganda. But that's the beauty of it, there could be conflicting narratives being pushed at once, and there's no way to tell whether someone believes it or is just shilling. At the end of the day, it's just an anonymous comment and you can only determine it's value based on the content of the post. You can't even safely tell if it's a human or a bot nowadays.

I have no doubt in my mind that the free flow of information is always better. Now, you can argue about the practicity of this, and you'd be right. The thing is, this is a symptom of the state of affairs. Think about it, there are 8 billion people walking on Earth, a great proportion of which have a computer with an internet connection and a high quality camera in their pockets. That means that this year will be the most commented on, most recorded in human history by far. On top of that, there are governments around the world spending billions of US dollars in propaganda. It's no wonder 'truth' is obfuscated and almost impossible to come by.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#337

Post by wolverine876 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #324
wolverine876 wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't observe "maximum tolerable negativity". Could you give an example, maybe a link to a serious news website that looks this way?

https://www.cnn.com/ as of 10:47ET: 32 links to stories above the fold for my browser 3 are emotionally neutral or positive --------------------------------------- https://www.foxnews.com/ : 6 links to stories above the fold 0 are emotionally neutral or positive The only thing next is to just be the violence network

That doesn't support the claims about 'negativity' and especially about 'maximum tolerable'.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#338

Post by dahart »

t12hrow wrote: post #336
dahart wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anarchy and no moderation whatsoever, in this context, is always better [...] the opposite is much much worse. Why do you think this? What is your basis for this claim? Note specifically that in unmoderated channels, governments already do participate with propaganda, so your claim that the only problem is distinguishing signal from noise is false by your own stated standards. Agenda in reporting is a problem, ther…

> 4chan is usually demonstrably and objectively worse than any mainstream news at sharing important, relevant, and true information. Are you talking about trivial news reporting ("this thing happened today")? If so, yes. If you're talking about important questions in society, no. I mean, if you want full-on propaganda you can read the New York Times or The Atlantic, or Washington Post, etc. Aside from tangible report…

I appreciate the response, but yeah I just don’t buy that 4chan is better on any axis ever, especially for important world news. I see and acknowledge that you lack trust in mainstream news and your government, and there’s probably a longer story there, but I think it’s objectively false to claim you’ll find more truth on 4chan than mainstream news. It might be fair to say that certain subjects will be discussed that you wouldn’t see on TV, then again there’s almost no way to tell, and the stuff on 4chan is is rarely if ever made by people with any qualifications or expertise in the subject.

This twisted argument seems to be claiming that 4chan is more trustworthy because it’s less trustworthy. But you’re demonstrating a double standard. If you can excuse and overlook the unending ocean of fake news and propaganda and bullshit on 4chan, then it’s only fair and consistent to do the same for mainstream news, where it’s also true that not everything is propaganda. You’re whole complaint boils down to you writhing against the “pretense”, but why does that matter, exactly? You either care about the truth or not, so the reputation shouldn’t be a factor for you, especially if you seek information from disreputable sources.

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#339

Post by wolverine876 »

KoftaBob wrote: post #320
wolverine876 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Sure, but there's no deep secrets. Take away the partisan criticisms and smarter-than-though HN commentary, and there are few surprises (unless you go deep into news coverage). Newspapers are generally best - much more scale and room than TV or other options, and the most well-regarded have reputations for good reasons. (The trick is to ingnore the opinion pages, which are often no better than long HN comments.)

* NY Times: Attacked from all sides by those in power, and for a good reason.

* Washington Post: Smaller, and if I had to say, maybe not quite up to the NY Times

* Financial Times: Expensive, but on par IMHO with the other two.

* The Guardian can be excellent, but signal-to-noise (consequential-to-not) ratio isn't as strong as the others, IMHO.

* The Economist: Free-market ideologues, but if you have to read one thing, they are most efficient. Not really journalism (they don't go out and dig up information, nor report their factual basis transparently with quotes, etc.; but short, efficient, sophisticated, very wide-ranging analysital pieces.

* Poltico: I'm not sure what I think of them; I don't trust their ownership entirely [0], but they are seriously competing with the others, at least in national/international political news.

The Wall Street Journal seems serious, but it's run by Rupert Murdoch. If people trusted the WSJ before, I don't know how they do now after the Dominion case revealed Murdoch openly manipulating reporting to favor Trump and others.

----

Another good options is curated news summaries. I'd look up Just Security's, for example. Politico also has some newsletters like NatSec Daily. Memeorandum can be great, if you skip over the less important stories.

[0] Look up the NY Times reporting on Axel Springer's owner (Axel Springer bought Politico recently).

Re: Negativity drives online news consumption

#340

Post by wolverine876 »

endominus wrote: post #306
wolverine876 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> In what way are you allowed to change state level policy on those issues?

State level policy depends on public support or opposition. For example, re Ukraine, US policymakers and others - from Fox News to the Russians to internationalists and many others - are carefully monitoring public opinion and trying to shape it.

They are investing a lot of time and resources in that. Why are they doing it if public opinion doesn't matter?

Post reply on HN