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How people die vs. media coverage of death

owenshen24.github.io

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Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#41

Post by nemild »

This is awesome! You might really like All the News That's Fit to Sell which is a deep dive into the media economics behind why things are covered — it gives lots of color for why coverage is the way it is (there's a famous journalism saying: "If it bleeds, it leads" — which speaks to the readership/profits that come from covering vivid deaths)

If useful, I did a similar analysis, but just for the NY Times vs WHO/CDC (I manually tagged an year of articles by cause of death vs. this article's ability to see across many years):

In 2015-6, the deaths that are most covered are a tiny fraction (: https://www.nemil.com/s/part3-horror-films.html

You can also extend the analysis to see how death coverage varies by region (those who are culturally similar to us get more coverage):

How Media Fuels our Fear of Western Terrorism: https://www.nemil.com/s/part2-terrorism.html

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#42

Post by lqdc13 »

owenshen24 wrote: post #10
qznc wrote: post #4

They use media coverage and conflate it with "general public sentiment" and how "people think we die". While the wording seems to be carefully crafted that it avoids stating something outright wrong, it does suggest that they are the same. Are there studies that compare media coverage with surveys on how people think we die?

There are! The most famous one is this one https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794... and the results are largely in-line w/ what one might expect. > Two kinds of bias were identified: (a) a tendency to overestimate small frequencies and underestimate larger ones, and (b) a tendency to exaggerate the frequency of some specific causes and to underestimate the frequency of others, at any given leve…

Problem with such use of statistics is that we underestimate black swan events.

Humans are intuitively better at it. For example, it would be impossible to predict something like 911 event with such frequentist analysis.

Also impossible to predict some sort of nuclear disaster terrorist act that never happened before and could take a million lives.

Another thing to keep in mind is the "missing life" (dying young) and quality of life after disease. That's why something like Alzheimer's seems a lot worse than heart disease.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#43

Post by mLuby »

GW150914 wrote: post #26
losteric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news is supposed to keep the public informed... fusing of entertainment and information, along with corporate mergers, has brought us to this unhealthy state of public awareness. Our society is becoming more paranoid because it boosts ratings and profit. A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on…

Fear of terrorism isn’t just fear of dying from terrorism. What was the economic damage or 9/11?

Pretty sure the actual economic damage ($250B) from 9/11 attacks was small compared to the self-inflicted economic damage that followed in the form of market reactions $1T and wars $2T.

In other words, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#44

Post by TangoTrotFox »

rs999gti wrote: post #32
losteric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news is supposed to keep the public informed... fusing of entertainment and information, along with corporate mergers, has brought us to this unhealthy state of public awareness. Our society is becoming more paranoid because it boosts ratings and profit. A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on…

> A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on terror". Meanwhile heart disease/cancer silently kills 1.1 million Americans every year. The same thing could be said for the gun control narrative being pushed by the media and politicians. If gun deaths are classified as homicides and using CDC numbers, t…

I would elaborate on that as well. The main focus of the media is on "assault style weapons" which translates to semi-automatic rifles. Of that How many people are aware of these data? I think that ignorance is going to be primarily the media's fault.

[1] - https://news.vice.com/article/glock-pistol-omar-mateen-orlan...

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#45

Post by [deleted] »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #2

Wow, terrorism really is overrepresented compared with how we die these days. I wonder if that's some kind of evolutionary echo of a more violent time when a leading cause of death for most humans was regional strife. We're apparently still pretty interested in who's out there somewhere, scheming to come and kill us.

[deleted]

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#47

Post by craftyguy »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #2

Wow, terrorism really is overrepresented compared with how we die these days. I wonder if that's some kind of evolutionary echo of a more violent time when a leading cause of death for most humans was regional strife. We're apparently still pretty interested in who's out there somewhere, scheming to come and kill us.

> when a leading cause of death for most humans was regional strife

What leads you to believe that was ever a major cause of death for more than a tiny handful of people? It would seem the hardships of living before modern medicine and (any) agriculture would have killed far more people. Given how expensive/risky it was to collect food, why would any group of folks risk most of their healthy, strong brood to wage regional conflict? If they lost, all of them would lose by virtue of losing the most capable members of the society.

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#48

Post by thyrsus »

owenshen24 wrote: post #9

Hey everyone, I'm super stoked to see this project getting some more traction! I was responsible for the visualizations / the scraping, so I'm happy to answer any questions people might have about the whole process. ^_^

Did the database of articles include the obituaries?

Re: How people die vs. media coverage of death

#49

Post by losteric »

rs999gti wrote: post #32
losteric wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The news is supposed to keep the public informed... fusing of entertainment and information, along with corporate mergers, has brought us to this unhealthy state of public awareness. Our society is becoming more paranoid because it boosts ratings and profit. A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on…

> A prime example is the American public's irrational fear of terrorism, which translates to pouring unfathomable amounts of tax dollars into the unending "war on terror". Meanwhile heart disease/cancer silently kills 1.1 million Americans every year. The same thing could be said for the gun control narrative being pushed by the media and politicians. If gun deaths are classified as homicides and using CDC numbers, t…

I agree that the media is hyperbolizing gun violence, however that's a false equivalency.

The "war on terror" is costly and only creates more terrorism... stoking public fear feeds back into the problem. Legislation could significantly reduce firearm abuse with negligible cost and no feedback loops.

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