It seems like accident's were accidentally left unmanipulated.
(Social) media manipulation in one image
51–57 of 57 posts
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#52The 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…
> 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.
It's incumbent that readers/viewers actually want to properly understand the world: Fox News broadcasts the stuff that it does because people want to it, and their ratings / market share is evidence of it.
* https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/20...
* https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/msn...
* https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2025/06/10/the-politi...
If Fox doesn't supply what their audience demands (e.g., saying "Trump won the election") they'll go someplace else:
* http://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2020/...
There are three ways to make a living:
1) Lie to people who want to be lied to, and you’ll get rich.
2) Tell the truth to those who want the truth, and you’ll make a living.
3) Tell the truth to those who want to be lied to, and you’ll go broke.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed on 2, this problem predates what we call social media. I also tend to agree with 1, but that’s the actual problem, and I don’t think it’s fair to call it clickbait. The news media shouldn’t be reporting what they think viewers will find interesting, they should be giving an accurate picture of what is happening. We all know how, for example, YouTube’s and Facebook’s engagement algorithms turn your online world…
I think I would feel more manipulated re: this distribution of cause of death if I felt like mass media was intending to send the message that homicide and terrorism had higher rates than heart disease or cancer. I don’t get the impression this is the message they’re intending to deliver. I believe they report on individual stories of homicide and terrorism because it’s more interesting to the public, thus will gain…
They might not intend to claim homicide is a bigger danger than heart disease, specifically, but that’s effectively what’s happening anyway.
However, they are claiming homicide and terrorism cause more risk and death than they really do, in part because fear is good for their business, and in part because these two specific causes of death are sometimes political vehicles.
The topics of homicide and terrorism wouldn’t actually be as interesting to the public if the media reported on them accurately, and actively worked to show the true risks to the public, especially in relation to heart disease, cancer, and car accidents. The level of public interest depends on the level of reporting!
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#54It would be interesting to see a followup graph "% of attention, laws and resources spent on each issue by Congress or the government" and check if it's closer to the left or the right graph.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#55Depends on where you live. In 2020, drug overdoses were worse than COVID-19 in San Francisco:
https://www.phi.org/press/overdoses-have-killed-more-than-th...
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#56Odd that the debate here is all around what is in "the news", vs what is in the other tv shows people are watching. The amount of violence in the stories we watch is astounding; I wonder if that doesn't influence peoples perceptions much more than the news does. try counting how many times in the last week you saw a gun being drawn (on TV/Netflix/hulu).
> The amount of violence in the stories we watch is astounding
It's almost as if violence is a key component of human folklore, mythology, and storytelling passed down from antiquity.
Re: (Social) media manipulation in one image
#57This picture is wrong because deaths themselves are not as interesting as estimated years of live lost.
For cancer and heart disease that multiplier would be around 5x (e.g. mostly older people die from cancer, but if they did not, in ~5 years (optimistically) they'd probably die from something else anyway). But for overdoses that would be around 50x. So one needs to scale overdoses at least 10x.