Relying on the priests’ potentially corrupt interpretation

Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018

Sociologist Francesca Tripodi takes an ethnographic approach to studying how partisan groups interact with media:

There is a narrative out there, floating around the executive offices at Google and Facebook, lurking in the halls of prominent publications like The New York Times or The Washington Post, and emerging from the mouths of most cable news pundits that “fake news” has ruined democracy. Tied up in this narrative is an accusation that supporters of President Trump were “tricked” into voting for him because Russian bots fed them a steady stream of misinformation. If only, the story goes, there was some way to reach Trump supporters — who, according to a study by the Oxford University Computational Propaganda Project, more frequently like and share “fake news.” Why don’t they do their research? some bemoan. Don’t they check the facts? The assumption: If only they could learn to think critically, accessing, analyzing, and evaluating a variety of sources, then they would be informed voters.

The thing is — they do, and they are. During 2017, I began regularly attending Republican events associated with two upper-middle class communities in the Southeastern United States: a women’s group and a college group. [...] At one point during the meeting, the Pastor turned from the Bible to the new tax reform bill, where he encouraged the group to apply the same “deep reading.” The group poured over the text together, helping each other decide what it really meant rather than relying on mainstream media coverage of the bill. In that moment, I realized that this community of Evangelical Christians were engaged in media literacy, but used a set of reading practices secular thinkers might be unfamiliar with. I’ve seen hundreds of Conservative Evangelicals apply the same critique they use for the Bible, arguably a postmodern method of unpacking a text, to mainstream media — favoring their own research on topics rather than trusting media authorities.

[...]

Distrust in translation of text also explains why the debate-watching parties I attended favored television stations without pundits, like C-SPAN. They did not need CNN to tell them who had won; they relied on Trump’s words to signify that the values they described to me as “faith, family, the constitution, and national security” would be protected. The style of media literacy that I witnessed among Conservative groups helps explain the strategy of several prominent Conservative media organizations. These organizations stress that liberal ideology is formed by disputable claims and emotional appeals instead of fact-based evidence.

[...]

Herein lies the problem with media literacy approaches. Based on my data, upper-middle class Conservatives did not vote for Trump because they were “fooled” into doing so by watching, reading, or listening to “fake news.” Rather, they consumed a great deal of information and found inconsistencies, not within the words of Trump himself, but rather within the way mainstream media “twisted his words” to fit a narrative they did not agree with. Not unlike their Protestant ancestors, doing so gave them authority over the text rather than relying on the priests’ (i.e. “the elites’”) potentially corrupt interpretation.

Comments

  1. Sam Fetters says:

    Utter nonsense.

    The conditions of “Confirmation Bias” and “The Backfire Effect” absolutely contradict your hasty generalization reached herein.

    Everyone has cognitive biases, even “Conservatives”.

    Even if the statement “Rather, they consumed a great deal of information and found inconsistencies” is true (which relies on absolutely no scientific basis), just because one group finds inconsistencies does not guarantee they posses the logic nor reasoning skills to discern which is fact, which is fiction from those inconsistencies.

    It can be reasonably argued that often, many of those whom do consume more sources of information, may just get more confused, thereby falling back on their cognitive biases (“The Backfire Effect”).

    But I reject the very notion that “Conservatives” take in more information.

    I identify as neither “Conservative” nor “liberal”, frequently engage in deep thought provoking conversation with both, and both claim to sell out information and “balance” that information, yet in my experience, neither group achieves this goal.

    I read, a lot, and a lot of varied sources.

    Both media of the “left” and “right” are absolutely skewed, highly-biased, and often completely ridiculous. They are more akin to episodes of The Jerry Springer Show than real “news”. Both mainly rely on tired old fallacies, rather than thought-provoking information.

    Thomas Jefferson found this to be true, as did mark Twain, Ben Franklin, Henry David Thoreau, George Orwell, and countless others.

    In regards to “mainstream media”, Trump himself continually criticizes CNN (seemingly, as does this essay), whilst praising FOX News.

    Here’s the grand hypocrisy of that:

    CNN is a subsidiary of WarnerMedia, which is owned by AT&T (NYSE: T).

    FOX News is owned by FOX Entertainment Group, which is owned by 21st Century Fox (NASDAQ: FOXA).

    The largest institutional shareholders, and thus effective controllers, of AT&T (NYSE: T) include:
    Vanguard
    State Street
    BlackRock
    Northern Trust
    Capital Research
    Fidelity
    Morgan Stanley
    Dodge & Cox
    And others of the largest money-management firms, whom operate collaboratively, forming virtual monopolies amongst the largest “competing” corporations in every single industry.

    The largest institutional shareholders, and thus effective controllers, of 21st Century Fox (NASDAQ: FOXA) include:
    Vanguard
    State Street
    BlackRock
    Northern Trust
    Capital Research
    Fidelity
    Morgan Stanley
    Dodge & Cox
    And others of the largest money-management firms, whom operate collaboratively, forming virtual monopolies amongst the largest “competing” corporations in every single industry.

    So, still believe these corporations, and CNN and FOX News are competitors? In “Conservative” and “Liberal” media?

    Some 90% to 95% of the media are largely owned, and thus controlled, by the same groups.

    The media prints most solely only entertainment.

    I’ve worked in the media, I’ve worked in politics, and both “Conservative” and “Liberal” media exist solely to sell advertising to their loyal readers, those whom engage in “Bias Confirmation”.

    The Author here needs to read the following:

    Democracy and Political Ignorance by Ilya Somin

    The New Media Monopoly by Ben Bagdikian

    Thinking Fast & Slow by Daniel Kahneman

    The first outlines researh & studies detailing the vast ignorance of both the “left” and “right”.

    The second outlines “The major media maintain their cartel-like relationship with only
    marginal differences among them, a relationship that leaves all of them
    alive and well — but leaves the majority of Americans with artificially
    narrowed choices in their media.”.

    The third outlines the central thesis of a dichotomy between two modes of thought: “System 1″ is fast, instinctive and emotional; “System 2″ is slower, more deliberative, and more logical.

    Listen to “Conservative” talk-radio, then tell me it doesn’t provoke “fast”, highly-emotionally charged “thinking”.

    Listen to Trump himself (or most any other politician, for that matter), and tell me he (they) doesn’t provoke “fast”, highly-emotionally charged “thinking”.

    Much like the “liberal” media you choose to bash, just because YOU say something is true, doesn’t make that thing true.

    I suggest you do some intensive studying of the multitude of logical fallacies, and open your mind just a tad.

  2. Lucklucky says:

    Finally someone that reached that journalists are the new priests. The News are the Mass. And Politics the new Religion.

  3. Kirk says:

    What we are terming “the media” has been lying to us since, oh, I don’t know… Maybe the days of William Randolph Hearst? Going back even further than him, perhaps?

    I used to be an eager consumer of news–I read every newspaper I could get my hands on and afford, as well as all the newsmagazines and other specialist publications. What I discerned, sometime in my mid-twenties, was that they were all guilty of collusion and distortion on a grand scale. The only thing you can rely on is that if they report it, then there was probably a tiny grain of capital-letter TRUTH somewhere at the core of it all–An incident may have actually happened, true… The interpretation, the context, the “rest of the story”? Nearly all of that was sold right along with the singular raw fact, and the rest was the conjecture and prejudice of the “story”, the “narrative”, that the journalist and their editors wanted told.

    You can rely on some of the raw facts–A girl was killed, in Iowa. The raw fact will get reported, but the choices of which of those facts to emphasize, to run 24-7 on the media outlets…? Then, too, there is whether the “story” will be told by the media, in the first damn place. Pretty white girl, whose victimization makes for sales? Oh, the story will have legs. Hispanic, black, or asian…? Maybe; was her killer a white male? Conversely, if the missing white girl is a victim of one of the protected classes, that story will die a swift death, and will vanish into the memory hole more certainly than one of Stalin’s enemies.

    Likewise, with domestic violence murders. White, middle-class victim? Oh, yeah… If the narrative can be spun that she was a victim of a white male, then the story has legs. Protected class? LOL… It will be off the front page and unmentioned in the news broadcasts within days.

    You can observe the same shit with Gosnell, or with these Islamic freaks down in New Mexico… There’s going to be precisely zero coverage of the movie about Gosnell, and that story about the encampment in New Mexico is already vanishing.

    The problem with all this is that the news media does serve a purpose. However, that purpose and their credibility has been so damaged by the partisan nature of what they’ve been doing in the shadows that I’m not sure they’ll ever be trusted again; certainly, not for generations.

  4. David Foster says:

    Sam F., the AT&T acquisition of Time-Warner didn’t happen until June 15 of this year (and the court decision that allowed this to happen is still being appealed by DOJ). Before that TW was a separate public company, trading as TWX. So the political behavior of CNN had nothing to do with AT&T.

  5. Kirk says:

    David Foster:

    While I think you’re correct in your details, the real issue is not who owns what, but which cultural sub-element dominates both AT&T and Time-Warner. Management and “talent” both are almost exclusively of the Left; it matters not the details of who owns what. They’re run the same way, by the same people, who are putting out the same message…

    I don’t know how you apply anti-trust principles to entire industries, but we damn sure need to come up with a way to do it. Academia and the media are almost entirely all ran by left-wing “true believers”, and have been for decades. Were they not, the distortions that resulted in Obama and the counter-reaction represented by Trump wouldn’t have happened.

    I think we may well be in a process of backing into tyranny, simply because of the way the Left has abused the power that it accrued. By losing their credibility so thoroughly, the way the institutions of Weimar Germany did, we may really wind up with a demagogue running the show. Trump ain’t it, but what might come after him scares the shit out of me…

  6. David Foster says:

    “Management and “talent” both are almost exclusively of the Left”

    This is almost certainly true of the “talent” and the management of the media entities. But the parent companies (for NBC, previously GE and now Comcast, and for Time-Warner, now AT&T) are not media-type people. Quite possibly, the problem is too *little* supervision of the media assets (“as long as they’re making their numbers, we’ll let them alone”) than top-down influence by the investors.

  7. Lucklucky says:

    Kirk, if the right does not want to tell its story, there is nothing to do. The left wins because the others do not show up for the battle.

  8. Yara says:

    Hey, Sam. Thanks for dropping by.

    “(which relies on no scientific basis)”
    The belief in the ignorance of experts?

    “just because one group finds inconsistencies doesn’t guarantee [that] they posses (sic) the logic [or] reasoning skills to discern [what] is fact [from what] is fiction”
    To whom, then, should “one group” outsource their thinking?

    “It can be reasonably argued that often, many of those [who] do consume more sources of information, may just get more confused, thereby falling back on their cognitive biases”
    Do you prefer the New York Times or the Washington Post? or should I get my nightly from the Colbert Report?

    “But I reject the very notion that “Conservatives” take in more information”
    (which relies on no scientific basis)

    “I’ve worked in the media, I’ve worked in politics, and both “Conservative” and “Liberal” media exist solely to sell advertising to their loyal readers”
    Why do they continue operating while losing money hand over fist? How do they continue operating while losing money hand over fist?

    “Much like the “liberal” media you choose to bash, just because YOU say something is true, doesn’t make that thing true.”
    If we cannot rely on Isegoria to supply our Official Truth, then where indeed shall we find it?

    “I suggest you do some intensive studying of the multitude of logical fallacies, and open your mind just a tad.”
    “How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”

  9. Kirk says:

    Lucklucky, perhaps you also think that the blackballing and ostracism of non-left views in academia is accidental, as well?

    It isn’t that the “right” is not “telling their story”, it’s that the other side has been engaged in silencing them for generations, going back to the days of Woodrow Wilson. The fact that he and most of the “progressives” came out of academia ain’t an accident, nor is the mostly Left composition of the academy we have today.

    It is all going to come to a grinding halt, anyway, after the ‘eedjit class performs their lobotomy of the STEM portion of the academy. Shortly after, we’ll start to see a return to the pre-credentialism world we had back in the mid-19th Century, where engineers not educated at West Point mostly got their chops through experience and working for other, already-successful engineers. Likewise, with doctors, in all likelihood. The AMA monopoly on training them is one thing that’s going to have to go, if we’re to have the numbers we need, and the affordability to go with it.

    You want my honest opinion? We’re about to go through a prolonged paroxysm of change, that’s going to leave the majority of our dysfunctional institutions entirely disintermediated. Why the hell should a kid take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of educational debt, to get a degree they can’t pay the bills with? Why bother, when the information and instructional material is out there for free?

    Someone is going to smarten up, and start doing credentials based off of actual accomplishment. Kid runs through all of the Kahn Academy material, takes a test, and bingo-bongo… They’ve done their math requirements for certification in their chosen field. Likewise, with English and other sciences. About the only lingering thing out there, that I see in the future, is the school laboratory. That, you can’t do at home–The rest? LOL… The education industry is in for a shock, when they figure out that what they’re offering is valueless, and that the rubes have cottoned on to that, as well.

    Here’s the thing: Much of what we’re doing, ain’t working. We’re also not doing a hell of a lot to try to understand why it ain’t working, and then do anything tangible to fix it.

  10. Kirk says:

    David Foster,

    I really don’t see a lot of effect resulting from how we’re doing “corporate governance”, because the shareholders don’t seem to be exerting all that much influence on the direction of the corporations they supposedly “own”. If they did, then you wouldn’t see the crap we have going on in the media industry, with all the gratuitous waste on propaganda films that never make their money back.

    Investors don’t seem to get really pissed-off enough to actually do anything, until and unless they’re staring bankruptcy in the face–And, even then? It’s like most of them are someone in steerage trying to warn the captain of the Titanic that maybe slowing down a little would be a good idea…

    We do corporations and big government entirely wrong, in my opinion. We set up these huge bureaucracies that are all too prone to being captured by interests inimical to long-term success, and then when it all crashes and burns, we’re sitting there in the wreckage and going “What happened…?”. Harvey Weinstein should have been a known quantity, and reined in enough to prevent that whole hubristic disaster from happening. The man was talented, but… Jeezus, what a dysfunctional ego.

    The US has this habit of raising people up into positions and then feeding their egos to the point where they’re disasters. Most of our generals and admirals are like this–They get so much attention and adulation from the yes-men sycophants they wind up surrounded by that they completely lose touch with reality. Which is why the guys like me, down at the rubber-meets-road level, look up at them in their office suites and go “WTF are you thinking, sir? This ain’t gonna work, no way, no how…”. And, why the disasters we have ensue, despite there having been many people pointing out the lights of the oncoming trains.

    Latest deal with people being tracked by their various and sundry GPS apps, revealing military basing and itineraries? Dude, we were pointing at that as a risk factor back in the early 2000s, and nobody did anything about it until it hit the headlines. This is why I’m convinced that we’re either going to have to find a better and more effective way to organize ourselves, or we’re all going to drown in the friggin’ red tape and dysfunction…

  11. Lucklucky says:

    Kirk, the right don’t tell stories.

    The left instead have a culture of hate that makes them proselytise everyone.

  12. Kirk says:

    Lucklucky,

    I’d frame that as being more that the Left requires a narrative, regardless of whether it is true, and the Right is mostly dependent on facts.

    There is a certain immaturity to most of the people I know who profess to Left-ward belief systems; they must have their Story, their narratives, and anything that stands contrary to it is to be ignored or attacked.

    The Right-ish folks, on the other hand? They fail to realize the power of the narrative to persuade the median, and rely on what they perceive as self-evident facts.

    I think it’s a function of my long-held belief that every human being requires a certain amount of irrational belief, or they cannot function. On the right, that need is met (mostly) by organized religion. Since many on the Left have abandoned organized religion in any serious way, they have had to substitute more and more bizarre irrationalities in substitute. My favorite one, I think, was the vehement atheist who was also a fervent believer in the healing benefits of certain specific crystals…

    A lot of what passes for Left-wing politics can be analyzed as a substitute religion, the facts of which are taken on as a matter of faith, and held to with similar vigor. It’s scary how much irrational and rigid belief a lot of these folks actually have in their politics. An acquaintance of mine was railing on and on about corruption in local government, based on the (mistaken) belief that the perpetrator was a Republican. Two minutes with the phone, and I’m showing him the actual party affiliation. Instant switch to “Oh, I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding…”. And, what was truly amazing was my observation that the whole thing was like watching a switch being flipped in his head.

    I’m telling you, if we start doing the Turing test on a lot of humans, Graham is gonna be super-disappointed at how few actually pass the damn thing…

    Me? I’m probably going to be amazed at how many pass. Human stupidity and fecklessness may be the only thing really infinite in this universe of ours.

  13. Felix says:

    A side note.

    I’ve become convinced that modern, public corporations are pretty much “owned” by their employees.

    Owners call the shots. Owners get the bennys. Owners get the shaft when things go south.

    Stockholders? What individual stockholders there are don’t have any power. Funds like Vanguard, etc. make up most of the stock owners. In effect, stockholders lease the stock, hoping for a gain. The funds (and individuals) don’t have the time and expertise to call any shots. If they don’t like what the company is doing, they bail.

    Follow the money. Where do revenues go? Doesn’t it make sense that $ would go to “owners”?

    Employees make a *lot* more $ than stockholders.

    Various governments might get more $ than stockholders. And governments probably have a *lot* more say in what a company does than stockholders. So, if you’re looking for who else has “ownership” of corporations after employees, governments are a good candidate. (BTW, it might be argued that governments are “owned” by their employees, too.)

    And when things go south, it’s the employees who feel it most. The Black Rocks of the world eat 0.001% of their wealth and move on.

  14. Kirk says:

    Felix,

    The truth of the matter is that we have backed ourselves into what amounts to a more-than-slightly Fascist economy, mostly in an absence of thought. Shareholders don’t hold enough of a stake in these enterprises to care when the government apparatchiks mandate some unworkable BS like the home loan programs of the Clinton era. So, they don’t object, riding the plane into the ground. No skin in the game, really. Responsibility and power to do anything has become diffuse and disconnected from reality. So, nothing gets fixed until it is unrepairable with a minor adjustment.

    And, of course, the heavy hand of the State looms in the background, thumb on the scales, picking winners and losers based on the political whims and fads of the moment. Fascist.

  15. Graham says:

    Sam F,

    I am not so sure it matters whether either side or both is ignoring the corporate structure of the other side’s media, or whether there is or is not any difference between being suspicious of the Koch Brothers and of Soros. [I would think it worthwhile to be suspicious of both considering where the Koch bros fall on some issues.]

    The whole ‘fake news’ and ignorance of Republican voters paradigm really depends on the left believing their vision of the world and of their country is the only possible one, therefore their goals are the only possible ones, all others are illegitimate, therefore if you believe stories or pursue policies that contradict those you are either a villain, an idiot, or being manipulated. They are actually generous to so often assume mere idiocy. Kind of them, really.

    So contradictions like -”you are stupid for believing Alex Jones” versus “I was intelligent for believing fringe Democratic netroots in the 2000s” or “I was smart to oppose confrontational policies against the RUssians in the 1980s” but “you are stupid to oppose confrontational policies against the Russians” seem to fly completely under the radar.

    There’s near complete disconnect of goals and expectations as well as of information.

  16. Yara says:

    Since many on the Left have abandoned organized religion in any serious way, they have had to substitute more and more bizarre irrationalities in substitute.

    You evidently have not been attending service. For a return to moral rectitude, I suggest a few weeks with the Good Bishop Stephen Colbert.

    Shareholders don’t hold enough of a stake in these enterprises to care when the government apparatchiks mandate some unworkable BS like the home loan programs of the Clinton era. So, they don’t object, riding the plane into the ground. No skin in the game, really. Responsibility and power to do anything has become diffuse and disconnected from reality.

    This is a logical consequence of, for example, the hedge fund: nanoscopic slivers of ownership spread out across as many entities as is practically feasible. For shareholders to exercise legitimate authority over an enterprise, they must be compelled to possess a stake sufficiently large for them to care, in enterprises few enough that they are capable of caring about.

  17. Adar says:

    “Since many on the Left have abandoned organized religion in any serious way”

    NOT merely organized but any religion period. Atheists most of them. A pretty good number of them despise religion in any form, Christianity especially. Unless to say JESUS was the first communist.

  18. Kirk says:

    I’ve been trying to say that the phenomenon of “religion” is answering a need in the human psyche and/or soul, however you want to ideate that. What a majority of the Left has done is to abandon organized, traditional religion and belief, substituting the Leftist canon for that.

    It’s all equally illogical, in terms of belief. The religious believe as a matter of faith; the source of that faith is the received wisdom they gathered in from their elders and society. Hardly anyone out there has experienced the supernatural aspect of religious belief; those who have, are arguably mistaken and/or deluded, thinking the voices in their heads are those of God and/or the angels. I’m not gonna render a verdict on that, but the fact is, I’ve never experienced anything that would either point to or reinforce the religious teachings I had as a kid. It’s all faith; all the way down.

    Similarly, the Left? LOL… They’re more like the people they disdain and mock, oblivious to the fact that the belief system they follow is equally evidence-free. You can’t point to a single large- or small-scale example of socialism working. But, they still believe in it, ignoring the failures, insisting that it will only take proper implementation to work. Empirical evidence to the contrary.

    The majority of Leftist thought is purest faith-based bullshit. The Marxist canon is full of theories that don’t work, but it is studied as though it were the writ of some bearded god, delivered by one of his prophets. You can’t even discuss anything with the majority of adherents; they block you out, precisely as the most fervent Southern Baptists will when you bring up issues of their faith.

    It’s well past time to start evaluating Leftism as either a religion or mental illness; it ceased being a political/philosophical issue decades ago.

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