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Why right wing disinformation must be countered
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Sun Dec 15, 2013 11:11 pm    Post subject: Why right wing disinformation must be countered Reply with quote

Interesting article by Patrick Mattimore:

Quote:
By Patrick Mattimore, guest commentary © 2013 Bay Area News Group
POSTED: 12/14/2013 04:00:00 PM PST

It may seem that stupid, insulting comments posted as online responses to articles are pretty harmless, but there is now some evidence that there is a big downside to mean-spirited remarks.

According to two University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele, readers turning to newspaper and magazine websites for science news may be influenced as much by the comments at the end of the story as they are by the report itself.

In their study released earlier this year, the scientists found that the tone of the online comments significantly altered how the public thought about the technology.

They wrote that: "Simply including an ad hominem attack in a reader comment was enough to make study participants think the downside of the reported technology was greater than they'd previously thought."

In September, Suzanne LaBarre, online editor at Popular Science, announced that the publication had decided to shut off online comments. She wrote that "(C)omments can be bad for science."

LaBarre suggested that "a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story .... And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science."

Echoing LaBarre, Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor of the history of science, has concluded that: "The Internet has become a forum for the spread of disinformation."

"Unless a comment stream is actively moderated, it inevitably is ruined by bullies, hotheads and trolls," writes James Fallows, explaining why he does not allow comments on his columns on The Atlantic's website.
We do not process information the way a video recorder does. Our memories are fallible and malleable. Unlike a computer, we aren't able to neatly store bits of information that we recognize as inane in irrelevancy folders or delete that information entirely.

So while we may think we have brushed aside information that we recognize is without merit, those less than choice tidbits nevertheless color our analyses.

Our store of information is also subject to subjective manipulation.

In a classic 1970s experiment, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus found that subjects who witnessed a simulated car accident and were asked how fast they thought the cars were going when they "smashed" into each other, reported speeds an average of 7 mph faster (41 mph) than other subjects who were asked how fast the cars were going when they "hit" (34 mph) each other.

The "smashed" subjects also were more likely to report having seen broken glass at the scene, though there was none.

Just changing one word produced variable perceptions. Further, psychologists have shown that they can alter a person's beliefs about their own life histories.

A significant minority of research participants have been led to believe through the "misinformation effect" that when they were younger they had an accident at a wedding, nearly drowned and were rescued by a lifeguard, or were hospitalized overnight.

Regrettably, companies have begun to recognize that they can distort public opinion by using phony online comments to market products.

Recently, Samsung was fined $340,000 by Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission for asking third-party contractor Peng Thai to write forum posts that praised its devices and trashed its competitors.

The Internet has become the public's forum. Now we must grapple with ways to make that marketplace both civil and honest.
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MalibuGuru



Joined: 11 Nov 1993
Posts: 9293

PostPosted: Sun Dec 15, 2013 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mac, you and a couple of other haters have spoiled this site.
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real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 12:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Mac, you and a couple of other haters have spoiled this site.


do you understand the irony of your ad hominem attack of the poster?

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when good people stay silent the right wing are the only ones heard.
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nw30



Joined: 21 Dec 2008
Posts: 6485
Location: The eye of the universe, Cen. Cal. coast

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 2:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"Why right wing disinformation must be countered"

Well first they should start right here, damn it, this place is rotting with right wing vermin spewing their disinformation, left wing stuff, okay, but the right wing stuff? No way, there is just too much.

Where have all the Obamabots gone,,,,,, long time passing---------------

Really? Are you serious?
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GURGLETROUSERS



Joined: 30 Dec 2009
Posts: 2643

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 5:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Has human nature ever been any different?

Does any teacher/parent not manipulate, however unwittingly, his/her charges or children according to their own experience/ learning/ upbringing/ insecurities/contradictions? Do the children not in turn tend to carry this bias through life, or violently oppose it by swinging to the opposite extreme? (Conditioning, just the same!)

The internet is impersonal, but daily contact with parents/teachers is real. My mother was emotional and strong willed, and my teachers (late40's early 50's) were, in many cases, no nonsense war veterans. It took me many years as an adult to fully realise how clearly I'd been conditioned. (Conservative, with a small c, and remain so.)

You (Mac) have often posted of your upbringing, and I would suggest that you are no more infallible to having been influenced than the rest of us.

Children today are under influences as never before, and I would say that family breakdown and often consequent emotional neglect of the offspring, along with ready recourse to drugs/uncommitted sex/ alcohol) is far more important to their damaged development than the internet, which is just a sympton, not a cause.
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pueno



Joined: 03 Mar 2007
Posts: 2807

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 5:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

stevenbard wrote:
Mac, you and a couple of other haters have spoiled this site.

Damn, but don'tcha just hate those haters? They've smashed this forum.



nw30 wrote:

Well first they should start right here, damn it, this place is rotting with right wing vermin spewing their disinformation...

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who's the rightest of 'em all?"

Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing Laughing
.
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keycocker



Joined: 10 Jul 2005
Posts: 3598

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 6:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

My oldfashioned conservative friends are quite concerned about countering right wing falsehoods.
We think liberals pay no attention to the misinformation on Talk and the net.
The only folks being fooled by this kind of propaganda are conservatives.
It makes us seem like fools to educated, well informed young folks.
Despite the rightness of our base principles, if we spout false facts to support them we do serious damage to our credibility.

Ever notice young folks grinning and poking each other when conservatives are ranting based on wrong facts? I see this in Maui.
Our media is treating us like fools. Some of us repeat this BS nonstop.
Boehner is trying to point this out to Republicans in time to save the party from a return to permanent minority status like in the Days of Roosevelt.
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real-human



Joined: 02 Jul 2011
Posts: 14834
Location: on earth

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

GURGLETROUSERS wrote:
Has human nature ever been any different?

Does any teacher/parent not manipulate, however unwittingly, his/her charges or children according to their own experience/ learning/ upbringing/ insecurities/contradictions? Do the children not in turn tend to carry this bias through life, or violently oppose it by swinging to the opposite extreme? (Conditioning, just the same!)

The internet is impersonal, but daily contact with parents/teachers is real. My mother was emotional and strong willed, and my teachers (late40's early 50's) were, in many cases, no nonsense war veterans. It took me many years as an adult to fully realise how clearly I'd been conditioned. (Conservative, with a small c, and remain so.)

You (Mac) have often posted of your upbringing, and I would suggest that you are no more infallible to having been influenced than the rest of us.

Children today are under influences as never before, and I would say that family breakdown and often consequent emotional neglect of the offspring, along with ready recourse to drugs/uncommitted sex/ alcohol) is far more important to their damaged development than the internet, which is just a sympton, not a cause.


do you ever think before you puke out unsubstantiated hate. Please back up this hate. Please show that drug use is higher now than in the 60s. Please show that your so called uncommited sex is higher now than in the 60s. Please show that alcholhol is at a different rate now than anytime in history.

I know how right wing idiots just love to spout out puke from their mouths without reality behind them. So if you are wrong on these can we conclude all right wingers are born to lie or they learned it at home?

Do you have any clue to what you are talking about. Here is research to show conservatives use a different part of their brain vs liberals may actually be more important to the political orientation. So your home brew theory is not so set in stone.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211002892

Political Orientations Are Correlated with Brain Structure in Young Adults

Summary
Quote:
Substantial differences exist in the cognitive styles of liberals and conservatives on psychological measures [1]. Variability in political attitudes reflects genetic influences and their interaction with environmental factors [2 and 3]. Recent work has shown a correlation between liberalism and conflict-related activity measured by event-related potentials originating in the anterior cingulate cortex [4]. Here we show that this functional correlate of political attitudes has a counterpart in brain structure. In a large sample of young adults, we related self-reported political attitudes to gray matter volume using structural MRI. We found that greater liberalism was associated with increased gray matter volume in the anterior cingulate cortex, whereas greater conservatism was associated with increased volume of the right amygdala. These results were replicated in an independent sample of additional participants. Our findings extend previous observations that political attitudes reflect differences in self-regulatory conflict monitoring [4] and recognition of emotional faces [5] by showing that such attitudes are reflected in human brain structure. Although our data do not determine whether these regions play a causal role in the formation of political attitudes, they converge with previous work [4 and 6] to suggest a possible link between brain structure and psychological mechanisms that mediate political attitudes.


so lets see you back up the sex, alcohol and drugs part. I just hate when people talk out of their arse like it is some kind of truth.

Can you also show how the rate of kids that have so called liberal teachers are transformed. again this is just an idiotic unsupported thesis on your part. after all if true since the huge majority of teachers in the USA are liberals, just like the huge number of police officers/engforcement are right wingers. Well if your puke is true texas, south Carolina et al would be a liberal state.............

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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 11:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bard--you are too funny. You threaten to punch me, and then you say:

Quote:
Mac, you and a couple of other haters have spoiled this site.


Funny. For all your claims to be free of bias, I have never heard you call any of the right wing posters of misogyny or racism (like Obongo by BB) haters.

You're right, I hate the haters. I like those who can actually muster an argument, from left or right, that doesn't post empty calories gleaned from talk radio. Empty? haters? Try Isobars nonsense about Obama confiscating wealth.

You are very funny--and pretty well unhinged.
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swchandler



Joined: 08 Nov 1993
Posts: 10588

PostPosted: Mon Dec 16, 2013 3:56 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

"In September, Suzanne LaBarre, online editor at Popular Science, announced that the publication had decided to shut off online comments. She wrote that "(C)omments can be bad for science."

LaBarre suggested that "a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story .... And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.""



The above comments are from the article that mac posted. It's a good one to make a point, especially since it covers science rather than politics. They are so right on in what they're trying to say.

But, when you think about it, the topic could be politics too, because the same kind of thing has been going on in the internet as a whole. In addition to a featured article, I often read the comments provided by readers that respond to the article. After reading a newspaper or other publication for a period of time, you begin to recognize a crew of screen names that regularly comment. After a while, you can readily recognize the negative shills. They are clearly biased, and they are clearly focused on taking down an idea, topic or stance. I have no doubt that most of them are paid.

One of the favorite topics today is the ACA. Yet, what you never hear from these negative shills are any ideas or plans to change or improve the issue to be taken down. That's not why they're there. They are the voice of special interests. The ones with the money.
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