If only this level of scrutiny was applied to traditional mass media over the last century. All of these techniques are just updated versions of handing the anchorman a biased script.
The beliefs people seem to hold to most strongly, in the face of all evidence, are those that form their identity. The Dust Bowl farmer, who is a farmer, owns a farm, has a mortgage on the farm, has a family on the farm, and when the water dries up and the soil blows away doesn't know how to do anything else but farm all that much harder.
As an example -- the reference is one of the statements from a farmer faced with just that situation, and may explain a number of phenomena, including a pathological case of sunk-cost determinism.
What's your evidence that working for information helps with convincing? Because there's at least some evidence (above) that the exact opposite is true. Belief transcends all evidence and experience, or cost, including farm, family, and life.
I can't say I had any hard evidence while I wrote that. I admit it's more of an observation from my experience. That said there this study[0] seems to suggest a mechanism whereby this effect could occur. Other ideas like the suck cost fallacy and effort heuristic seem to confirm that this effect has been noticed by others on some level.
A study of concept/belief fixity and dynamics associated with those would be interesting. If difficult to design.
The anti-expertise movement is what I would describe as religious fervor, not the other way round.
An expert psychologist for example? Her patients can remain depressed, mutilate themselves, kill themselves and even kill others and yet she will remain an "expert" mostly on the basis that she was educated at a place that similarly ineffective experts have claimed is a good place for a psychologist to come from.
I suppose the trouble is experts by education got lumped in by experts by results at some point down the line.
https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/view/
https://www.cato.org/research/growth-development
how big is the middle part of the venn diagram here?
being skeptical of domain-experts is only 'religious fervor' if the field is cut-and-dried. many aren't
I don't have time for this.
These are both hugely influential policy think tanks which hire experts. They both have hugely differing views on the economy.
Or is providing evidence to support a claim now 'cherry picking' to be dismissed? And if so, aren't you proving my point?
Instead, it seems to me now that giving everyone a printing press made so much noise that we still rely on centralized authorities to sort, rate and surface those that we want to read. And it made it cheaper, in terms of both reputation cost and money, for someone to create a bunch of false signal.
The parallel to the printing was misleading, and the true outcome is much more complicated and mixed. The scale really changes how these things work, in terms of the incentives created and the sheer amount of content possible to consume.
There seems to be a concentration of political activists among these. I very seriously doubt it's by coincidence.
Does a organizing with members of key organizations count as biasing a community. How about a campaign sign placed at a strategic intersection? Or oft used last minute mudslinging postcards. For that matter what is the difference between biasing a voter, and convincing a voter to vote (maybe in the papers case on team-dynamics instead of issues, but voters often decide their votes not on direct issues...).
I fully believe though that there are techniques, accessible by money, which yield more efficient results of voter persuasions than other techniques - but those tools are not limited to social media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dguiAWrUGMM
And it's still going on today. Not just some bad practice they did years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=487CRdRHEeI
Think about the control you can nudge things in a specific direction with that.
1. Figure out people’s political leanings via their data
2. Figure out target networks to influence
3. Plant influencers
Have watched the videos. I had not realised the media in the USA was that localised and co-ordinated. Initially thought it was some kind of prank/joke between the stations. With this level of co-ordination and functioning a specific (untrue) narrative could be spun. One could even a/b test and see what has the most desired effects.
Chilling. The question then becomes: What narrative is being spun? Who does it benefit? Who does it disadvantage?
https://theintercept.com/2019/01/20/beyond-buzzfeed-the-10-w...
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
> ... the authors propose that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.