An article published by Nature, one of the world's most respected science magazines, describes the effects of Trump's Tweets on media coverage. The article's abstract says this:
Social media has arguably shifted political agenda-setting power away from mainstream media onto politicians. Current U.S. President Trump’s reliance on Twitter is unprecedented, but the underlying implications for agenda setting are poorly understood. Using the president as a case study, we present evidence suggesting that President Trump’s use of Twitter diverts crucial media (The New York Times and ABC News) from topics that are potentially harmful to him. We find that increased media coverage of the Mueller investigation is immediately followed by Trump tweeting increasingly about unrelated issues. This increased activity, in turn, is followed by a reduction in coverage of the Mueller investigation—a finding that is consistent with the hypothesis that President Trump’s tweets may also successfully divert the media from topics that he considers threatening. The pattern is absent in placebo analyses involving Brexit coverage and several other topics that do not present a political risk to the president. Our results are robust to the inclusion of numerous control variables and examination of several alternative explanations, although the generality of the successful diversion must be established by further investigation. (emphasis added)
Once again, the power of dark free speech (lies, deceit, unwarranted emotional manipulation, partisan motivated reasoning, etc.) is observed. The casualty is, as usual, the public interest and the wound is deceit and distraction. Ever since Trump announced he was running for president, the professional media seemed to be doing a bad job in dealing with Trump's endless stream of dark free speech. I wavered between giving the media an overall D or D-.
I suspected that the reason Trump tweeted when and as he did was to divert attention from his problems and failures. This research supports that belief. Trump is not the only politician or government that does this to manipulate the media and public perceptions. The Nature article includes this in the paper's introduction:
On August 4, 2014, a devastating earthquake maimed and killed thousands in China’s Yunnan province. Within hours, Chinese media were saturated with stories about the apparent confession by an Internet celebrity to have engaged in gambling and prostitution. News about the earthquake was marginalized, to the point that the Chinese Red Cross implored the public to ignore the celebrity scandal. The flooding of the media with stories about a minor scandal appeared to have been no accident, but represented a concerted effort of the Chinese government to distract the public’s attention from the earthquake and the government’s inadequate disaster preparedness. This organized distraction was not an isolated incident. It has been estimated that the Chinese government posts around 450 million social media comments per year, using a 50-cent army of operatives to disseminate messages. Unlike traditional censorship of print or broadcast media, which interfered with writers and speakers to control the source of information, this new form of Internet-based censorship interferes with consumers by diverting attention from controversial issues. Inconvenient speech is drowned out rather than being banned outright. (emphasis added)
And, once again, the power of social media to poison millions of minds to the detriment of the public interest is clear. Unlike the Chinese people, Americans still have a chance to fight against dark free speech in social media. The question is how long will this luxury last?
No comments:
Post a Comment