Comments on: Disinformation Works

By: Chris W.

Chris W. — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 02:58:26 +0000

I run all of my campaigns as if people were watching television with the sound turned down. --- Karl Rove

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 01:24:32 +0000

I love the Lakoff quote. The truest thing I’ve read all day.

What is important is to keep the federal government from promoting mendacities. There have been some pressure on this front with global warming, HIV & condoms, and the “abstinence only” education. The media is of course corporate or “private,” even if a corporation is about as private as a medieval fiefdom, and putting pressure on them to stop broadcasting falsehoods or nonsense is a difficult thicket.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: thm

thm — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 19:26:08 +0000

Whether or not you agree with his theory of metaphor, I think the most important thing that George Lakoff brought to the progressive table is this:
the notion that people will give up irrational beliefs when presented with solid evidence is itself an irrational belief, unsupported by the evidence.

By: B

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:40:33 +0000

Regarding disinformation and the media, don't underestimate the increasing importance of information found (or unfound) on the internet. See e.g. my recent post The Spirits that we Called about the influence of search engines on our information filtering. (And for my pessimism about where we go if we don't manage to organize availability and communication of information in a useful way, see On the Edge.)

By: Lawrence B. Crowell

Lawrence B. Crowell — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 01:51:58 +0000

I agree that the media is generally the problem. The evolution vs Creationism (or ID) debate is case in point. The media presents this on their puerile news broadcasts as if there is some real debate or issue. Of course there is no such thing, for anyone who tracks AAAS or NAS can see. What issue over this might exist is with education policy. The Discovery Institute is promoting a “teach the controversy” agenda (a new form of their “wedge”) as a way of keeping creationist persiflage alive and well.

A similar issue of course exists with global warming, or what might be better called global climate perturbation. This of course gets closer to the heart of the problem. Huge financial interests have come into play to attempt to blunt real coverage of this issue, and the usual suspects should come to mind the oil companies, auto industries, Peabody Coal and so forth. Then all you have to do is look at the corporate ownership of the main media outlets, the advertizing revenue link and it then becomes no surprise that we have this problem. It gets particularly bad with FOX, where still nearly 50% of viewers think Iraq was behind 9/11 or that there were WMD in Iraq and the rest. In this decade there has been a particularly septic convergence of money, corporate, political and religious interests — and our media has been particularly malodorous as it has obsequeously followed the money trail.

Politicians and political parties need to be changed with some regularity, just like babies need diaper changes — and for much the same reasons. Politics and power seems to attract bad people, or psychopaths, and it is up to us to keep the pot stirred so that these types don’t put permanent roots in the political soil.

Lawrence B. Crowell

By: Cold, Cold Weather, Hot Politics « blueollie

Cold, Cold Weather, Hot Politics « blueollie — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:47:25 +0000

[...] a nice blog post about how many “general undecided voters” make up their minds. Often it is on disinformation. I remember back in the ’90’s talking to a woman who was between jobs at the time, and [...]

By: TomR

TomR — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:16:22 +0000

Psuedolethe–pretty sure there’s good evidence that voters tend to agree with Democrats on issues but vote for Republican candidates. I submit that this constitutes the hard data of systemic asymmetry you’re looking for.

I’ve worked a few campaigns, and usually hear this is usually explained as either “issues aren’t what really matter–people vote on personal attributes, and later back-form their issue justifications” or “Republicans have better funded, better run campaigns.”

By: Farhat

Farhat — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:59:39 +0000

Obviously, or they wouldn’t use so much of it.

By: Yvette

Yvette — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:37:19 +0000

Some people will always act like idiots. Live with this.

(No really, I just think a better question is if people are acting more as idiots now than they were, say, 20 years ago!)

By: Pseudolethe

Pseudolethe — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:26:05 +0000

Who cares if some voters have trouble expressing their preferences with their votes? The people who agree with candidate X but vote for candidate Y will be balanced by the people who agree with Y and vote for X. This sort of thing only matters if there’s a systemic asymmetry, which in the absence of hard data is just a restatement of your priors.

Of course, supporters of each party are more inclined to think supporters of the other party will act stupidly, so it makes sense that this particular anxiety shows up every election year.