Slashdot Mirror
Engineering Election Debates With Subtle Cues
smolloy writes "A recent innovation in televised election debates is a continuous response measure (the 'worm') that allows viewers to track the response of a sample of undecided voters in real-time. A potential danger of presenting such data is that it may prevent people from making independent evaluations. Researchers from Royal Holloway, University of London, and the University of Bristol, report an experiment with 150 participants in which they manipulated the worm and superimposed it on a live broadcast of a UK election debate. The majority of viewers were unaware that the worm had been manipulated, and yet the researchers were able to influence their perception of who won the debate, their choice of preferred prime minister, and their voting intentions."
Once again The Onion was there first.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
What is this "peer pressure" thing you speak of?
What is the world coming to. ...bah. Terrorists and earthquakes and hackers and lawsuits and big waves and big oil and radiation and no oil and ....omg.
This, along with the idea of an Overton window, and the classic approach of simply buying all the media sources available are reminders that, although we are each beings capable of making rational choices - what we see as reasonable is VERY often decided by the range of views we are exposed to.
Watch only right/leftwing media, and someone on the other extreme will seem extremely unreasonable compared to the side you're used to - even when you agree with them.
Live life only aware of your own nation, and all other nations will seem unreasonable and absurd, speaking their strange languages, with their scary history of violence - but your own nation's history of violence will seem a unique point of pride.
The "worm" mentioned in this article is just an instant poll - and conflated polls have always been a tool of shaping a nation's "reasonable discourse." You don't even have to lie - When you get to select the questions in a poll, or the audience for the instant poll - you get to shape the greek chorus chanting of what is authority and reasonableness to the populace.
That's not to say the whole system is all a sham, as would be tempting - but it is all flawed in most every direction (as it always was, and was expected to be historically). Skepticism and exposure to outside views are key to growing your mind to a state less vulnerable to such things. The Internet is actually helping here with the next generations - but open even-handed skepticism as a subject still needs a LOT more promotion in free societies, along with awareness of what works in other nations.
We need more bologna detection kits working out there!
Ryan Fenton
Rupert Murdoch won't use this to manipulate elections. Much.
Political debates are pretty useless anyway.
At best all you get to learn is how good a debater each candidate is. The only reason to watch a debate is the same reason people really watch NASCAR races - for the occasional flameout like Jan Brewer in the Arizona debate but even that wasn't a fatal crash as she went on to win the election anyhow...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This sort of thing is exactly why I have been against televised exit polls and election returns on national elections in the US while the polls are still open.
Exit polls and even preliminary poll results from the east coast are being broadcast while the polls are still open in other states, which influences the voters who have yet to cast their vote.
That's not to say the whole system is all a sham
It is a sham. The choice of leaders is a pretence. All of them are backed by the same groups and are obligated to those groups, not the electorate. Take a look at the enacted policies and you will be completely unable to tell the parties apart.
Deleted
When news outlets (especially the heavily biased ones) refer to 'polls' or 'the majority of the ${x} people', I always assume most of the article is coming from someone's ass. The newspapers with the biggest and darkest headlines always contain the most polls and showing what 'other people think', without any discussion on the range of possible decisions and their consequences. All playing on the social group-think urge a lot of the currently functioning brains have. This worm is no different, it's simply another form of social manipulation.
an experiment with 150 participants in which they manipulated the worm and superimposed it on a live broadcast of a UK election debate.
Look, I know it's fascinating, and possibly addictive, but I think the field of wank research is well tapped out... Anyhow, what sort of research are you playing at wot involves 150 folks "manipulating" their "worms" all over a live election broadcast.
I take it they're electing porn-stars now?
eThat's what to get that a link ,...like a manolo blahnik
Right. This real time response analysis is going to be the cause of people failing to "making independent evaluations". After all, they aren't already contracting their thought processes out to their religious texts, religious leader, party leader, opinionated bloviator, unions, or other deciders to make such determinations for them.
Isn't this the very same story as age old radio v. television debate that happened between that one guy and that other guy?
A recent innovation in televised election debates is a continuous response measure (the 'worm')
Bullshit, we've had the worm in Australian political debates for nearly a decade.
I have thought he same thing.
Unless one single party has the ability to pound away at the electorate, to the exclusion of all other parties and opinions then I doubt that anything except the final exhortation to "vote for me" that they see on the way to the polling station, will have any lasting effect. Elections are like athletics: it doesn't matter who's in the lead at any time, except right at the end.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Humans display herd mentality, news at 11.
Asch Conformity Experiment : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA
Privacy is terrorism.
Although, to be fair, there's not a lot of room for manipulating his audiences.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The Clegg effect OR How to hang a parliment!
are they proven citizens? many do not pay cash tax, or have any money. before we came, they didn't even need money? backwards thinking may be in order?
The majority of viewers were unaware that the worm had been manipulated, and yet [*] the researchers were able to influence their perception of who won the debate
( [*] What does "and yet" mean here? If people had been aware of the manipulation it would have been even more effective?? )
A political debate is not an argument over facts that can be verified, it's all about impression and rhetoric. The candidate who leaves the best impression in an audience is the one who "wins" the debate. So if people are given a purportedly live data feed of audience sympathy towards the candidates, isn't that a much better measure for "who won the debate" than one's own impression?
The Republican party is in favor of even stronger copyright law, and the Democratic party is in favor of... exactly the same. They are both beholden to corporate interests, because that is where the money is - and it doesn't matter how good your policies are, you arn't going to get far in politics without the money to run a campaign.
It's not just that. All five major TV news organizations are co-owned by five out of the six major motion picture studios. They will play up or play down issues and candidates in a way that controls public perception of the movie industry. Details
At best all you get to learn is how good a debater each candidate is.
If you want to have your constituency's views heard in the legislature, you need a master debater representing you.
"Idiots Easily Duped by Smart Rich People"
World is shocked, until they remember how much they like rich people
I strongly disagree with your conclusion. People, almost all people, are susceptible to group-think. It's built into our genes that we want to agree with those around us, a sort of empathy. This may seem counterintuitive because it is a well known fact that most people are resistant to persuasion, but this sort of group influence relies on a lack of an opinion prior to the influence.
One thing that always bothered me was that after political debates all the networks want to show me a group of "independents" who tell me who won. On fox you can bet they vote republican, and on CNN it's always the democrat who wins. Thing is, I don't want to know who they thought won! I would much rather hear some post debate fact checking and then turn the TV off: I know my opinion is susceptible to influence and I'd rather protect it, allowing me to crystallize my own opinion.
Like the studies that show how you phrase a question can have a noticeable effect on the poll answers, just more sophisticated.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The REAL IMPORTANT question is how long will democracy last against the march of the social sciences?
Will computer science give us machine overlords before our "free will" is subverted by the oligarchy? That is, assuming we have any free will at all.... will we have 2 classes of people-- ones raised to rule and ones raised to be "free" within their cages?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Is this how Palpatine so expertly handled political affairs? I miss the Emperor's worm and Luke's trampoline.
Just goes to show you that most people can't or won't think for themselves. Most people just follow the herd, no matter what that herd is... and if you disagree with that herd you are a moron or an idiot, etc. Another posted mentioned " what we see as reasonable is VERY often decided by the range of views we are exposed to" and I think he's got it spot on precisely b/c people don't think critically and usually aren't informed (but are more that willing to render an opinion.)
The problem is probably due to the fact that public high schools (most people only have high school education) generally teach people to memorize and recite rather than think critically. Think back onto most exams you've ever had (secondary and even post secondary) and how many of them required critical thinking ability? Very few. But you probably got great marks in most subjects if you could just memorize and recite data.
This is the basis of all the conflicting polls that come out before elections. Most people are influenced by what they think everyone else thinks. The more you can make people believe everyone else thinks something, the more people you will get to vote that way.
Get them out of the hands of the Commission on Presidential Debates (i.e. a coalition of the Republican and Democratic parties) and back into the hands of a neutral non-partisan (note that I said non, not bi) group. Maybe we'd have a more diverse political landscape if we stopped censoring ideas that didn't neatly fit into the Democrat or Republican ideology.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs