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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"
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
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
I dunno, but everybody seems to believe in it so it must be true.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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
Asch Conformity Experiment : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYIh4MkcfJA
Privacy is terrorism.
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