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"
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
Debates are only useless to people who follow politics. For that person with only a casual interest, they're very revealing snapshots. I learned this after talking to a friend after the last election. For those of us who are interested in politics beyond the headlines, we have a bad habit of forgetting how uninformed most of the public is. And, I wouldn't use anything from Arizona as a model for the rest of the nation!
The problems start when we stop having real debates and the "safe" crap like the Bush-Kerry debates.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Ah, the famous "b... b... but both sides are the same and equally bad."
You're right, there's no difference between them except on minor policies regarding the environment, the economy, national security, worker's rights and a few other bits of fluff. Last election, one party nominated "Harvard graduate & policy wonk" and the other nominated "Senility & nice tits", but there's no difference. One party supports increased fuel efficiency standards and research, the other is outright attempting to destroy the EPA and OSHA, but there's no difference. One party got us involved in 2 land wars in Asia (One of them based on lies) with no good way out and now has no policy on national security other than chest beating and "anything to make the black man look bad, even if it means delaying a nuclear inspection treaty with Russia," the other is trying to get us out of those land wars and is busy not starting one in Libya. One party thinks the answer to our economic problems is more deregulation, cutting taxes, and is anti-worker to the point of taking down murals from the Department of Labor for being pro-labor, to say nothing of the attempted complete no-bid sellout of Wisconsin.
But you're right, they're both equally as bad.
People who, like you, throw up their hands in despair because no group is perfect are the best ally the neo-fascists who've taken over the Republican party could ask for. The more people they can disgust and keep away from the polls, the fewer useful idiots they need to vote for them and therefore the more extreme/overt they can get.
Depends how you define 'bad.' There are a lot of people who would be one-issue voters, if not for both the parties not caring about it. Take, for example, copyright reform - this being Slashdot, a lot of people here believe that some form of weakening of copyright laws would be in order to preserve freedom of innovation and because the cost of enforcement is unacceptable. But what can they do? 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. In the last presidential election, the candidates between them spent nearly three billion dollars. They differ only in exactly which corporations they serve.
The problem isn't that the parties are the same - they do differ substantially, as you describe. The problem is that they are both essentially corrupt, just in different manners, because that is the only way to compete in the political arena. Winning elections takes money, and you get money by courting the rich donors and implying that you'll do something to help them if they give you enough to get in power.