Statisticians Investigate Political Bias On Wikipedia

Hugh Pickens writes "The Global Economic Intersection reports on a project to statistically measure political bias on Wikipedia. The team first identified 1,000 political phrases based on the number of times these phrases appeared in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record and applied statistical methods to identify the phrases that separated Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. Then the team identified 111,000 Wikipedia articles that include 'republican' or 'democrat' as keywords, and analyzed them to determine whether a given Wikipedia article used phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress. The results may surprise you. 'The average old political article in Wikipedia leans Democratic' but gradually, Wikipedia's articles have lost the disproportionate use of Democratic phrases and moved to nearly equivalent use of words from both parties (PDF), akin to an NPOV [neutral point of view] on average. Interestingly, some articles have the expected political slant (civil rights tends Democrat; trade tends Republican), but at the same time many seemingly controversial topics, such as foreign policy, war and peace, and abortion have no net slant. 'Most articles arrive with a slant, and most articles change only mildly from their initial slant. The overall slant changes due to the entry of articles with opposite slants, leading toward neutrality for many topics, not necessarily within specific articles.'"

Comments

How to write without political bias?

[Quakeulf]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[vlm]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

Don't write about political topics that are relevant to you?

For example writing about modern civil rights (gay marriage, gun rights, etc) in the USA is going to get a intention and/or unintentional bias from me.

However if I research and report on the political situation in France, where I have no dog in the fight, I'll probably end up pretty much unbiased.

Its a big interconnected world... there's really no reason for locals to have to write biased filler about local issues.

Doesn't have to be geographic. I have no personal interest in the gay marriage thing, not being gay or close to those in their subculture and not being hyper-christian, so I can be extremely unbiased about the topic. This SHOULD work, but it fails anyway, because my completely unbiased view unsurprisingly seems to match the (few) non-cowardly (D) and oppose almost all the neo-(R) so I'll be accused of being "politically biased" based on results, although I obviously don't have any reason to care that would influence the process of writing about it. Think of how everyone naturally decides that slavery was a dumb idea now, but it was a hot political football around 1860 or so in the USA.

There's some other hints, like if you find evidence of sloganeering in your writing you're probably doing it wrong.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Curunir_wolf]

In my opinion, the best way to combat it is to let it happen, because that way you create the most content possible. Then you use a review process to improve the content. Actually this is pretty much what Wikipedia does, it seems to work out okay for them.

Actually, according to this study, that doesn't work out for them at all. They mention that articles with a bias tend to keep that bias - it remains across many revisions. They only found some balance because other articles with bias in the other direction were also found.

But that raises another question, which they don't address: How much bias is the average reader subjected to if they don't hunt around for obscure, related topics. That is, if the main article for a topic is one read by, say, 1,000,000 people, and there are articles that balance out the viewpoint but are only read by 1,500 people, then the public in general is getting a very slanted view of the topic.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[bbbaldie]

What can be done to avoid political bias and how do we do it consistently?

About the only way I can think of is to avoid politics altogether. Too bad we can't determine a man's heroics or douchebaggery without first determining if he's a liberal or a conservative. By the time we figure that out, most of the time, we've already decided his (or her) worth. Sad.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Hatta]

You can't. Even if you write purely factual prose, it's slanted toward's the left. Reality has a well known liberal bias.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[TFAFalcon]

There is also another problem. They are measuring only the bias toward the two main parties. What about bias toward/against other points of view?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[JWW]

Ok, I'll not mod the troll for what it is. But that condescending "reality liberal bias" shit is getting really old.

Just to point to a counter example. Greece would prefer to stick with its liberal policies and continue spending government money it doesn't have. In this case, and I am not claiming that this is true in all cases, reality has a decidedly conservative bias. Greece needs to make heavily conservative moves with respect to their government spending or they are doomed. And no, the liberal "raise taxes" move isn't going to work, either.

So, Greece is living in a reality that has a conservative bias. Through proof by contradiction, the lie that "reality has a liberal" bias (in all cases) is patently false.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[nedlohs]

There are no other points of view.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[1s44c]

There are no other points of view.

How come that didn't get modded insightful?

The two party bi-polarism has buried every other point of view in the US and it has pretty much killed the democratic process for years now. Nobody gets a fair vote in anything unless it can be represented as one extreme or the other. The system is rigged in such a way that this is unlikely to change and the media keeps dumbing down everything to the same two extremes.

A democratic system can't function with only the illusion of choice, you need more than just 2 viewpoints.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[mcmonkey]

Ok, I'll not mod the troll for what it is. But that condescending "reality liberal bias" shit is getting really old.

Just to point to a counter example. Greece would prefer to stick with its liberal policies and continue spending government money it doesn't have. In this case, and I am not claiming that this is true in all cases, reality has a decidedly conservative bias. Greece needs to make heavily conservative moves with respect to their government spending or they are doomed. And no, the liberal "raise taxes" move isn't going to work, either.

So, Greece is living in a reality that has a conservative bias. Through proof by contradiction, the lie that "reality has a liberal" bias (in all cases) is patently false.

I don't think you're making the point you think you are. Spending money you don't have is a thoroughly conservative value. In the USA, sure people claiming to be conservatives talk about responsibly government spending, but when they get in to office, it's been 30 years of "deficits don't matter." Even now the presumed Republican nominee for president is running on a platform of cutting taxes and raising defense spending. How is that not spending money you don't have?

I suppose you know this is true, as you say so yourself in your comment. I don't have the solution to the Greece situation, but isn't 'the liberal "raise taxes" move' an effort to get money to spend? While liberals in the USA have traditionally been "tax-and-spend," doesn't that contradict your point? It's the conservatives who have been "borrow-and-spend" AKA spending money they don't have.

There may be situations where the conservative course of action is the best solution, but that does not mean reality has a conservative bias. (I don't think reality has a liberal (or any) bias either. I do think the current reality in the USA shows liberal values (in moderation) work. I say that makes liberals more biased to embrace reality while conservatives biased to deny it.)

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tbannist]

That's an interesting point of view, but it's not a very good proof. Greece has been following the "conservative" prescription to solve their economic problems. The result? Record levels of unemployment. If you think the American economy is doing poorly, consider that Greece now has hit a new record level of unemployment (22%) and over 50% unemployment for people aged 15-24. Given how well the "conservative" solution is working out, do you think it's any wonder they're looking for a "liberal" solution instead?

More importantly, you missed the entire point of the joke. The joke is that when reality disagrees with conservatives, they claim reality is biased. It's a sad commentary on the far right's rejection of facts and embracing of fictions to justify their views in the face of evidence to the contrary*. Liberals, while not immune, are currently much less prone to that type of behaviour as recently confirmed.

* Sometimes it manifests as an inability to accept some of the relevant facts. For instance, Grover Norquist is unable to accept that Ronald Reagan raised taxes, increased the size of the government and tripled the U.S. federal debt during his term in office. This colours his entire perception of government and it's role in the economy, since he credits the Reagan economic boom solely to the tax cuts that Reagan implemented without considering any of the other relevant factors.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[JWW]

Yes, Greece is looking for a liberal solution.

I agree the conservative solution is very painful for them.

But, I think if they follow the liberal solution, their country will burn. It will be 10x worse than anything they've gone through so far.

Their options are painful thriftiness, or universally worthless money.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[Guppy06]

Don't write about political topics that are relevant to you?

One slight problem with this idea...

However if I research and report on the political situation in France, where I have no dog in the fight, I'll probably end up pretty much unbiased.

Why would you?

People only contribute to articles on topics that interest them (witness all the video game and anime/manga articles). How many topics are there that actually interest you, but for which you hold no bias?

Re:How to write without political bias?

[tnk1]

Bias is an interesting phenomenon. I can be a fundamentalist Christian and think all gays are going to Hell to burn in eternal torment and still be okay with gay marriage as a civil situation since its not like the government can actually force me to accept that they are truly married in a Christian sense.

Alternately, I could also be atheist or agnostic, believe that being gay is perfectly acceptable and normal but still wonder just what the point of gay marriage is actually supposed to be, from a state perspective.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> It's also an 'artifact of language' issue, where the various sides on an issue may use different names for the same topic.

It isn't nearly as petty as you imply. Control of the language is control over the framing of the debate and usually gives whoever has that control an overwhelming advantage. Once you understand that things make a lot more sense.

Some example. Note that I am not interested in opening up these issues themselves so consider them OFF TOPIC here. Keep replies on the idea of bias and language.

Pro Choice/Pro Life? Both are carefully selected phrases that imply acceptance of that side's philosophy, even if the speaker hasn't made a conscious choice yet, so making sure your word selection is the one that most people who haven't yet thought it through pick is very important. Pro Choice carries the implied decision that it isn't a 'life' and therefore it isn't a very important choice at all. Pro Life on the other hand carries exactly the opposite implied decision, that the fetus is a 'life', thus murder can't be a valid 'choice.' And both are an attempt to short circuit the actual question, where does society draw the line of citizen/not a citizen. Birth is the only ljne that can be supported by the current Constitution but the question is whether that is the right place for it in light of modern neonatal medicine and philosophy. However since the very idea that the words in the Constitution have weight is a matter of political debate so again, what would define NPOV?

Is it public charity, welfare, an entitlement or 'the dole'? Which phrase you can get uninformed people to pick up will probably determine their eventual decison as to whether it is a good thing.

Fairness, Social Justice, Redistribution, Socialism. Admit it, that are all just closely related concepts that blur into simolar shades of grey that only hard core partisans can even really distinguish but they certainly carry a world of difference in the public square. And the same word games can be played with Capitalism, Free Market, Survival of the Fittest, etc. So which one is NPOV?

I could go on but the point should be made.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> For example writing about modern civil rights (gay marriage, gun rights, etc) in the USA is going to get a intention and/or unintentional bias from me.

It is worse. Just using those phrases implies a bias. NPOV is a very difficult thing, few could actually attain it and even fewer would actually be interested in the result. No, what most people want is their beliefs confirmed in such a way that they are assured that what they believe is the only Truth, thus defined as 'neutral'. The Truth has no Agenda, all that rot.

Gun Rights? Biased. Denies the possibility of common sense measures to stop the epidemic of gun violence on our streets. The Constitition isn't a suicide pact. Besides the 2nd Amendment only protects the government's right to an army you know. Framing it as a 'civil rights' issue is so loaded.

Same for 'gay marriage.' Implies the word 'marriage' somehow quietly morphed to cover groupings other than one male mated to one or more females in a reproductive unit. The idea it had such a strange and impractical (from a historical perspective) meaning would be amazing for all of human history up until the 20th Century. And to suddenly go from a novel new notion to a fundamental civil right being discovered in the space of a decade or two is even more amazing. Regardless of the desirability of the idea, it should be admitted it is a new one but the language usage of quietly overloading existing language is intentionally deceptive. Again, how would you even approach the notion of NPOV on such a controversial question since the very success of the project hinges on framing it as an uncontroversial and logical extension of 'civil rights' and just saying that is controversial. Tricky.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> Define doomed.

Hyperinflation, total collapse of social order, cats and dogs sleeping together.

Their basic problem is they are spending far more on their welfare state than they can take in through taxes. Full stop. They are far beyond the point where any conceivable tax scheme is likely to actually generate more revenue to their treasury, that 'ol Laffer Curve is a reality that can no longer be denied for them. Their ability to borrow the difference between what they can raise through taxation and what their voters demand is about finished. If they repudiate their current debts and stop making the interest payments they can forget raising more through the international bond markets. That is reality.

Long term you can't spend more than you take in. An argument can be made for borrowing for a short term problem or perhaps for a long term capital improvement. But when you try to borrow for day to day expenses with no plan for getting income balanced to outflow the result is certain. You can't do it, business can't do it, corporations can't do it and governments can't do it.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

> I suppose you *could* wonder this, but that'd make you an idiot.

Not really. The benefits you speak of are designed to promote a public policy purpose that homosexuals can't fulfill so the public (i.e. the state) should have no interest in expending finite resources upon them. See how easy it is? No religion or 'idiot' required. Coldly rational. One could even say reality based if one wanted to taunt the politically correct? Or take this argument: A hundred years ago it was pretty much universally accepted in the medical world that homosexuality was a mental defect. Is it really unpossible for someone to believe that the modern rethinking of that position is in error and was based more on politics than science; without insisting that said belief could only be based in stupidity or religion? I know I haven't devoted enough time to researching the scientific lit to say and I'd bet good yellow gold you haven't either. Leaving aside the entire question of which side is right or wrong, I'm only interested here in demonstrating that there ARE other sides possible that aren't limited to stupid, homophobic, bigoted, blah, blah. That sort of dismissal of the possibility of valid opposing viewpoints is the whole point behind controlling the language of an issue.

Re:How to write without political bias?

[jmorris42]

Whoosh!

Try and keep up, K? This thread is about bias and the difficulty of preventing it, even defining it. Personally I stopped giving the NRA money because they aren't pure enough and seemed to spend more than I was giving them on postage begging for more money. Doesn't mean I can't borrow the gun grabber arguments in an example of the framing bias inherent in the selection of terminology.

Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Or shall we remind them that the English Wikipedia is not only about U.S., and the word 'republican' and 'democrat' have other meanings too?

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it kill you to read the paper?

We obtain a list of 111,216 articles. We then eliminate these articles that cover countries other than the United States.
[...]

For each of these articles, we construct a slant index by applying the methods and estimates developed by Gentzkow and Shapiro (2010), hereafter G&S. G&S select 1,000 phrases based on the number of times these phrases appear in the text of the 2005 Congressional Record, applying statistical methods to identify phrases that separate Democratic representatives from Republican representatives, under the model that each group speaks to its respective constituents with a distinct set of coded language. In brief, we ask whether a given Wikipedia article uses phrases favored more by Republican members or by Democratic members of Congress.

And the corresponding footnote:

The words “republican” and “democrat” do not appear exclusively in entries about United States politics. If a country name shows up in the title or category names, we then check whether the phrase “United States” or “America” shows up in the title or category names. If yes, we keep this article. Otherwise, we search the text for “United States” or “America.” If these phrases do not show up more than 3 times in the text, this article is dropped. This process keeps articles such as “Iraq War” but drop articles related to political parties in foreign countries.

Researchers do think of this stuff, you know.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[EdgePenguin]

Indeed; I should imagine that those who fought against Franco in the Spanish Civil War have little in common with Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, and neither have much in common with the former Iraqi Republican guard.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[TheRaven64]

'America' appears 7 times in the article 'Irish republicanism' (3 times as 'America' 4 in 'American') and so by their metric (must occur 3 or more times) it would go in, in spite of being nothing at all to do with the US political party of the same name.

Re:Hope they don't do just word frequency analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read their metric?

Let each input line consist of the article title, followed by all category names (tab-separated or whatever). The countrynames regex matches any country name. The following AWK script approximates their algorithm (yes, I know egrep misses multiple matches on one line -- but you get the idea).
{
    if ($1 ~ countrynames) {
        if ($0 ~ /United States|America/) print $1;
    } else {
        title = $1;
        "egrep -c 'United States|America' wiki/" title | getline;
        if ($1 > 2) print title;
    }
}
Since "Irish Republicanism" contains "Irish", a form of country name, it would go through the first branch, and would require "America" to appear in a section heading.

Equally biased != NPOV

[TorrentFox]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Troyusrex]

One guy may say that the sun is green, the other guy may say it's purple. Having both of them in the same article does not make it neutral.

It depends on what your definition of "neutral" is. If it's making sure that all major points of view get equal mention and if Green and Purple are the two major points of view then it may well be "neutral".

Of course, there are many other definitions of "neutral" for which your example would not make then neutral.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Hatta]

Exactly. A neutral article will be biased towards the position that is actually true. An article that treats all opinions equally is biased in favor of the positions that are untrue.

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[Theophany]

You make the erroneous assumption that the biases are empirically provable or that opinions are in some way absolute rather than normative, which is not always the case. (Actually, in politics this is never the case, they all distort facts beyond any limitations of meaningfulness to suit their own agendas.)

Re:Equally biased != NPOV

[CastrTroy]

This is the same problem we have in the news. Reporters (some anyway) want to be seen as non-biased, so they give equal time to both supporters and non-supporters of global warming, and therefore the general public thinks that there is actually some kind of debate in the scientific community over whether or not global warming is really happening. Same goes for evolution and a lot of other topics. Sometimes it even gets a little out of hand, like this Anderson Cooper interview where he has some non-educated person who just embarrasses herself on national television, because they insist on having someone from the other side of the issue talk about it, and she was the only person stupid enough to try to defend the point of view. Ignoring the other side of the debate is fine if the other side of the debate is provably wrong.

Obligatory

[beezhive]

[Citation Needed]

Libertarian bias?

[EdgePenguin]

Surely they need to investigate libertarian bias (especially seeing as Wales himself is, how should I put this, a raving Objectivist nutjob). The fact that libertarian beliefs overlap with democrat and republican beliefs can explain the two separate slants with one single hypothesis.

Dangerous to Conclude this is "Slant"

[eldavojohn]

This is a neat study but I feel like the foundational assumptions are subjective and a little flawed.

(civil rights tends Democrat; trade tends Republican)

Could that be simply because Democrats invent/introduce/overuse new phrases and talking points for civil rights and Republicans invent/introduce/overuse new phrases and talking points for trade? For example, you'd probably hear Democrats say "Equal Opportunity Employment" or "Affirmative Action" a lot and you'd probably hear Republicans say "Laissez-faire" or "Free Market" a lot. What would be the antithesis of these phrases for the other side? I would posit that it's entirely possible that these articles are not on average biased and instead are merely explaining and using the phrases that each party has employed to tackle their number one priorities.

On top of that, I didn't see anything that seemed to indicate that they used windowing to determine when a phrase was opposed to the phrase they were using. For example if you found that the acronym ACORN indicates a Democratic slant but there's a whole section on its Wikipedia page full of negative criticism despite them using 'ACORN' frequently in that section. Would this section be identified as a Democratic slant?

Where is this G&S word bank? Where is the list of results so I can look up the ACORN article's scores?

I'd be more interested in the media

[Grayhand]

I would have assumed a fairly even distribution with Wikipedia so the results weren't that surprising. I'd be more interested in using it to find bias in the media. There are obvious cases of bias such as Fox but I've noticed a gradual move towards the right in groups like CNN who seemed in the past Democratic in it's leaning. I've found more open reporting from comedians these days. Some subjects only the comedians take on that the media avoids or barely mentions. One interesting trend I noticed early on is all media sources including supposed left wing groups call the President Mr Obama while Bush was generally called President Bush and I can't remember him being referred to as Mr Bush. Traditionally the media always calls a sitting President by the title President and expresidents are generally referred to as Former President. Pay attention when you listen to the news and see if I'm right. Both Bushs and Clinton are referred to as former Presidents far more often than Obama is called President Obama.

Re:I'd be more interested in the media

[phantomfive]

I've found more open reporting from comedians these days.

Take this as a sign of your biases, then, you probably like what the comedians are saying. Comedians, such as Jon Stewart, are fully happy to distort the truth, selectively report, anything for entertainment value. When he is called out on it, Jon Stewart doesn't deny it, he says, "hey, I'm a comedian."

If you think comedians are giving you 'more open reporting' it's a problem with you, because they are not even trying to do that.

WAIT!

[Charliemopps]

How on earth can 2 scientists be so naive as to think there are only 2 political points of view... and then to measure for those 2 points of view? They basically took talking points from our 2 main parties and then measured how often each showed up in an article. I'd argue that the Republican and Democrat points of view are one and the same. They disagree on very minor, but very polarizing points of view that give them something to argue about in an election. Most of the subjects they were surprised to see no slant on, both parties agree on... foreign policy, war, peace... How has our current president acted any different than the last one? Or the last 10 for that matter? Abortion? Does anyone really care other than extreme feminists and extreme Christians?

We have one ruling political party in this country that masquerades as two. They measured bias in those articles... far more than they realize. Bias towards the statuesque and our 1 party system.

Interesting, but shallow

[Hentes]

The frequency of using individual words is far from an actual political bias.

Re:Interesting, but shallow

[HeckRuler]

Well, I could understand if some language gets more use by one party or another, but that's linguistics, not bias. If you assume everyone with a texan drawl is a dyed-in-the-wool republican and you see a lot of articles with that Texan drawl, you can't assume that those articles are biased towards republicans. Because the Texan republicans can still write with a NPOV. They can be professional and, you know, fair. Even when they speak funny.

Hey, it's possible. (plus, there's this place called Houston).

Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[captainpanic]

Europe has a clear political bias too (we're left wing socialist surrender monkeys), and we're quite happy about that. So, please America, leave our wikipedia alone. Thanks.

If I think that wikipedia is politically neutral, then this investigation will show it has a bias for the Democrats.
If wikipedia is neutral between Democrat and Republican views, then I will think it has a strong right wing bias.

The problem with this kind of reserach is that it might either undermine Wikipedia as a source in general (when finally the world seems to agree that the qualiy of wikipedia is just as good as any encyclopedia), or worse: it leads to changes in the contents to neutralize the supposed bias. This investigation has no benefits for wikipedia, or for free information.

Re:Please limit it to articles about the US gov't

[Chrisq]

Europe has a clear political bias too (we're left wing socialist surrender monkeys), and we're quite happy about that. So, please America, leave our wikipedia alone..

Didn't you know that every use of British spellings counted as a "left wing" article.

Three accountants go duck hunting.

[drainbramage]

The first accountant shoots and misses a meter high.
The second accountant shoots and misses a meter low.
The third accountant says "Got it"!
------------------
It looks like another paid for study that proves what they were asked to prove.
They only had to determine which data points would produce the required end point.

I'm glad it isn't liberal, because...

[N0Man74]

I'm glad it didn't turn out to be a liberal bias. I would tire quickly of the phrase "Liberal Pedia" constantly from Conservatives.

Though, it still might not stop Fox.

And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[Anonymous Coward]

Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis: A rhetorical device that stealthily inserts a false pretense of general knowledge. For example "As everyone knows..."

Or, as this article does: "expected political slant - civil rights tends Democrat"

Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's. The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories. The first Republican President freed the slaves. Every Governor of every state that let loose the fire hoses on and dogs on minority students was a Democrat.

Study rhetoric, and don't fall for it. We are most vulnerable to the rhetoric we cheer for. That's where we should put most of our scrutiny.
Being tricked by adversary is bad enough, being tricked by someone you support is truly insulting.

Bias is not in the use of phrases alone

[hessian]

There's also choice of topic, slant of the article and what is included or excluded.

I see, for example, they excluded the chart with the average IQs of all nations.

Slant of article is tough to define, but it's your approach to the topic. "Self-Appointed 'Neighborhood Watch' guy shoots innocent teen" or "Angry Teen with marijuana possession offense attacks neighborhood watch official."

As long as there are people, there will be political bias, and Wikipedia still leans left because the people behind it are mostly students.

Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[TerryCary]

Apodixis: A rhetorical device that stealthily inserts a false pretense of general knowledge. For example "As everyone knows..." Or, as this article does: "expected political slant - civil rights tends Democrat" The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories. The first Republican President freed the slaves. Every Governor of every state that let loose the police, the fire hoses and the dogs on minority students was a Democrat. Republicans broke the Democrat's filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's Study rhetoric; don't fall for it. We are most vulnerable to the rhetoric we agree with. So, that's where we should put most of our scrutiny. Being tricked by an adversary is bad enough, being tricked by someone you support is truly insulting.

Debates can be reframed, introducing bias

[Urban Garlic]

Bias can sneak in because of changes in terminology, presumably in both directions, although I've noticed it more on the right these days. As Robert Anton Wilson famously observed, you can go from liberal to conservative without changing a single idea if you wait long enough -- the reverse is also true, depending on the domain in which you have your ideas.

For instance, an article about taxation written in the 1990s might be considered neutral in its time, and talk about the "inheritance tax" a lot. Fast forward ten years, during which the term "death tax" has come into prominence, and the old term "inheritance tax" is only used by fogies and liberals. The textual analysis of the unchanged article will now score it as "liberal", because the terms of the debate have shifted.

This can happen with policies, too -- I remember when a carbon tax was considered a compromise position between liberals, who wanted to directly regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and conservatives, who felt that some kind of market mechanism would provide useful flexibility. Carbon taxes were a technocratic, ideologically neutral solution when they were proposed, but now they're seen as liberal social engineering.

It doesn't always go rightward, of course, some debates have been successfully re-framed by the left, as well, I think -- "global warming" used to be a neutral descriptive term, but the warming isn't uniform, so "climate change" is the preferred term, and I think it's mostly conservatives who use the term "global warming".

That ought to blow up my karma for a solid year...

Re:And this article is example 1: Apodixis

[uigrad_2000]

Republicans broke the Democrats filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's.

Everett Dirksen was a republican congressman that grew up in the extremely racially charged town of Pekin, Illinois. I grew up nearby, and Pekin is still regarded as one of the most racially divided towns today, but they have made a lot of progress. At least they got rid of the previous high school mascot (changed from the "Pekin Chinks" to the "Pekin Dragons").

Dirksen is the one who brought forward the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

You can't go through the Illinois school system without hearing about what Dirksen did to bring about equality, and Springfield has even tried to make him a local hero, by naming roads after him, etc. But, I don't know how many times I've seen him listed as a democrat, when the truth was the complete opposite. Now, this article is calling civil rights a democrat issue, and it just makes me cringe. Is history education really this bad in this country?

Conservative Democrats

[Attack DAWWG]

Your "history" stops at the 1960s. You are aware, aren't you, that huge numbers of conservative Democrats moved to the Republican party in the '60s? Look up "Solid South."

So you are basically claiming that a significant part of today's Republican party is racist.

Brilliant.

Flawed

[Jiro]

I think the major flaw is that this seems to be assuming that bias on Wikipedia is done in the same way as bias elsewhere. Someone who wants to bias a Wikipedia article has to do so within the confines of rules which help prevent some kinds of bias more than others.

For instance, one of the most common ways to bias a Wikipedia article is undue weight--you include negative information and exclude positive information, or vice versa. This sort of bias doesn't use coded language (thus making it invisible to this study) and while it is still against Wikipedia rules, Wikipedia does relatively poorly at stopping it.

Re:Bias is rhetoric. Apodixis For Example

[slimjim8094]

The Republican Party was formed for the sole purpose of overturning Democratic Legislation that allowed slavery to expand into the Western Territories.
The first Republican President freed the slaves.
Every Governor of every state that let loose the police, the fire hoses and the dogs on minority students was a Democrat.
Republicans broke the Democrat's filibuster of the Civil Rights Laws of the 60's.

True, but missing the point. LBJ managed to get the Civil Rights Act passed, largely using the political capital of JFK's death (by describing it as an enduring legacy) and nearly all Republicans and Democrats in the North (but more Democrats) voted for it, while nearly all in the South of either party voted against it. This correlation reverses when you combine the figures (Simpson's paradox) which is what you are talking about. The divide was so intense that it changed the base of the parties - the Democrats "lost the South", and they went to the Republicans - which changed the GOP more than the GOP changed them. Starting with the next election after this shift (Nixon's), the GOP started winning elections by playing to racist fears

While saying that the Democrats in aggregate opposed the CRA is technically true, it's not really relevant. The South opposed the CRA, and that was so important to them that party lines not only didn't matter, but they changed what the party lines were.

How are States Rights racist?

[SuperKendall]

ntil the Republican party adopted the Southern Strategy in the 70's to win over the racists

    It's absurd that the Wiki page you link to labels the "southern strategy" as racist - when the main thing that entailed was Republicans advocating for states rights! The article tries to paint that as pandering to "scared white people" but if you even thought for a second about what it actually meant, you'd realize that stronger states rights means more control for blacks than whites in the south where the black population is a majority, since after all they could vote at that point... That is how Nixon managed to get a high percentage of the black vote. Think again, WHY would black people vote for Nixon in large numbers were he pandering to racist whites?

That whole article is a prime example of how Wikipedia tilts so far towards Democrats it's horizontal.

The Republican party used to be basically like the Democratic party was today.

Not at all, things are still as they were. Democrats still seek to keep "lower classes" like the black minority groups down, by keeping them addicted to government handouts and assistance.

Affirmative action is another example. It is basically a declaration that the specified minorities are inferior and cannot help themselves. When you expect less from people you get less, which serves no-one well.

As far as I can tell, Republicans are still the only major party offering true equality and freedom from racial discrimination.

It is rather funny that the black population continues to vote in large numbers for Democrats, at this point it's a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and very advanced propaganda from Democrats parroted and amplified by much of the media. Looks like the racists won after all.