dagblog - Comments for "The news that bots share on Twitter tends not to focus on politics"

It is like the Stanford

moat — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 22:18:49 +0000

In reply to .. this poll was not actually

It is like the Stanford Prison experiment all over again.

.. this poll was not actually

barefooted — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 22:12:34 +0000

In reply to The opinion statements are

.. this poll was not actually testing what the pollsters assumed it was testing.

Exactly.

The opinion statements are

ocean-kat — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 21:15:32 +0000

In reply to But in a larger sense, doesn

The opinion statements are clearly opinions so I have some trouble understanding how people didn't get that. But they did do much better with them than the factual statements. The factual statements are written as facts but I'd guess that people got them wrong because they disagreed whether the fact was true. In other words as is so often the case with polls and studies this poll was not actually testing what the pollsters assumed it was testing.

But in a larger sense, doesn

barefooted — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 20:30:42 +0000

In reply to I can't imagine not being

But in a larger sense, doesn't it go farther than the news? Simply the wording of a statement should give a large clue about whether it's an opinion or a fact. WaPo and others regularly do little "test your news iq!" quizzes which are just silly fun and judge nothing more than whether you've been a news junkie over the preceding week or so - but this kind of polling should (in effect) show whether you have the innate ability to tell the difference between something proven and something supposed.

I can't imagine not being

artappraiser — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 20:06:40 +0000

In reply to The factual, opinion and

I can't imagine not being able to tell the difference

Well, you're a news junkie, and basically one of their conclusions was that news junkies could tell the difference, so there you have it! Like you, I did go over the questions, because it's a hint for us news junkie types a little insight into what non news junkie types might fall for. It was also interesting that they stressed that experience at reading mainstream news sources was a factor. Makes no judgment why, just says....one could make different presumptions about why.

The factual, opinion and

barefooted — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 19:01:21 +0000

In reply to Repeating post of a new large

The factual, opinion and borderline statements

Below are the 12 news statements that respondents were asked to categorize:

Factual statements

Health care costs per person in the U.S. are the highest in the developed world

President Barack Obama was born in the United States

Immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally have some rights under the Constitution

ISIS lost a significant portion of its territory in Iraq and Syria in 2017

Spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid make up the largest portion of the U.S. federal budget

Opinion statements

Democracy is the greatest form of government

Increasing the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour is essential for the health of the U.S. economy

Abortion should be legal in most cases

Immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally are a very big problem for the country today

Government is almost always wasteful and inefficient

Borderline statements

Applying additional scrutiny to Muslim Americans would not reduce terrorism in the U.S.

Voter fraud across the U.S. has undermined the results of our elections

Within the Pew link you cited, I tried to find the actual poll - kinda curious how we'd do - but this is the best they had. An answer sheet, really, but I can't imagine not being able to tell the difference between the statements even without a cheat sheet.

Repeating post of a new large

artappraiser — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 07:37:39 +0000

In reply to The news that bots share on Twitter tends not to focus on politics

Repeating post of a new large Pew study I linked to 4 days ago,

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN FACTUAL AND OPINION STATEMENTS IN THE NEWS

The politically aware, digitally savvy and those more trusting of the news media fare better; Republicans and Democrats both influenced by political appeal of statements

@ Pew Resarch Center, June 18

[....] A new Pew Research Center survey of 5,035 U.S. adults examines a basic step in that process: whether members of the public can recognize news as factual – something that’s capable of being proved or disproved by objective evidence – or as an opinion that reflects the beliefs and values of whoever expressed it.

The findings from the survey, conducted between Feb. 22 and March 8, 2018, reveal that even this basic task presents a challenge. The main portion of the study, which measured the public’s ability to distinguish between five factual statements and five opinion statements, found that a majority of Americans correctly identified at least three of the five statements in each set. But this result is only a little better than random guesses. Far fewer Americans got all five correct, and roughly a quarter got most or all wrong. Even more revealing is that certain Americans do far better at parsing through this content than others. Those with high political awareness, those who are very digitally savvy and those who place high levels of trust in the news media are better able than others to accurately identify news-related statements as factual or opinion [....]

Found this June 10 Parscale

artappraiser — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 06:35:02 +0000

In reply to The news that bots share on Twitter tends not to focus on politics

Found this June 10 Parscale interview with 60 minutes (has transcript as well as video for those who prefer to read,) very interesting in that he clearly still is a true believer Facebook is what helped them win, espec. the micro-targeting, with Facebook staff helping them learn "how to", like this (my underlining):

[....] Brad Parscale: I understood early that Facebook was how Donald Trump was going to win. Twitter is how he talked to the people. Facebook was going to be how he won.

Lesley Stahl: And Facebook IS how he won.

Brad Parscale: I think so. I think Donald Trump won, but I think Facebook was the method -- it was the highway in which his car drove on. [....]

And Brad Parscale was in the driver's seat. In the beginning of the campaign he worked alone at home in San Antonio, but by the end he had 100 people reporting to him. One of his main jobs was to send out carefully-tailored, low-cost digital ads to millions of people.

Lesley Stahl: And these were ads on Facebook?

Brad Parscale: Facebook, we did 'em on Twitter, Google search, other platforms. Facebook was the 500-pound gorilla, 80 percent of the budget kind of thing [....]

Lesley Stahl: One of the best things Facebook did for you, I heard, was penetrate the rural vote. Is that correct?

Brad Parscale: Yeah. So Facebook now lets you get to places and places possibly that you would never go with TV ads. Now, I can find, you know, 15 people in the Florida Panhandle that I would never buy a TV commercial for. And, we took opportunities that I think the other side didn't.

Lesley Stahl: Like what?

Brad Parscale: Well, we had our-- their staff embedded inside our offices.

Lesley Stahl: What?

Brad Parscale: Yeah, Facebook employees would show up for work every day in our offices.

Lesley Stahl: Whoa, wait a minute. Facebook employees showed up at the Trump headquarters --

Brad Parscale: Google employees, and Twitter employees.

Lesley Stahl: They were embedded in your campaign?

Brad Parscale: I mean, like, they were there multiple days a week, three, four days a week, two days week, five days a week --

Lesley Stahl: What were they doing inside? I mean --

Brad Parscale: Helping teach us how to use their platform. I wanna get --

Lesley Stahl: Helping him get elected?

Brad Parscale: I asked each one of them by email, I wanna know every, single secret button, click, technology you have. "I wanna know everything you would tell Hillary's campaign plus some. And I want your people here to teach me how to use it."

Lesley Stahl: Inside?

Brad Parscale: Yeah, I want 'em sittin' right next to us --

Lesley Stahl: How do you know they weren't Trojan Horses?

Brad Parscale: 'Cause I'd ask 'em to be Republicans, and I'd -- we'd talk to 'em.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, you only wanted Republicans?

Brad Parscale: I wanted people who support Donald Trump from their companies [....]

There's alot here. But when

barefooted — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 00:40:30 +0000

In reply to The news that bots share on Twitter tends not to focus on politics

There's alot here. But when it comes to analytical data research re our interest in bots, I think the high point was before the November 2016 election:

To conduct the analysis, researchers examined 108,552 tweeted links to 50 popular news websites sent during a six-week period in the summer of 2017.

Of course, as I said, there's alot here to absorb. But the time frame matters when we consider the import overall, and what we're trying to understand.