Pew Study on Political Polarisation of the American Public

APU, I haven't read the comments on the Wow, how ignorant do they think you are??? Post, but I have this feeling that they run along the lines that the Koch Brothers care more about you than Bloomberg does.  After all, the Kochs do all sorts of wonderful things that are harmful to you: they must care!

Anyway, The Pew Charitable Trust (more billionaires) came up with a study on political polarisation in the US. It's a very involved study on the topic as the video below points out, getting into many different aspects of polarisation.

The part which interests me the most is the media, even that is rather involved.  The most consistent Media source for the right is Fox News, with about 47% of those identified as conservative listing that as their trusted source of their news.  Liberals, tend to have many different news sources with CNN (15%), NPR (13%), MSNBC (12%) and the New York Times (10%) all ranking near the top of the list.

The important part of all this:

The public’s understanding of government and politics is also influenced by the extent to which they trust – or distrust – the information they hear from various news sources. In other words – how open people are to the political news and information put forth by various outlets, including those they do not actively consume.

In general, the survey finds that there is more trust than distrust of news sources. But there are substantial differences in trust and distrust across the ideological spectrum.

People who took this poll were asked if they had heard of 36 different news sources.  If they had heard of the source, they were then asked to what level they trusted the accuracy of that source. Those with consistently liberal political values had heard of more sources than any other ideological group – on average, about 26 out of the 36 – and trust about twice as many as they distrust (10.5 vs. 4.8). Respondents with mostly liberal views or with about an equal mix of conservative and liberal views have heard of fewer sources, on average, but still trust more sources than they distrust.



Where I fit in here:

One example is the Economist. Only 34% of panelists have heard of the outlet, but within that group there is far more trust (12%) than distrust (2%), when it comes to news about government and politics. The BBC is recognized by a greater portion of respondents (76%), but is similarly more trusted (36%) than distrusted (7%).

Oddly, they left out the Guardian (even though it was one of the choices in the poll).  Anyway.

What really came out here was that those with consistently liberal views had more sources for information than those on the right.




See Also:

• Why conservatives prefer propaganda to reality - Salon.com
• The single most important fact about American politics - Vox

Politics in the Age of Social Media

The BBC has a story that asks why social media couldn't save Troy Davis? Despite the outcry on social media, in particular--Twitter--Troy Davis was still executed. Celebrities such as Martha Plimpton and Alec Baldwin tweeted about the case, and Outkast artist Big Boi posted photos from outside the jail to his TwitPic account. "Troy Davis", "Letter to Georgia" and NO EVIDENCE were all trending topics in the US throughout the night on social media. Yet all the angry tweets and online petitions did nothing to prevent Davis being executed at 23:08 local time in an Atlanta, Georgia prison.

The inability to turn the digital outrage over Davis into real-life action served as a stark contrast to the new realities of much of the digital world. "We are living in a 21st Century communications infrastructure, but we are still governed by a 20th Century political system," says Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Media, which focuses on the intersection of politics and internet culture. In an age when movies and music can be accessed instantly and a customer service issue can be resolved with a quick tweet, social media has already been cited in the success of the Arab Spring revolutions.

But the case of Troy Davis showed its limits. "I'm not sure that 1,000 twfeets or Facebook posts have the same power as one phone call," says Brian Southwell, a professor at the University of North Carolina. "We've lowered the bar for activism. Now it's a click away."

One factor could have been that all the activity on social media happened too late. Instead of starting the momentum toward clemency earlier in the process, the activity happened far too late to have any effect. One tweeter asked, "To the people yelling injustice for Troy Davis, where were you last month, six months, years ago & not just the week prior to his execution?"

Another factor, is that the action doesn't come from the force of public will, registered online or otherwise. America's execution rate has dropped by 50% since 1999 due to reduced concern about crime, a lower level of homicide, and fiscal austerity, since death penalty cases are more expensive to prosecute. Another factor is the Judges, prosecutors, and American Legal Institute, the "elites" who decided about how the death penalty functions and wrote the guidelines for death penalty legislation, publicly denounced those guidelines in 2010.

On the other hand, overall public opinion for the death penalty remains strong. A 2010 Gallup poll shows that 64% of Americans support the death penalty for someone convicted of murder, down from 65% in 2006 and 68% in 2001.

So, Social media gave the case added publicity, but there was little effect in the outcome for various reasons. Does that mean that Social media is worthless for activism? Not really, it can be used to raise awareness of an issue--particularly issues that are ignored by the Main Stream Media. Maybe people didn't know about the case and weren't involved in the efforts to save Troy Davis, but a lot more people now know what happened. Perhaps the increased awareness of the circumstances of the Troy Davis will help erode support for the death penalty.

The real bottom line is that we are not sure how Social Media will effect activism. Will it raise issues and debate to change public attitude toward social issues? Social media is yet in its infancy where activism is concerned.