Essay: Don't believe all the political news "facts" and predictions you read on the internet and see on the news

From Conservapedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Within a news media and social media environment, an echo chamber is an environment or ecosystem in which individuals merely encounter beliefs that mirror, amplify or reinforce their preexisting beliefs via communication and repetition inside a completely closed system that offers no contrary facts or rebuttals.[1][2][3]

Question: What percentage of the political news you read or watch on television is wrong or is one-sided and lacks objectivity?

As can be seen below, a significant amount data shows that political partisans who choose to live in self-imposed ideological bubbles in terms of their information sources suffer from groupthink.

The danger of being in a political partisan news bubble

See also: Critical thinking and Falsification

Arthur C. Brooks wrote in his article Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being: "A 2012 survey conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University asked a sample of Americans about their news-consumption habits, and quizzed them about U.S. and international political and economic events. They found that those watching the most partisan television news sources—on both the left and the right—were often less knowledgeable about world events than those who consumed no news at all."[4]

Related studies:



"Trust, but verify" is a Russian proverb.

The phrase became internationally known in English after Suzanne Massie, who is a scholar of Russian history, taught it to Ronald Reagan, then president of the United States, who latter used it in the context of nuclear disarmament discussions with the Soviet Union.
Jonestown was a classic example of how groupthink and ideological rigidity leads to poor decision making.

"I was an atheist even then, and at that funeral parlor they held me up to look at her, and when I got down, I was bitter." - Jim Jones [5]

Trust in media is so low that half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them

Political predictions on the internet

Question: Did you know that a great many so-called political experts have a very poor track record when it comes to their predictions? It's true. Although some political experts practice critical thinking and try to falsify their notions/theories, most do not.

There was a large study on this matter of the unreliability of many political experts and I give the resources related to this matter below.

Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of individuals in which the quest for harmony/conformity within the group results in irrational and/or poor decision-making.

1. It is much better to receive a broad spectrum of information in order to more deeply understand the present and better understand various trends that will affect the future.

Please see:

2. Political betting markets have better accuracy than polls and pundits.

Why did so many self-declared international relations experts miserably fail concerning their multipolar fantasy?

Colleges and universities are not paying enough attention to teaching critical thinking skills

See also: Critical thinking and Falsification

Presently, there appears to be a higher education bubble that will burst.[6] In addition, college is clearly not delivering the goods in terms of intellectual development for a large percentage of its students. An American study found that forty-five percent of students achieved no significant improvement in their critical thinking, reasoning or writing skills during their first two years of college. After four years, 36 percent displayed no significant increases in these so-called "higher order" thinking skills.[7] Students, particularly those who made poor curriculum choices, are increasingly angry that college does not adequately prepare them for the marketplace and leaves them with a pile of debt.[8]

The socialist brain of a liberal Democrat: A mind is a terrible thing to waste!

Liberal Brain.jpg

NPC internet meme

See also: NPC internet meme

Popular graphic used in the NPC internet meme.

The NPC internet meme (derived from non-player character in video gaming), is a politically right-wing internet meme that represents liberals/leftists who do not think for themselves, lack critical thinking skills and have been politically indoctrinated.

According to website The Verge:

“ Last week, The New York Times published a piece about an insular 4chan meme that had started to bleed over into political Twitter. At the time, NPC — an acronym for the gaming term “non-playable character” — had been weaponized.. in an attempt to “own the libs” by calling them automatons, but it was still a relatively niche meme very few outlets had touched.

Along with a couple of stories before it, the Times’ article kicked off a domino effect: its publication prompted popular members of the alt-right — including Paul Joseph Watson and Infowars — to amplify the meme to their audiences through YouTube videos, articles, and tweets. Search results for “NPC” increased, according to Google Trends...

Suddenly, a meme... [was] telegraphed to a massive audience in a jarringly forced display of virality that highlights just how quickly an inside joke from an insular community can spread with the oxygen of press coverage. [9]

”

The rise of the NPC internet meme

Google Trends graph of the number of worldwide searches for the term NPC

There has been a huge rise in the use of the NPC meme on the internet as can be seen by this Google Trends graph of worldwide searches for the term "NPC".

The main factors are:

1. Elon Musk taking over Twitter which gave a boost to the political right.

2. Supporters of right-wing politics are getting more active in culture war issues such as anti-woke backlash.

3. The growing hunger for free speech and growing anti-cancel culture sentiments.

4. The rise of a few other right-wing friendly social media platforms (Rumble, Gab, etc.).

5. Right-wingers are aggressively building their own ecosystem.

6. A right-wing populist programme normally encompasses factors such as economic protectionism/problems and anti-imigration/anti-illegal immigration sentiments and these factors are rising in some countries.

7. European right-wing political figures (Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Andrej Duda, etc.) are using the European Union corruption scandal as a political weapon and inciting anti-EU sentiment ahead of the 2024 European Parliament elections which is giving a bounce to right-wingers.

(The popularity of video gaming is somewhat down from its coronavirus pandemic high so that cannot explain why the NPC meme is currently rising in popularity in the above Google trends graph.)

Kitler the cat was immediately canceled and a Kansas City meteorologist forced to make a public apology and rectification for thoughtlessness and insensitivity.[10] See: Cancel culture

Too much negatively slanted and sensationalistic news is not good for people

See also: Self-care

Consuming too much negatively slanted and sensationalistic news is not good for one's physical and mental health (See: Avoid News Towards a Healthy News Diet By Rolf Dobelli).

User:Conservative's essays

Related essay:

References

  1. ↑ Nguyen, C. Thi (June 2020). "Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles". Episteme. 17 (2): 141–161. doi:10.1017/epi.2018.32. ISSN 1742-3600. S2CID 171520109.
  2. ↑ The echo chamber effect on social media, PNAS, February 23, 2021, 118 (9) e2023301118 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023301118
  3. ↑ What is a Social Media Echo Chamber?, Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations, The University of Texas at Austin, 2020
  4. ↑ Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being by Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 2020
  5. ↑ An untitled collection of reminiscences by Jim Jones
  6. ↑ Multiple references:
  7. ↑ Rimer, Sara (January 18, 2011). "Study: Many college students not learning to think critically". The Hechinger Report. Reprinted at McClatchyDC website/News/Nation-World/National.
  8. ↑ Vedder, Richard (April 5, 2011). "The higher education bubble". Forbes website/Sites/CCAP.
  9. ↑ The NPC meme went viral when the media gave it oxygen, The Verge, 2018
  10. ↑ https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-meteorologist-sorry-for-showing-kitler-a-hitleresque-cat-on-air/
Retrieved from "https://conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Essay:_Don%27t_believe_all_the_political_news_%22facts%22_and_predictions_you_read_on_the_internet_and_see_on_the_news&oldid=2042693"