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posted by cmn32480 on Monday November 14 2016, @07:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the twitter-is-known-for-being-a-place-of-kindness-and-intelligence dept.

El Reg reports in a story that at least some people seem to think so.

Twitter trolls are undermining what political analysts had predicted would be a new form of responsive democracy.

Far from being an opportunity to engage directly with voters, researchers found that the more politicians tried to actively interact with their constituents, the more abuse they faced.

The eggheads, based in Europe and the US, analyzed just under 800,000 tweets from over 650 politicians based in Germany, Greece, Spain and the UK and found that the percentage of "impolite" tweets directed at them went from 8 per cent when they did nothing to an extraordinary 40 per cent when they actively tried to engage with voters.

If that wasn't depressing enough, the paper notes that the level of abuse increases almost exactly proportionally to how engaging people's messages are. The more they asked to hear people's views, the more those views were insulting.

"Most politicians who post anything quickly become subject to constant personal abuse," the paper, published in the Journal of Communication, notes.

Such is the level of unpleasantness and vehemence that most politicians simply give up and use their Twitter accounts to simply broadcast messages rather than seek input or discussion. Something that, ironically, has led to them being criticized for ignoring voters and not being sufficiently open or engaging.

My take: The egg heads may be right on this, however there is nothing inherently undemocratic in people publishing libelous and slanderous crap about politicians. It's been happening in American democracy for at least as long as the republic has been in existence. Some of the things said about Thomas Jefferson when he was running for president were worse than what we were subjected to during this election cycle.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 14 2016, @01:31PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2016, @01:31PM (#426518) Journal

    Past dirty campaigns amuse me somewhat. It seems that a lot of people believe that we have lowered our standards over the years. But, no, people are people. People don't change, they don't "evolve". An article I read long ago made me laugh. It seems that in Greece, Rome, and any other ancient civilization, all the graffiti is vulgar. Drawings of penises, writings of scatology, on and on it goes. People simply don't change. The public places have always been places for vulgarity.

    The elections are no different. Leaders throughout history have been attacked with sexual allegations, accusations of weakness, the lack of morals, cowardice, and more. Nothing changes.

    Politicians everywhere, throughout time, can all identify with this song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sky1tt8vLA [youtube.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 14 2016, @02:43PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 14 2016, @02:43PM (#426538)

    and any other ancient civilization

    .... err western civilization anyway. Non western civs are, well, non western.

    I'd agree that western civilization fundamentally doesn't change very much.

  • (Score: 2) by RamiK on Monday November 14 2016, @05:48PM

    by RamiK (1813) on Monday November 14 2016, @05:48PM (#426595)

    all the graffiti is vulgar. Drawings of penises

    Those were serious futility symbols. Socrates's trial is the direct result of those devotions. As the story goes, at the eve of the 415BC Sicilian expedition, Alcibiades, a general and one of Socrates's students, was conspired against and falsely implicated in the defacing of such statues [wikipedia.org]. While Alcibiades managed to set out for the war despite the charges, he was convicted in absentia and forced to defect to Sparta to save himself. His teacher, Socrates, wasn't so lucky and was found guilty of corrupting the youth of the Athens and asebeia against the gods which lead to his state-assisted suicide in place of execution.

    Similarly, Roman soldiers were often wearing a good luck charm that had a phallus on it called a Fascinus.

    On the other hand, Catullus... [gizmodo.com]

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  • (Score: 1) by nobu_the_bard on Monday November 14 2016, @06:00PM

    by nobu_the_bard (6373) on Monday November 14 2016, @06:00PM (#426601)

    Caesar hated people thinking he was gay. It wasn't a big deal to most people at time, but to Caesar being macho was important. He often seduced other mens' wives just because he could, and loved the infamy that came with it (and strangely most of them were okay with it - "my wife is so beautiful CAESAR seduced her!" was a thing?).

    There was a longstanding rumor that a VIP from Babylon had "seduced" him when he was younger and people loved ribbing him about it (both in a friendly manner and in a not-so-friendly manner) and it was noted by people at the time as one of the few things that would genuinely get him angry in public. To the Romans this seemed a hilariously minor thing to get angry about, which just made them do it to him more. He even had issued an official proclamation of his straightness one time.